The release of Jose Padilha’s remake of RoboCop is only a few months away, so it’s time for the trailers to start getting into the more human aspects of the tale. While the footage we’ve seen so far have focused on the robotic and action elements of the film, the latest international trailer for RoboCop introduces us to the man inside the high-tech suit.
Joel Kinnaman plays Alex Murphy, a good Detroit cop and family man who’s injured in an explosion and wakes up to find that he’s become a cybernetic cop at the behest of industrial giant OmniCorp. Despite having the illusion of free will, Murphy’s body is actually controlled by the corporation that now employs him, as they seek to put a RoboCop on every street corner.
The international trailer gives us new insight into Murphy himself, drawing out the humanity within a story about corporate control, manipulation and the rise of a police state. As a result, this is perhaps the most effective RoboCop trailer I have seen yet. It’s difficult now not to compare the RoboCop story with other ‘part man/part machine’ narratives that have been flying around recently, and Kinnaman looks a bit like Iron Man in his first introduction. But amid the action there appears to be an actual human story going on here, with brief scenes of Murphy’s wife (Abbie Cornish) expressing concern about her husband’s future, and Murphy’s own realization that he’s come through alive, but at a price.
So while I’m still a bit skeptical about the necessity of this remake, I’m a bit more interested to see what the new RoboCop will do with the story. In a world of drones and potential robotic armies, it seems a topical tale to bring back once more. We will just have to see if Padilha and his stellar cast have managed to pull it off.
You can watch the latest international trailer for RoboCop below and let us know what you think in the comments.
RoboCop hits theatres February 7, 2014.
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