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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Robocop - Remastered Unrated Director's Cut
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 02-13-2014 06:37 PM
quote: Justin Hamaker
I just watched Robocop and Robocop for the first time in probably 20+ years. I thought both movies were just plane awful. The dialog was pathetic, the acting was horrible, and the story lines were weak. Plus the way the visuals were done looked very fake.
While I respect your views on the film, I can't disagree with you more. RoboCop is an outstanding movie which was one of the better films of the 1980s. A sleeper hit in 1987 a film which got tremendous reviews, made decent box office money, has a cult following, it truly was a great film, and yes I call it a film.
The beauty of RoboCop is that it was made in the old fashioned way of film making with stop motion animation, rear projection, matte paintings, multiple locations (Dallas and Pennsylvania), it was pretty cool that they built a life sized ED209 (although it was static and did not move).
The acting was good.
quote: Justin Hamaker
I will say that story in Robocop 2 is probably more relevant in 2014, in a post Citizens United era, where big business really does have great political power.
Let's also not forget that RoboCop was a political satire as well.
quote: Claude S. Ayakawa
Dolby SR was the latest thing in sound at the time and no Hawaii theatres had it so I am glad I had the opportunity to see the movie at that Los Angeles theatre with the sound I too enjoyed the movie very much and got the DVD and Laserdisc
Just me, but I would rather listen to the original mix than a 5.1 remix, not everything needs to be discrete. I could care less how much "panning" there was in the surrounds, good sound is not about panning. I also think a lot of people forget that RoboCop was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound (won for a special achievement). Who knows if someone new remixed the new bluray mix and for the simple fact that original mix is omitted is disturbing.
quote: Aaron Garman
I've had the Criterion LaserDisc for years.
quote: Michael Coate
FWIW, RoboCop is listed as 70mm in Dolby's master records.
Perhaps Aaron can confirm if there was any clarification in the directors audio commentary from Verhoeven that there was indeed a 70mm release of RoboCop?
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 02-15-2014 01:07 PM
quote: Michael Coate
...and it wasn't uncommon for American-made movies to get a 70mm release internationally but not domestically.
I couldn't swear to it, but I think I showed a 70mm blowup as a Saturday late-night students' show in Britain in the late '90s.
As for the BD, I haven't seen it, but am a bit depressed by the feedback here. It doesn't let you see the cut of the film as it was seen by a widespread audience on its initial release, and nor does it let you hear that audio mix, either. This is basically a modernized version and that's all you get.
The original is a classic, but more for the black comedy of its script than anything else: the critique of globalization and the 1980s "greed is good" culture (e.g. the hostage taker who demands a better company car), mutually assured destruction reduced to a kids' game ("Nukem") and so on and so forth. I haven't seen this new version, but would speculate that if there is extra-violent footage that didn't make the final cut in 1987, it was left out for a reason - that what did go in was enough to make the point. If the extra footage exists, by all means include it as an extra (or, as Bobby suggests, use the BD code platform to allow the viewer to choose to include it or not as the main movie plays), but I'm not comfortable with denying the viewer the ability to see the movie as it was released in 1987.
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Michael Coate
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1904
From: Los Angeles, California
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 02-15-2014 05:37 PM
quote: Steve Guttag
Michael...check the Washington Post and look for the Avalon. I thought it ran Robocop in 70mm. Being close to 30 years ago, I definitely don't have a strong recollection but that is where I did see the movie.
I'll take another look, Steve, but my recollection is that Washington, DC was among the markets checked back when I was doing research for a 70mm database project for a home theater publication. (Much of that research evolved into the 70mm blow-up listings found on In70mm.com.)
Finding that there did not appear to have been any 70mm presentations of RoboCop in LA or NY, I recall my initial thought was that maybe 70mm prints were booked in markets where there weren't any Dolby SR installations, speculating the distributor did not want to deal with having to promote two different "premium" formats in the same market on top of the customary sorting out of any standard Dolby and mono presentations. Newspaper promotion for several other cities was checked, though, and no evidence could be found of any 70mm presentations (and you guys already know my thoughts on 70mm prints being screened without promotion, so I won't even go there).
The conclusion drawn at the time was that RoboCop's distributor, Orion, who were never all that hot on releasing films in 70mm, cancelled any domestic plans for 70mm, going instead with 35mm-SR prints in the key bookings. I think the odds are decent, though, that there were 70mm prints internationally, perhaps in Japan or Latin America where those territories historically played a lot more 70mm than North America and Europe. I also have a hunch a 70mm print may have been used during the Academy Award nomination "bake-off" screenings.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 05-03-2014 10:29 PM
quote: Jonathan Goeldner
why would you ever want to see the R-rated cut version of the film? (I'm just curious) - thankfully EVERY home video release has been the full cut of the film.
Apologies for the late reply - forgotten that I'd posted on this thread.
An historian working in the 2080s and researching, say, American politics and popular culture in the 1980s, might want to know what the mainstream audience saw when the movie was first released and what they didn't (and why they didn't see the bits that were included in later releases). Knowing who saw what and when can be important. Footage that didn't make it into an initial release was left out for a reason. This can be one of many - censorship, audiences at test screenings thought it was too long, studio executives didn't like it, the filmmakers simply didn't like the scene as shot and therefore left it out of the final cut, etc. etc.
Nowadays we have the cult of the director's cut, "back from the dead" rediscoveries, and other ways of re-selling old movies, which in essence consist of claiming that you've made them better in some way. Sometimes censorship ends up happening for the re-release which didn't in the original, hence the infamous substitution of walkie-talkies for guns in E.T. and countless examples of the n-word being dubbed over (Guy Gibson's dog in The Dam Busters now being called Jigger, Digger or Trigger, depending on whose DVD you buy). The bottom line is that you've changed the movie into something that is fundamentally not what the initial audience saw. I'm not claiming that it's wrong per se to do that, but when a rerelease home video package takes away the option to see the version that was initially mass-released, it makes me uneasy because effectively you're trying to rewrite history.
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