Neill Bomkamp to direct new RobotCop movie, RobotCop Returns. Yay or Nay?

Oops RobotCop....

After Chappie and Elysium, I'm not exactly enthused by the idea of a Neil Bomkamp movie. That being said, a new Robocop movie can't be bad. So why not.

@liquiddragon: Such a good typo.

Anyway, I didn't even really like District 9 that much, so seeing him attached doesn't make me excited. That being said, I do like his ideas most of the time...it's just the execution that hasn't always clicked with me. So, always holding out hope for those like that that this next movie will be the one that they connect (with me at least).

Chappie was dumb fun.

Elysium seemed like preachy garbage, so I never bothered with it.

I guess the Robert Cop franchise survived the third movie and a not actually terrible but still woefully misguided reboot (I never watched the various TV shows/Canadian miniseries, so I can't speak to their quality), so it can't hurt anything to take another crack at it. If it's actually good? Awesome. God knows we could use some good dark satire right now. If it's bad? Ah well, we can just wait for the inevitable RoboCop vs. Short Circuit movie that fans have been clamoring for.

Edit: Also, thumbs up on Chappie. It was a feature length excuse to put Die Antwoord in something, and dammit, it was fun.

I think Blomkamp works good with good material. I was hoping Alien would be the franchise he revived, but I think Robocop could work. His style lends towards it, a lot more then it did to things like Elysium for instance, which was just all style, no substance. Chappie, I'm pretty mixed on. Parts of it felt interesting, especially Hugh Jackman's character, but as a whole, it felt primarily like one big South African inside joke. Which I can dig, but as an American it's obviously hard to connect with that stuff beyond the innate goofiness.

He seems to be taking the M. Night Shymalan career path of promising start, then a downhill slide from there.

More like the Richard Kelly route. Shyamalan at least had a good run before he started churning out garbage. Blomkamp made a decent, very original sci-fi and that's it. So no, also don't make another Robocop, just leave it alone.

I thought Chappie was fine but I didn't like some of the performances, and maybe I'm just racist, but the blonde haired woman's accent was kind of grating (I don't mean the accent in general, just the way she talked). Elysium looked great and sounded great, but yeah I didn't like it much. District 9 was great. Now, we're talking about Robocop, right? If so, then that's cool I suppose. I'll give Neill Blomkamp a chance, as I was going to with his Aliens 5 before it got canceled. I picked 'I'm not totally against it, but it's hard to get excited'. Considering it's another remake (or, a reboot of a sequel?), and I am curious as to what Blomkamp can do, I am not all that enthused, but I am also not entirely dismissive of it. We'll have to see what it looks like when trailers come around. Also, something I noticed with a lot of his films is that there's not a lot of gray areas, it's just good vs. evil, which can work with Robocop mind you but can get kind of tiresome.

*RobotCop show up on screen*

Me: "That's RobotCop"

The only Blomkamp movie i've seen is Elysium which wasnt great, it cant be much worse than the other reboot though. Robocop was a movie of its time and is a classic, Reimagining it and making it grittier or adding CG wont make it better. Also it will be another PG-13 movie so yeah, i'm gonna go with "Nay".

@boozak: why is it a given that it’ll be PG-13? All but one Robocop movie is rated R and Blomkamp has only done rated R movies.

Also, not against it, but not excited really. Love District 9 and there were things to like about Elysium and Chappie, although not much. Hopefully he can pick it up in the quality department.

@fuzzypumpkin: RoboCop 3 and the reboot were both PG13 but it depends on the budget, which most likely is high for a new RoboCop movie.

@fuzzypumpkin: It might not be, that was just me being bitter over other reboots. Blomkamps movies were 15's here in the UK which could be PG-13 or R in the US.

I think I appreciate Blomkamp's visual eye most of all. Beyond District 9, I haven't loved much of his writing. One of the biggest What If? moments in cinema/video game crossover history is what Blomkamp's Halo would've looked like behind Peter Jackson's resources and the Alex Garland screenplay. It's always seemed to be the case that Blomkamp would benefit from having a great writer helping pull the strings.

I don't know. It'll probably be a perfectly acceptable movie that the internet shits on relentlessly. Hard to get excited about it.

Blomkamp is a great director, he just puts his talent behind scripts that are a little too hamfisted because he believes in the messages. (Monsters is a great example of his work with a good script with the same kind of message.) Doesn't help that most of them involve telling Americans that they're the bad guys.

He's a great visual director, and he gets good performances out of even bad actors (that Chappie is watchable at all is proof enough of that). It'll come down to the script, but at least it'll look good.

@charongreed: I think you're confusing directors. Monsters is Gareth Edwards. Both of them known for their visuals.

@sethmode: I also misspelled Blomkamp. lol

I'd rather see him directing a new Alien, but Ridley Scott fucked that up like everything else.

I dig the shit out of Blomkamp's work, but yeah he needs to partner up with a decent writing team.

Not too excited for another Robocop reboot, I'd rather have a feature length version of his Tetra Vaal short set in the states....but that's not gonna happen after Chappie.

Hugh Jackman was the only decently-acted part of Chappie. And I really, really liked Chappie.

I like his style and direction. District 9, for me, was disappointing especially after Alive in Joburg. Didn't like the action route the movie took, its focus on one human and unsuccessfully trying to get us to relate to the aliens (while at the same time making the majority of them dull violent hive minds). The more nuanced and documentary-style what could have been version will live on in my heart. That said, I'd give it a shot. I really liked the reboot even if it was toned way down, and I should see Chappie and Elysium someday to get a better feel of Blomkamp's work.

