RoboCop Fans Furious Over New ‘Unrobotic’ Look

Looks like I read RoboCop fans wrong when I wrote that they’d be pleasantly surprised by the character’s updated look in the upcoming reboot. Leaked photos of Joel Kinnaman’s new RoboCop suit hit the web over the weekend, and have apparently stirred quite a bit of ire among fans of the classic Paul Verhoeven cult film.

Disclaimer: I am indeed a fan of the original RoboCop series, minus the third entry which deserves every bad thing anyone has ever said about it. A few days ago, I wrote the article which debuted the new RoboCop suit worn by Joel Kinnaman in the upcoming reboot, and expressed pleasant surprise at the sleek new look. It seemed to me that the RoboCop outfit was a logical evolution from the clunky 80s suit that preceded it, and compared its evolution to the progression of outfits worn by the comic book character Batman on film.

Boy, did I underestimate RoboCop fans.

“The original Robocop looked like a robot, this one looks like a guy in a suit,” bemoaned one Redditer, with another scoffing, “I had no doubt that the original Robocop was just a dude’s face and torso stuck inside a machine. This one just looks like he’s wearing armour.”

Ben Child of Guardian remarked that the filmmakers had swapped the “clunky much-loved Peter Weller iteration,” for “a crime-fighting machine who is not so much cyborg as skinny bloke in matt-black body armour.” He also reiterated fan hopes that the leaked images portray a suit on which CGI armor will be placed in post-production, or that the leaked photos merely show standard regulation Detroit riot armor and not the RoboCop suit.

With the release of the teaser poster, I think that the latter fan hope is unlikely, and that the sleek black body armor look is indeed what was intended for the RoboCop reboot.

So now we’re back to where we started with opinions on the RoboCop reboot. In one corner, we have the Total Recall remake that removed the camp of Arnie’s original at the expense of its soul. In the other corner we have Dredd, a reboot of the Sly Stallone box office bomb, based on the long-running British comic strip 2000AD. The new film reportedly excises the satirical and over-the-top elements of the strip as well, but so far, the film is proving to be a success with both critics and audiences overseas.

Do you think that the RoboCop reboot will be any good? Will it fail like Total Recall or be an unexpected surprise like Dredd? Sound off!

Also, an “improved” RoboCop suit, courtesy of one imgur user: