TheRetroCritic

Why is America so reboot-phobic? Because some stories just don't need to be retold, especially when they were told extremely well the first time and are beloved by all just the way they are. Over the years, we've had so many awful horror remakes, from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Evil Dead , and with the criminally boring, unnecessary Total Recall remake still fresh in our minds, a RoboCop reboot just sounded like a bad idea. The idea of a more earnest RoboCop movie grounded in reality, with a grittier, more down-to-Earth feel and a mostly CGI hero with more self-awareness and an inexplicable human hand was missing the point of the original film entirely and, after watching the film, I can confirm that it has, indeed, missed the point on various levels. That said, unlike Total Recall, this is, miraculously, not a complete disaster. Where some changes either don't really work or simply backfire, some make sense in the new world introduced within the movie and ther

Exciting stuff for Godzilla fans: the upcoming new Hollywood attempt at bringing the iconic monster to the big screen finally has a trailer! And it looks surprisingly kinda... good! Of course it's too early to tell but what do you guys think? As far as I'm concerned, the film will only officially have me as soon as it plays this theme in the next trailer:

Here's the thing about Superman Returns : It's not THAT bad. I wouldn't even call it "bad", it's just... misguided, really. Instead of reinventing Superman for a new generation, here's a film which decides to pay homage to those old Christopher Reeve movies, the only Superman movies we've ever seen. Was that really necessary? No. That was a bad idea to begin with: not original, not ground-breaking, not different. As a slick retread and as a sort-of sequel to Superman II , however, it just about works. You've got Kevin Spacey taking on Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor role and doing a really good job, though he's only a tad more threatening than Hackman was back in the day. The film looks good, the classic Superman theme is still there, the action sequences (all TWO of them), as rare and far between as they may be, are really well done and Bryan Singer's direction is slick and stylish. That said, there's a serious problem when

Rebooting/continuing the Star Trek franchise was never going to be easy. What were they supposed to do? Make a movie based on the flop series Enterprise ? Invent a brand new Star Trek crew, give them their own movie and hope for the best? Give one of the old crews their weight in gold to stick around and continue making Star Trek movies? With J.J. Abrams onboard, in the end the goal became to restart the franchise with the Original Series crew, except with a brand new, younger cast, tons of action, state of the art special effects and try to somehow create a parallel timeline within the film itself in order to keep things fresh and avoid remaking the old show and the old movies shot-for-shot. Probably the only logical approach, but still pretty risky. The result was an epic, expensive blockbuster with enough action to keep even the most reluctant viewers entertained. An origins story, we got to see Kirk and co.'s pre-Enterprise days and their earliest of missions which a

There's a new judge in town and he's... slightly less bulky. Yes, Karl Urban takes on Judge Dredd in this slick reboot which sees the moody Mega City judge with the super-cool voice-activated gun make his way up a tower block with a blonde psychic rookie taking out any unlawful culprits along the way. Like a video game, it all gets harder and harder as the levels get higher and you can expect one-liners aplenty and a lot of gory action. That Dredd is an 18 and not a 12A is the best thing that could have happened to this movie. Proving once again that a dark, violent comic-book movie should, indeed, be dark and violent regardless of whether the kiddos will flock to it or not. Sometimes you just have to let movies be themselves. Here, the blood and gore  adds a tough edge to Dredd (a tough, edgy guy) and makes it not only a worthy action flick but a satisfying adaptation. Which, after months of watching that unimpressive trailer on and off, is not so much a surprise as

What kind of a world do we live in where people are remaking Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and making them worse?! I mean, it's not like they're remaking the shitty ones either, Conan The Barbarian and Total Recall get remade when the likes of Red Sonja , Hercules In New York and Junior  still roam the Earth? I don't get it. But ok, fine. It's a Philip K. Dick short story so there's room for interpretation and I guess with all the new CG technology available to us, a slicker version of Paul Verhoeven's film could serve at least as decent popcorn entertainment. Or, if it's smart enough, as a kind-of-good companion piece to Minority Report . The trailers promised striking visuals, loads of action and a solid cast so chances were we'd get something half-decent if not quite as retrogasmic as the original film. Alas, what we got was a mixed bag to say the least. Technically, Total Recall is not a bad film. It follows the basic formula of the orig

Well, it looks that the (likely) ill-conceived RoboCop remake is finally going forwards as the news that Michael Keaton will replace original pick Hugh Laurie as the film's villain is made official. Not to mention the early viral campaign which seems to be there mostly to serve as kind of warning that CGI will most definitely replace practical effects, not a huge surprise seeing as that other Paul Verhoeven remake Total Recall , out this year, as you know, did just that. Ah ED-209, I'm guessing this new model's stair-tested. Not sure what RoboCop himself will look like but if the teaser promo above and whatever concept art is floating around the internet is anything to go by then I think it's fair to say that we won't be getting our favourite 80's design but something completely different. Darker? More intimidating? Or... Hm. I wonder what Peter Weller thinks of this potential character design...

With the release of this new, slick Spidey reboot, there's been a lot of Sam Raimi bashing with people praising the new film for not being as silly as those early noughties efforts. I liked those movies! Well... the first two anyway. Then again the third one was pretty   lol... My point is these were fun comic-book flicks which, for the most part, got the cartoonish spirit of the comics and brought Spider-Man to us for the first time on the big screen. Sure those movies had their problems and there was a hell of a lot of shark-jumping going on in all of them but Spider-Man was never Marvel's darkest, moodiest character. One villain was a bird for crying out loud! An old man bird! That's freakin' ridiculous. Raimi delivered good old-fashioned popcorn entertainment. It was goofy but we loved it. Now comes The Amazing Spider-Man , a reboot with a brand new cast, a brand new approach and brand new everything. This time, we concern ourselves a bit more wit

After the Spiderman 3 misfire (which, to be fair, was pretty darn funny), could it be that we might be getting something very familiar but *gasp* good? Liking it so far. Looks like we'll be getting something closer to the comics. I'm thinking how good or rubbish Rhys Ifans' Lizardman will look will make or break the film. But yeah, surprisingly satisfied with the trailer for now. At least it won't be Turn Off The Dark ...

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