RoboCop

We rewatched RoboCop over the Xmas holidays and decided to take a chance on the reboot and compare the films.  I can say that I was pleasantly surprised by how good the RoboCop reboot was.  The original Paul Verhoeven RoboCop is one of those iconic films that people still talk about nearly thirty years after its release.  The themes of the story still resonate today, and the new film had a lot to measure up to.

The new RoboCop is billed both as a remake and reboot of the original, and of all the sequels I will say it's the best.  It's a remake because it essentially retells the same story, and a reboot because it takes a different slant on the themes.  For me the changes were welcome, because they made the story feel fresh; as in looking at things the original didn't really address.  Also the ED209 scenes, both in Tehran and Detroit, were stunningly good.

However, the original is still the best, because the execution of the ideas were original.

The new RoboCop has some wonderful scenes, and it does talk more about what it means to be human.  Michael Keaton is chillingly good, Gary Oldman plays an interestingly conflicted good guy, and Samuel L Jackson is the man, which I think sums up the weakness of the new movie.  Peter Weller owned the role in the original film, whereas Joel Kinnaman is outshone by his supporting cast, because at best he's riffing off Peter Weller's performance, and at worse is rather bland with none of the nice touches Peter Weller brought to his relationship to his son's interests.

Moving on.

This week has been a bit of a mixed bag of stuff.  Still not really into the groove, but I'm getting there.  I added another 3,168 words to The Bureau, but then found a scene in the wrong place (as in moved to the wrong chapter during my last round of edits, which was a bit of an oops moment).  Banged head on table a few times.  Wrote a new chapter that went places I wasn't expecting it to go when I started, which is both a good thing and a bad thing.  Good in that it expands the story, bad as in I have to think about the character's story arc and retrofit stuff in.  So the current novel stands at 50,996 words.

The weekend was a fun filled trip to the Natural History Museum to see Sophie the stegosaurus with our godchildren.  Got home to find a pipe was leaking in the flat, and managed to sprain my wrist moving all the stuff in the cupboard out of the way to be able to get at it.  Been in a lot of pain and was worried I might have triggered my rheumatoid arthritis, but it seems I'm OK.

One final note.  I have, as is my wont, gone back through all my posts and revised titles and tags of my posts.  I had one of those moments when one realizes that if I kept the Writer Log title for those posts that only talk about what I've been working on, it would make it easier to keep track of those posts – well at least for me.  As for tags, I have the habit of revising them as and when needed to keep the labels functional so that when one is searching for something one can find it. No point having a tag if it doesn't do that.  Of course one can always use Google to search my blog if you want, but not everyone wants to cut and paste URLs to do so.

So thank you for reading.  That's it for another week.