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The vast majority of pap that comes from Hollywood … Helliwood … Commiewood is either poison, banality or foolishness. Occasionally, it can be inspiring with minimal cancerous messages being sent to you and once in a great while a movie can be downright thrilling as it stands against the malignant Machine that runs the world.

I think such is the case for RoboCop 2014.

Sometimes a good foreign or independent film like The Veteran slips out to give you a shocking real-life picture of, say, CIA drug-running but major motion pictures from the United States with big stars that exposes the “New World Order” agenda without trying to trick you into its inevitability are rare.

There is a twisted relationship the Machine has with the silver screen. The malignant Elite that run the world keep you constantly fooled, dumbed-down, inundated with perversion and lied to but they must also quietly explain their agenda to you. Some of them think it’s fun, like a predator playing with their prey, some think they need to because they have so much control they have no challenge but some realize that there are authorities (an Authority) even higher than they are. Even for the full-in servants of satan, there are rules.

I think that’s an important distinction to make; as powerful as the Luciferian Elite are, they aren’t all-powerful. They don’t control all of the 535 members of Congress, just the ones in important positions. They don’t supervise every movie that comes out, just the ones that are important to them, like the myth about bagging bin Laden.

The Department of Defense regularly cooperates with Hollywood on projects large and small, from Lifetime’s fictional Army base-set series “Army Wives” and CBS’ naval police procedural “NCIS” to Paramount Pictures’ warring robots franchise “Transformers” and Sony’s Columbia Pictures film “Battle: Los Angeles,” about Marines fighting an alien invasion. The military has allowed Universal Pictures to film its upcoming action movie “Battleship” on the battleship Missouri and permitted Navy SEALs to appear in Relativity Media’s February thriller “Act of Valor.” …

But controversy over an upcoming movie about the killing of Osama bin Laden — and how much U.S. officials should assist director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal — has shed light on some of the minefields that must be navigated by real-life warriors and the showbiz engine that seeks to portray them. ~ The U.S. Military’s Hollywood Connection, Rebecca Keegan, Los Angeles Times

When a Hollywood flair was needed to perpetuate the hype over poor Jessica Lynch (the girl the media told you fought like an Amazonian “to the last round” but was actually brutally raped and sodomized), your government brought in famed director Jerry Bruckheimer to choreograph her “rescue”. Can’t have America’s daughters not thinking they were warriors ready for the meatgrinder of the Blackwater/Halliburton cash cow.

I HATE REMAKES

To me, remakes show just how desperate a particular venue (Hollywood, the music industry, etc.) is for real inspiration and creativity. The vast majority of them fail miserably to do justice to the original classic—and that’s even if it was a classic in the first place. John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing (1951) couldn’t even touch the charm, suspense, humor and nuance of the Howard Hawks’ classic. It was everything wrong with the 80’s in film—substituting gore for talent.

thing_from_another_world_poster

robocop 1987The same could be said of the 1987 movie RoboCop whose cheese, violence and gore factors rivaled the worst Arnold Schwarzenegger movie of the day.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Peter Weller. Any established actor who pushes aside the glitz of Tinseltown to teach history at Syracuse is alright with me (apparently, he’s damn good at it, too).

But I put RoboCop 2014 in my rental queue with great reservation thinking that, at least computer-generated graphics would make it entertaining if it wasn’t interesting.

Little did I know it would be both, and in spades.

Now, in order to tell you why this movie is so good, I’ve got to dissect the crap out of it, so if you’re in any way interested in seeing it, put the review on hold and come back.

Still here? You’re the kind of person that rummages through your parents closet after they’ve gone Christmas shopping, aren’t you.

The movie opens with a freaky straight-haired Samuel Jackson as the propaganda-pushing host of “The Novak Element”, Pat Novak.

I’m guessing he’s supposed to be patterned after the late Conservative pundit Bob Novak and it’s the only real swing and a miss from the movie. Bob Novak may have been a media insider but he was far from an all-out tool of the Machine (like just about every corporate media network and host is today).