Chappie felt very Robocop in a lot of ways, and not in good ways. Everything about it was just too obvious, too cloying. It really felt like a bad knockoff Robocop movie. The best part was Hugh Jackman reving up an angle grinder screaming "I WANT YA BRAAAAAIIIIIINNNNSSS".

I like District 9 a whole lot, as on the nose as it is, it's still a really strong movie. Everything else he's done has had significant issues. Zygote was probably the best thing to come out of Oats Studios, Gdansk was some good fun though. That said, he's remained a really strong director, and his style is perfect for gritty sci-fi. If this is written by someone else, it has potential for sure. Any followup to Robocop is going to be an uphill battle though, the original is damn near perfect.

But hey on twitter he said he's gonna be using some big fat juicy squibs so he's sort of on the right track.

I think the only film he's made that I have enjoyed so far is District 9...I actively disliked Elysium and Chappie (and it seems he can only make the same film at this point so I suppose Robocop fits in with his lazy messaging style). That said, Robocop 2 is awesome and I think it is dumb to ignore it entirely. I totally get ignoring Robocop 3.

I'm not sure it's the best fit. It's been awhile since I've seen RoboCop, but I don't remember an obvious analogy to apartheid.

Half Mr. Roboto, half Copter...

As long as the guns are big and the violence excessive!

Nay. I feel like people have consistently confused great performances from Sharlto Copely as being a sign that Neil Blomkamp is a good director.

Didn’t they just make a new RoboCop? So this is now the New New RoboCop? Not the most exciting thing in the world.

I have grow disinterested with Bomkamp as a director. Chappy and Elysium were so on the nose on its message and just shallow that they actively make me dislike District 9 by association.

Also, Robocop is a product of its time, as several attempts at revitalizing it proved. I don't even dislike the latest reboot, I think making it grittier and more about drone wars was the right move, but it was such a different beast that I don't think using the name did it any favors.

There's a lot it could tackle about militarized police in this day and age, but you're right in that I don't think Bomkamp could handle it with any kind of delicacy.

Well they wouldn't let him make that Aliens direct sequel yet, so I guess he feels compelled to make a direct sequel out of SOMETHING.

Hooray! They're going to keep unnecessarily rebooting an already unnecessarily rebooted franchise until the first, legititmately great, movie is garbage by association. They should just take it to the next level and go full creatively bankrupt Hollywood and plan an extended universe made up entirely of shitty retellings of 30 year old franchises.

( I would totally watch a movie where Capt. Chaos, Tango and Cash, and Robocop have to put their differences aside to protect the world from the bucket of water from Flashdance.)

I'm just not a fan of his at all, and I didn't even care for District 9. Unfortunately I can only look at this with disinterest.

Between the mediocre Alien Covenant, the mediocre looking new Predator, and the box office failure of Blade Runner 2049, I think people just don't care about 80s franchises anymore. I just don't see many people caring about a Robocop reboot on top of all those other 80s movies.

District 9 is one of my favorite movies while Elysium was so disappointing, that I didn't even want to give Chappie a chance. I think the biggest problem is that I want to see Neill Blomkamp branch out from the cyberpunk themes that all his current films have. The Halo Landfall ad was so good that I honestly wish he made more science fiction military dramas. He's got that gritty style down so perfectly that I would love to see a true novel adaptation of Starship Troopers or Old Man's War.

This just seems like more of the same from him, but it could also be good since he's being curbed from writing and it's based off a sequel script made by the original writers. So hopefully that will keep him more in line.

I liked District 9 enough, though I got sick watching it due to all the shaky cam stuff, but haven’t seen any of his other works.

I watched the first RoboCop reboot, so I’ll probably end up watching this one too. Jury’s our on the quality though.

Shyamalan's last couple movies(The Visit and Split) were pretty good I thought. He definitely had a long run of crap, though. I have cautiously high hopes for Glass. I really liked Unbreakable, so seeing more of that universe is cool to me.

On topic, I'm willing to give anything a shot. A string of bad movies/games/whatever doesn't mean the next one can't be cool.

I guess I'm down for it. The RoboCop reboot was pretty terrible. I really appreciate Blomkamp's work and want to see him do more and better stuff. District 9, I love to death. Elysium was extremely disappointing and straight up bad in spots, but Chappie was really enjoyable even though it was bizarre and not really what I was expecting.

Blomkamp does well with cool concepts and world-building in sci-fi settings, plus his movies are visual treats. I would personally rather see his Alien 5, but RoboCop seems like a good fit too.

I scrubed through replies and didn’t see anyone mention that Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner, will produce and executive-produce. They were the writers of the original Robocop. They will also be using the original sequel script writen for Robocop 2. This may give it some hope as someone who only enjoyed the 1st movie.

If the short films on his youtube channel are any indication, sign me up right now!

They're going to keep trying to remake Robocop because that original movie is still popular decades later. I haven't liked any of Neil Blomkamp's post-District 9 movies but he's got talent and he seems smart enough to understand why the original is a timeless classic. Here's hoping they at least learned no one wants a PG-13 Robocop.

I think the guy is amazing at creating visuals with a story - lived in worlds - and he’s exceptionally great at representing hardware that looks both practical and futuristic. So a Robocop from him might be really cool.

Nay, 100% Nay. You can't make a good Robocop movie now, it was a time a place film, and this planet sure as shit isn't that place anymore.

Come on dudes the guy is awesome

I voted Nay! because he doesn't have the right kind of humour for a Robocop movie. But I take that back. With a bit more, better, and in your face, satire moments District 9 would basically be a Paul Verhoeven movie. So he needs a good comedy writer.