Submitted by cowloom in mediathread
beautifully-shot copaganda
imagine setting a cyberpunk movie in a fascist dystopia, but then not criticizing said fascism
seriously, they leaned in really hard to the fascist imagery and worldbuilding. the judges are "judge, jury, and executioner." the masses live in run-down high rises. the judges harass a homeless guy. their emblem is a giant eagle.
i kept waiting for a scene where the movie shows us why cops having unlimited power is a bad thing, but it never came. instead we got 95 minutes of essentially police brutality porn. it even ended with some "thin blue line" bs about the judges being the only ones fighting for order against criminal anarchy. i see this as a movie where bad guys fight other bad guys - the small-time criminals vs the big-time cops with a state monopoly on violence. the slo-mo scenes were pretty artistic, but that's about all that I enjoyed about this film.
i've never read the comics, so idk if they're any better.
flabberghaster wrote
I don't remember if the original movie was better but I do remember there was a spate of remakes of 80s action movies that completely missed the mark in this way. Like the 80s RoboCop is extremely clear that the corporation making the RoboCops is completely evil, and the merger of corporate power and the state is horrifically dangerous, and being a cop takes away your humanity and makes you a machine for the evil side.
Then they remade it and it was just a movie about a cool cop who's a robot and he shoots the bad guys.