Stripped to the Bone

Conditions: Loud.

Getting Burnt

In reading about the tragic death of model Charlotte Dawson it becomes clear to me that her approach to dealing with online abuse was all wrong. Of course at the moment it’s not clear how much the trollish behaviour she dealt with was a factor in her death, but it seems it was a stressful ongoing factor in her life. Charlotte’s idea was to take every attack made on her and re-tweet it to her followers in an attempt to shame the trolls. This did not work. And the reason it did not work is because trolls are like plants. They thrive when they have the sun of attention being shined upon them. So making a big deal out of the awful things they post is simply like trying to put out a fire with burning logs. The only way to win with trolls is to ignore. Charlotte felt that by engaging them that would keep them from attacking others. That’s not going to work either, there is virtually no limit to how much time and effort trolls put into trolling. Always remember: haters gonna hate.



Film Review: Robocop

Like all of you, Robocop was a formative film for me. I saw it when I was far too young and was deliciously traumatised by the violence and horror of Verhoeven’s classic. It is a brilliant movie, a Frankenstinian nightmare full of dark satire and tragedy. Alex Murphy has become a classic tragic hero. When word was announced that a remake was in the pipeline, I like many many others despaired. In this age we live in, with watered down blockbuster fare being shoveled out weekly to the masses, how could the remake be anything other than diluted crap? After sitting through the thoroughly disappointing and gutless Total Recall remake of 2012, how could this remake be anything fresh or smart? And when we found out it would be PG13 then the final nails were sunk into the coffin. The film literally had three strikes against it before we even bought tickets. And then I saw the film. And now I’m here, with a mind thoroughly changed.

The new Robocop movie is not a remake of the original. Instead they’ve gone in their own direction and have effectively re-imagined the Robocop story. Alex Murphy, an undercover Detroit detective, gets too close to solving a case involving corrupt officials and gets blown up. At the same time, OCP has decided that the best way to sell Americans on the idea of allowing their robot soldiers to take over from human cops on American streets is to have a front man, so to speak: a man inside a machine. He literally will be a PR stunt for their corporation, and would be locked out of the actual combat functions since he would just slow the machine down, which is an effective new twist on the idea. Anyway, they offer Murphy’s wife a chance and she takes it, and what’s left of Alex wakes up in a laboratory in China wearing a strange new suit. It’s up to Gary Oldman, playing the brilliant but morally flawed doctor, to explain that it’s not actually a suit, ultimately showing him and us by pressing a button and reducing poor Murphy to just a head and a pair of lungs. In response Alex laments tearfully that “there’s nothing left of me”. Once the shock wears off the film becomes a tale of Alex struggling against the fear of what he’s become, worries over how he could ever return to his family, and the systems OCP has put into his brain to control him. Returning to Detroit he decides to solve his own murder case – delving into the dirty cops that conspired with the bad guy, which initially delights OCP due to its PR value, but then finally scares them as it becomes clear the politicians don’t like the idea of machines relentlessly investigating corruption at high levels. So they decide to make him a martyr, which brings us to the final action sequence.

Make no mistake, this is not a better film than the original Verhoven classic. It’s shot with shakycam, which badly hurts the movie. And I feel the inhumanity of Peter Weller’s Robocop was deeper and more tragic than this Robocop, who fully remembers his family and himself, and can move like a ninja. But. It’s better than I thought it would be, and it works hard to build the stakes and focus on the drama of the story, with some interesting details thrown in . The special effects are very good, and Gary Oldman’s part in the story is vital to showing the sheer hubris of the whole thing. Micheal Keaton’s corporate bad guy is kind of an odd fit, I’m not sure the character fits the actor, but it’s really the themes that sweep him and us through the movie as Alex struggles to be human again. Well played. Four tasers out of five.



- Peace out