I voted for Robocop because it came as a welcome surprise – the second SF movie in the space of a few years that vastly exceeded by expectations (the first being The Terminator). Even after seeing the ads, I expected an incredibly stupid and sily (if violent) movie. But it turned out to be an informed, darkly satiric film with high production values*, broadly played but not common “types”, and a grim little twist
The script paid homage to Cyril Kornbluth’s classic story “The Marching Morons” (and updating it via inflation./ The catchphrase “Would you buy that for a quarter?” became “I’d buy that for a dollar”) The same sort of Corporations In Power and Driving Things by Advertising that was in Kornbluth and Pohl’s The Space Merchants is clearly in command here, and making the same wretched mess of things in the name of corporate profits. Even the sympathetic head of OmniCorp is a corporate hack, caring more about the bottom line than about people.
The best part was what I call “The REAL Banality of Evil” – not what Hannah Arendt had in mind, but the trope of Criminals Having No Taste. You could see the same thing in films like Little Caesar or in Goodfellas, where the mobsters have a taste for cheap kitsch, but it’s overblown in Robocop, where the criminals spout trite sayings inspired by the cheap shows they watch and aspire to flashy consumer goods just because they’re flashy.
And the fake commercials are a hoot. The hacks who made the sequels never latched on to any of this – the plots are nonsensical and the commercials lack that dark, biting edge.
ED Neumaier wrote the screenplay for Starship Troopers, too, and his Internet blackouts are as amusing as the commercials (especially the one where the criminal about to be executed is … him), and he and Verhoeven tried to do ST as the same sort of dark comedy.(And the effects, again, are top-notch). But for SF fans it simply doesn’t work, despite all the critics (some on this Board) who keep telling us how it’s great because of what it’s trying to be. But it’s like taking Gone With the Wind and turning it into a four hour, over-the-top racist and anachronistic dark comedy* – it won’t fly.
But ST has the biggest disconnect between a movie and its supposed source material that I’ve ever seen – it goes way beyond divergence from the text into a fundamental difference in outlook and philosophy. And scientific and technical accuracy. Heinlein’s book is well thought-out, with a few SF assumption (FTL spaceships, for instance), but trying to keep the rest plausible, but the film is full of downright stupidity and monkey-logic (Why didn’t the Rodger Young contact earth about the Bug Meteor? Because their communications equipment was broken off by the meteor. Because it passed so close by the ship. Because they didn’t see it until it was too close. Heinlein must be spinning at hypersonic speed in his grave.)
I liked Total Recall, even though everything was too “clean”. It’s not a great interpretation of Philip K. Dick’s original story “WE can remember it for you Wholesale”, and I’ve said often enough before that I feel the bulk of the film is ripped off from Robert Sheckley’s The Status Civilization, without attribution (with a Martian Atmosphere Plant ripped off from Edgar Rice Burroughs, fer cryin’ out loud!) The effects were good (although quickly became obsolete as CGI became available). As Veerhoeven said, “every dollar is on the screen,” and you can’t fault the film for not moving along. You can explain the improbabilities and inanities from the likelihood that this is a dream. The remake has the advantage of looking gritty and realistiuc, but is much dumber in many ways.
*Yeah, I know – don’t say “but it is already!” It’s too cheap a shot. Mitchell knew her history and did her homework. GWTW is definitely racist, but you have to view it as the Civil War seen through the eyes of a Southern Belle.
*especially excellent animation work, by more than one provider