Director Jose Padilha Says ROBOCOP Remake Will Focus More On Robo's Origin

If you're at all a fan of the ROBOCOP franchise, then you know full well the origin part of the story that Paul Verhoeven put out in the beginning of the first film. I was a little disappointed when I heard that they were even thinking of remaking the film, then I was totally psyched when I heard that Darren Aranofsky would be directing. Then after the deal wen through (thank goodness), they got Jose Padilha to take the helm, which I am currently feeling kinda good about.

As of lately, it seems that Padilha is a little fascinated with the origin of Robo with the psychological effects and  the struggle between man and machine that he is. According to FilmDrunk, it's that part of the story that director Jose Padilha wants to pay most of his attention to.

“‘RoboCop’ the first movie was fantastic,” he told us. “But even if there was no movie, the concept of ‘RoboCop’ is brilliant, first because it lends itself to a lot of social criticism, but also because it poses a question, ‘When do you lose you humanity?’ The way it does that is by replacing body parts with machine parts, and that’s very smart because guess what? It’s going to happen!”

“I have my take on it,” he continued, “And I can tell you this: In the first ‘RoboCop’ when Alex Murphy is shot, gunned down, then you see some hospitals and stuff and then you cut to him as RoboCop. My movie is between those two cuts. How do you make RoboCop? How do you slowly bring a guy to be a robot? How do you actually take humanity out of someone and how do you program a brain, so to speak, and how does that affect an individual?”

If done right, I can totally see this being a good way to explore a side of Robo that we've never really seen before. To be honest, the whole scene in his house in the first film didn't do much to express the human side of him, even with Peter Weller in the role. But maybe that's the machine part trying to get in touch with the human part, in which case, only makes it awesomer.

As far as who will be making the technology, some people have actually been speculating that the actual hardware for this new Robo will be coming from Japan. The director finally laid those comments to rest:

via ComingSoon:

“We need an American RoboCop, man. RoboCop is an American guy, his name is Alex Murphy,” he said, laughing at the idea of turning Maura’s character Nascimento into an android.

story via FilmDrunk