‘RoboCop’ Reboot Details: He’s a Transformer Now?

So far, the ‘RoboCop’ reboot earned most if its headlines by surrounding lead actor Joel Kinnaman (‘The Killing) with an eye-popping ensemble. Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson and the always brilliant Michael K. Williams have signed on for the production, which is about to start filming in Toronto in September. But Sunday night, the love parade being thrown for ‘RoboCop’ ran into its first public pothole … and we’re not sure it’s going to be able to get back on track.

Drew McWeeny of HitFix reportedly got hold of the shooting script for the planned reboot, and used Twitter to answer several lingering questions about the direction of the new film. How did he like it?

Short version: this script makes my stomach hurt very, very badly...It's like someone wrote a script scientifically fine-tuned to destroy me. … Write it down. Page 55, the ‘Robocop’ remake beat me. I'm done. I can't hurt more than this.

So it sounds like he didn’t care for it. But in between the pain, McWeeny revealed a couple of choice details. We’ll apparently see different versions of the RoboCop suit, starting with the recognizable metallic suit from the 1987 original. (But a focus group reportedly will shoot the design down as being too outdated, so Padilha and crew will intro RoboCop upgrades.)

Later in the film, McWeeny describes RoboCop as being able to change, Transformers-style, from “Social Mode” to “Combat Mode” and back again. There also will be scenes of RoboCop infiltrating an Al Qaeda training camp, and the ED-209s will be used in the fields of Iran to “subdue suicide bombers."

Now, rewrites are possible. The movie hasn’t even begun filming, though McWeeny does say this is the rewrite that they’re using for their shooting script. And he does admit that once the script gets past all of the blatant winks to the original film, it starts telling a story that’s worth following. “But it’s way too late,” he adds.

Is it “too late” for the ‘RoboCop’ reboot? Hopefully not. But this isn’t a fire MGM likely wanted to put out at this stage of the game. What do you think? Have your expectations for the ‘RoboCop’ reboot diminished? Or is this just one guy’s take on a script that could be in development, and you’ll wait to see the finished product?