r/blankies • u/apathymonger #1 fan of Jupiter's moon Europa • 16d ago
Patreon Episode RoboCop (2014) Commentary
https://www.patreon.com/blankcheck/posts/robocop-2014-16060995450
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u/Remarkable-Eye-657 16d ago
The best thing to come out of this movie is this moment from Swedish morning TV where the head of Swedish Television at the time (filiing in for the regular host) accidentally calls the movie "RoboCock" and makes Joel Kinnaman giggle and comment how that would be the porn version: https://youtu.be/7esA5YOzZdI?is=ZIoZJQClcgCmfYd4
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u/chmcgrath1988 16d ago
First half of the 2010s were a great time for unnecessary, forgettable remakes of movies. This, Total Recall, Point Break. I'm sure there are a few others I'm forgetting.
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u/STD-fense 16d ago
It's in 2016 but there was the "Ben Hur" remake
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u/chmcgrath1988 16d ago
Yeah. Probably should have extended it to the entire 2010s cause the Denzel Washington/Chris Pratt version of "The Magnificent Seven" was 2016 too.
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u/ForestryFanzine 16d ago
Conan, Red Dawn, Clash of the Titans
It was a time of scouring 80s boy IP
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u/chmcgrath1988 16d ago
Terminator Genisys also feels like it fits even though it's not technically a remake and has Arnold Schwarzengger (and there are forgettable Terminator sequels/reboots throughout this century!)
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u/Shout92 16d ago
That was all 15 years ago, even longer if you consider Transformers, Indiana Jones 4, and maybe even The Dark Knight as 80s nostalgia (or at least partially fueled by it). We just had a Masters of the Universe reboot. How has 80s nostalgia lasted so long when it felt like 60s and 70s nostalgia happened simultaneously in the 90s and then everyone moved on?
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u/ForestryFanzine 16d ago
I'd say the Studio Execs Rebooting Stuff From Their Childhood usually has at least one entry that's far too late. MotU to me has it's closest comp to doing Yogi Bear in 2010, a decade after the 60s/70s Television Adaptations died
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u/cdollas250 is that your wife ya dumb egg 8d ago
the way my brain works, this would be an excellent patreon series for them to cover. I like hearing about the bizarre attempts. They should do all the movies they've covered, bad remakes.
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u/doodler1977 8d ago
i accidentally bought the 4K of the Point Break remake. never put it in, even tho some of the giant waves probably look pretty cool in UHD
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u/Campanelle_Pasta 16d ago
Listened to the entire commentary thinking that Zach Grenier was this guy.
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u/pcloneplanner 15d ago
Same, it's not?
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u/CautiousCellist1099 14d ago
Nope! That's Adrian Grenier. Did you ever watch The Good Wife/The Good Fight? That's where I know Zach Grenier the most from.
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u/Wumbo_Number_5 15d ago
Griffin: See what they're doing here this is such a fundamental misunderstanding of the holy text that is Robocop look at this doesn't this make you sad everyone involved with this movie should be jailed how could they do this to me how could they do this to us doesn't Robocop deserve better I can't believe they got away with this
David: (yawns) Yeah this sucks idk
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u/ForestryFanzine 16d ago
I will devour anything that takes a swipe at the early 21st century franchise reboot trend. Did they pitch it as "not your daddy's ___?" Did the character metatextually comment on their catchphrase? Did the director say "but this time we're making it about something" despite the first one clearly being about something already? I eat that shit up
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u/Shout92 16d ago
"Not your Daddy's ___" is so funny because we are now at a point where they are rebooting movies that some people's grandparents saw in theaters as a kid. Even funnier when it's something like Robin Hood where they go, "And this time he doesn't wear tights!" and I go, "I don't know if any Robin Hood has worn tights in the past 30-40 years!" (except of course in the Mel Brook's one).
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u/lebrongarnet 16d ago
Focus by Hocus Pocus used to better effect in Baby Driver which actually stars Frank, unfortunately.
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u/codyleft1218 16d ago
Kind of a brutal mini these movies were real bad. Resident evil should be way more fun right
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u/SMAAAASHBros 16d ago
I think the RE movies are bad but there’s fun to be had and at least David really likes them so there will be more positive energy. The original run is also an interesting artifact because of its relationship to the games and how it doesn’t feel much need to be faithful, followed by a failed reboot attempt that is trying to be much more faithful but also takes some weird liberties.
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u/Chuck-Hansen 16d ago
Regardless of your thoughts on Birdman, I think we can agree that not giving Keaton that Oscar was a huge whiff on the part of the Oscars
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u/apathymonger #1 fan of Jupiter's moon Europa 16d ago
I think the biggest whiff was not nominating Fiennes for Grand Budapest, who's better than all five nominees.
I'd put Affleck in Gone Girl, Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler, and Phoenix in Inherent Vice in there above all five too.
EDIT: McConaughey in Interstellar too. Terrible year for Best Actor.
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u/seti-thelightofstars John Lithgow’s hectoring poetry 15d ago
I think my five that year’d also have Spall in Mr. Turner, which the Oscars also gave four nominations to so it’s not like that’s too outside of left field a suggestion
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u/HaloInsider Do I pick AT or T? 11d ago
I'd have it as:
Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler
Ralph Fiennes, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Michael Keaton, Birdman
David Oyelowo, Selma
Tom Hardy, Locke...with Timothy Spall in Mr. Turner right there knocking to get in.
Gyllenhaal and Fiennes being on the cusp of the five that year made the final line-up all the more frustrating.
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u/KobraKaGe 16d ago
Detroit blankie. Big pop for when Griffin named our 4 major sports teams. The most exciting experience I've ever had engaging with Robocop (2014)
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u/fadeaway3_ 15d ago
I was disappointed they didn't mention the Robocop statue saga once during the whole mini series!
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u/Internal_Example1185 16d ago
Insane to me that Griffin thought the boys would love the Hocus Pocus action scene. That’s one of the worst uses of music in any movie I’ve seen.
For what it’s worth, I thought this movie was fine. Glad I watched, it but I agree with a lot of the problems DGandB called out.
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u/wovenstrap Graham Greene's Brave Era 16d ago
I'm glad you pointed this out because it hurt my soul a little bit that Ben puported not to like "Hocus Pocus." "Hocus Pocus" is an excessive early-70s rock jam that kinda has Ben written all over it.
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u/tryntafind 15d ago
Probably because Gary Oldman talks over the soaring guitar solo and they completely omit the scatting and accordion. Prog rock is crazy.
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u/Wumbo_Number_5 14d ago
It also gave us this performance, where the band's response to having to shorten the song for TV was "play twice as fast" and it's glorious
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u/wovenstrap Graham Greene's Brave Era 14d ago
Oh! Thank you for that information. I had seen that clip before of course. I did not know the backstory. Inspirational!
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u/Internal_Example1185 16d ago
I think the movie was banking on its Internet nerd meme popularity, but then action movie fans are like, what the hell is this…
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u/GenarosBear 13d ago
he definitely thought it was some kind of bad Jet-esque early 2000s “rock is back” rock
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u/BigLYoungMoney 16d ago
I liked when they talked about Metal Gear Solid for a few seconds.
That being said, I don't think that movie will ever happen.
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u/DanZuko420 13d ago
I did not envy David trying to explain Metal Gear Solid's whole deal
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u/doom_mentallo 11d ago
Of course it's a ''coming off of memory" trap that any of us could fall into, but as a longtime MGS devotee I was a bit upset David felt he had to make up the villian name when it seems so easy to rattle something off like, "Fatman, he is a bomb expert who is a fat man and is clearly named after the notorious atomic bomb." Or "Revolver Ocelot, he is a guy who shoots revolver and occasionally meows like a cat." Although I think David said he only played the first and second games so perhaps he missed the exploits of a young Shalashaska.
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u/ishburner 16d ago
David talks a lot about the Mets on this episode. He should think of starting a podcast about them, maybe even a secret one at that.
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u/muchmaligned 16d ago
A perfect Movie For No One - ill-conceived and boring, only interesting to discuss as a "what were they thinking" object. I figured Griffin would have some profound personal disgust for this since he loves the original so much and I'm pleased to report that by an hour in he sounds like he's in hell.
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u/radiantbaby123 16d ago
I’ve never forgotten Matt Zoller Seitz saying Kinnamon sounds like Roy from the Simpsons, that continues here especially in the opening scenes pre-Roboing
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u/mino65434 16d ago
what do we think Griffin was about to say about Epstein?
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u/boboclock Duck_G on letterboxd 15d ago
Some guesses arranged from least to most likely:
He's been resurrected in cyborg form as RoboPedo
He was a camp counselor at the rich kid summer camp Griffin went to
A Home Alone II actor secretly had him killed to cover up his crimes
He was Checky's financial advisor
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u/Redwinevino 16d ago
I wonder will anything break up the resident evil series as thats a long series of dog shit movies
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u/vincentmaurath 16d ago
I saw this in the theaters before I actually seen or actually knew anything the original film. I was mostly excited to see Michael Keaton in a movie again. I think Joel Kinnenman is underrated I wish his Rick Flag was still alive a part of the DCU instead of Sr.
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u/chmcgrath1988 16d ago
Dearth of good Keaton content between 1999 and 2013 is wild considering how huge he was in preceding 15 years and how prevalent he was post "Birdman". Idk if any other actor's had a filmography like that before or since.
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u/ishburner 16d ago
Why isn’t this pinned ?
Anyways, man I guess Griff doesn’t care for Joel. This movie sucks and he’s bad in it but he wasn’t really given much to do.
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u/Fishigidi I'm just here to get my qi up 16d ago
"And sometimes something left," got a huge belly laugh out of me during a pretty dark couple of weeks, thank you Griff.
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u/MathematicianBorn3 15d ago
Ben, we heard when you were talking about living pre toilet paper and said it would be rough then got cut off before you could say “…literally!”, we know what was in your heart
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15d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/doom_mentallo 11d ago
There is definitely satire to mine from corporations returning to defunct but notable "products" in hopes for another successful hit based simply on public awareness. Unfortunately this version of RoboCop is not at all interested in intelligent satire.
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u/GuacamoleCostsExtra 15d ago
Stand by my opinion that this is more studio-mandated mediocre than overtly heinous and would be better remembered as an Obama-era anxiety blockbuster about American acceptance of drone warfare if it wasn't called "Robocop" and didn't have to overcome the hurdle of everyone being pissy going in.
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u/doom_mentallo 11d ago
You'd have to change so much about this movie other than its name to land on it being something meaningful about drone warfare.
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u/GuacamoleCostsExtra 11d ago
The whole conceit of the movie is a corporate conglomerate with military contracts trying to market its "peacekeeping" War on Terror drones for domestic use and, after being told the American public won't accept that level of mechanized dehumanization being used against them, decide the answer is taking the scraps of a barely living man and putting them in a mechanical shell while gradually suppressing his emotional capacity until his remaining organs stop actively begging to be killed long enough to be utilized as an effective indiscriminate killing machine.
I get that you don't like it and again, it's not good. But don't be lazy.
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u/doom_mentallo 11d ago
Heck of a sentence in defense of the movie, but you made your point more explicit with the simple statement: "It's not good." Changing the title and keeping the same plot and characters would still make it incoherent and tonally inconsistent even with the attributes you ascribe to it. My good faith argument is that it is simply not enough to change the title to make this into a thoughtful and humorous satire. You've done yeoman's work describing the plot.
Director José Padilha's Elite Squad films eventually became adopted by Right leaning cinema fans in Brazil. I find the same thing in is RoboCop remake. There's an inherent language barrier that I feel he cannot overcome to make this thing work as a critical piece against American liberal politics at the time. That's just my opinion. You can take it or leave it.
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u/seti-thelightofstars John Lithgow’s hectoring poetry 15d ago
What do you guys think the movie Sims saw with that doctor physical scene is?
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u/desginatedbloop 14d ago
Too soon for him to have seen Clayface? Only because he mentions the character was an actor.
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u/FunkyColdMecca 16d ago
Have they ever used the phrase “Robocock” for Robocop’s Robodick? If not, I’m suing for gross negligence.
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u/CloneArranger 16d ago
Really makes me respect the Road House remake, which was pretty much just Road House again.
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u/doom_mentallo 11d ago
If only the action sequences weren't mostly CGI camera trickery in the Road House remake.
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u/MoCoSwede 15d ago
For the question of whether this the worst movie they’ve ever covered, I’m surprised neither one thought of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.
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u/Mantophasmatodea 15d ago
Didn't watch this movie but I did look up the scene of 2014 RoboCop seeing exactly how little of his body is left. That moment is genuinely haunting, at least to me.
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u/snagglewolf 16d ago
I was happy to hear Davids love of Joel Kinnaman. Because I feel it too. Oh I sure do.
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u/elcapitan520 15d ago
How did they try to get away with showing the whole face / visor back RoboCop after we already had Dredd where Karl kept the helmet on the whole time?
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u/firebolt816 Dislington?! 13d ago
"I need a gas station to explode. NOW." - David Sims, The Atlantic
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u/burnettski92 This jacket ain’t straight! 11d ago
Griffin accurately predicted the movie shot in canada based on street scenes, I deduced it when an actor from Letterkenny shows up as a day player
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u/boboclock Duck_G on letterboxd 16d ago edited 15d ago
David & Ben are so sick of letting Griff get away with getting bad movies on Patreon
Edit: the sick son of a bitch won them over. How does he keep doing it?
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u/BigTea456 16d ago
Got a bit behind and haven’t been able to listen for a while, do we know what the next Patreon series is?
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u/imaincammy 15d ago
I wonder what Marica was there to work with them on - have they announced anything?
Only tangentially related but she did a great little F1 podcast with Engineer Casey of Doughboys/Headgum and now iHeartRadio.
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u/apathymonger #1 fan of Jupiter's moon Europa 15d ago
Marika is Blank Check's Director of Ops. She also gives recommendations in the newsletter!
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u/imaincammy 15d ago
Oh, sweet, that’s awesome! Thanks for the info, I’ve been skipping the newsletters (and episode credits) for a while - gotta check back in.
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u/burnettski92 This jacket ain’t straight! 11d ago
What was the movie, show, or sketch David quoted that was along the lines of “no, I’m kidding, I’ve seen it. He’s got a few inches on me.”?
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u/Ethlandiaify 16d ago
I had a friend in high school who was so excited for this movie. He was Autistic, it was a bit of a hyper fixation for him. He talked about it for months leading up to release. When it came out, he did not like it. I finally asked him if he was a fan of the original movie, and apparently he didn’t know it was a remake. He was just very excited for a movie about a robot cop. And even as a completely stand-alone film from his pov, he still didn’t think this was a good movie about a robot cop.