Joel Kinnaman Says Robocop Remake Is a "New Story Within the Old One"; Says Gary Oldman Should Have Won Oscar
Posted 06.04.12 by Ryan
Remakes. While plenty of moviegoers groan over the prospect of yet another remake or — as they're often called nowadays — "reboot," studios keep finding success with them... And the proliferation continues.
Likely many balked at the news of a remake of director Paul Verhoeven's 1987 sci-fi classic Robocop. Production is ready to go this September and actor Joel Kinnaman (AMC's The Killing), who is cast in the lead role, made a case to Collider about why fans shouldn't instantly reject remakes.
I used to be like “Why are we doing a remake? What are remakes being done for?” But then, we do that all the time in the theater. If we weren’t doing remakes, nobody would know who Shakespeare was. I’m not saying that Robocop is Shakespeare, but it’s a way to... we’re retelling. That’s what we do as human beings. We retell our favorite stories. That’s what we’ve done since we were sitting around campfires. It’s a part of the human spirit. It doesn’t have to be negative to creativity. It can be completely opposite. That’s how you can break new ground by rethinking something that’s already been done.
Kinnaman may or may not have been convincing with his defense of remakes, but he did go on to say that the remake will be respectful of the original. He also revealed that the remake will be a "new story within the old one."
[Director] José [Padilha] has a completely different take on this than Verhoeven had, and with all respect, everybody that’s involved in this movie loved the original and we have a lot of respect for it. We’re going to have a lot of throwbacks and there’s going to be a lot of fun stuff for the fans of the first movie. It’s a new story within the old one.
Joining Kinnaman in the Robocop remake is Gary Oldman, who was cast late last month in the role of scientist Norton, who creates Robocop and finds himself stuck between his creation's growing need for humanity and the his employer's greed. Kinnaman said that working with Oldman was "as surreal as me being RoboCop" and that the remake is very much about the relationship between Oldman's character and Kinnaman's Robocop.
I couldn’t be happier. He’s pretty much the grand master of the game. I still think it made everybody that voted for the Oscars look bad that they didn’t vote for Gary Oldman, because what he did is so difficult in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It’s a completely different kind of thing. I mean, I loved The Artist. I thought it was fantastic. I saw it early before the whole hype of it and I thought that French actor (Jean Dujardin) did a great job, but he’s more like that guy. I’ve seen him in interviews and he is a bit animated like that character. But, Gary Oldman disappears into his character. It’s so subtle. It’s so difficult what he does, and it’s something that I don’t think maybe two or three other actors could do on their best day in the world right now. It was a master’s performance and he’s on top of his game right now. He’s in his golden age. So, I’m very, very excited and we have great scenes that have a lot of the substance that I was talking about. It’s very much a relationship between Gary Oldman’s character and Alex Murphy.
Next Showing: Robocop is scheduled to open on August 9, 2013