Novak is giving you a very carefully tailored interview with General Curtis Monroe about the wonderful success of pacifying Iran. The year is 2028 so I guess we can assume the master plan of toppling governments through the Middle East that was leaked by presidential wanna-be General Weasely Clark has finally been successful (apparently Syria fell after all).

Monroe may have been patterned after Strategic Air Command boss Curtis LeMay—another monster created by war and power who would’ve gladly slaughtered countless innocents to do what he thought was the next step in important world strategy. I’m not trying to lampoon him the way Kubrick did in Dr. Strangelove, I’m just saying that people like him never really served the Constitution or American citizens.

But the most interesting thing about the occupation of Iran is that all of the heavy combat was taken care of by robots. On screen, we are immediately treated to the return of “ED-209” along with a new humanoid counter-part, “EM-208”.

omnicorp in Iran

We’re shown a virtual map of the area being “secured” along with an embedded TV crew for propaganda. They are given special “red asset” bracelets for their Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) and we’re told “we’ve never lost a red asset”. This is important later in the movie.

A fit-looking SF type is managing the robots with various virtual body interfaces on his head and hands. Later we find out, he’s not military, he’s a loyal employee of Omni Corp.

In creepy fashion, the ED-209’s plod through Tehran telling its occupants, “Peace be upon you. Exit your homes with arms raised for non-invasive scanning.” You don’t see that in our future, do you?

While the citizen/slaves emerge to be scanned, nimble fighter drones patrol the skies, able to turn and hover on a dime.

On the ground, the 208’s and 209’s use biometrics and iris scans to immediately identify each person.

Pat Novak is all about it.

Soon we get introduced to the resistance. There is considerable white-washing here as Islamic suicide bombers now look to sacrifice themselves on camera attacking machines, rather than, say, strapping bombs to women with Down syndrome and shoving them into a busy marketplace. S’all good, though. We’ll gladly help wayward muslims redirect their efforts appropriately.

The robots handily shred the attack to include a knife-wielding teenager but Novak declares that “for security reasons the Pentagon’s going to cut our feed to Tehran.”

Next we are introduced to the CEO of Omni Corp, Raymond Sellers (played by Michael Keaton). Sellers is being grilled by Senator Hubert Dreyfus (Zach Grenier) on why his self-named Dreyfus Act prohibiting the use of robots on the streets of America is important: those making decisions of life or death need to feel.

Sadly, no such debate ever took place in today’s Congress regarding what this scene depicts so well: the use of drones over American skies.

Killing by proxy gives the bloodsucking Elite new-found freedom to rain death and destruction from above with few consequences. However, if you dig through foreign media, you’ll find that even some of our young video-game-playing soldiers and airmen still live what they have done from afar.

For more than five years, Brandon Bryant worked in an oblong, windowless container about the size of a trailer… Bryant and his coworkers sat in front of 14 computer monitors and four keyboards. When Bryant pressed a button in New Mexico, someone died on the other side of the world.

The container is filled with the humming of computers. It’s the brain of a drone, known as a cockpit in Air Force parlance. But the pilots in the container aren’t flying through the air. They’re just sitting at the controls.

Bryant was one of them, and he remembers one incident very clearly when a Predator drone was circling in a figure-eight pattern in the sky above Afghanistan… There was a flat-roofed house made of mud, with a shed used to hold goats in the crosshairs, as Bryant recalls. When he received the order to fire, he pressed a button with his left hand and marked the roof with a laser. The pilot sitting next to him pressed the trigger on a joystick, causing the drone to launch a Hellfire missile. …

“These moments are like in slow motion,” he says today. …

With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says. …

Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.

“Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the man sitting next to him.

“Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the pilot replied. ~ Dreams in Infrared: The Woes of an American Drone Operator, Nicola Abé, der Spiegel

How pesky that human conscience can be, even when sitting at a video game.

We really need to pull them out of the loop, and we will in a few short years!

The Navy’s new drone being tested near Chesapeake Bay stretches the boundaries of technology: It’s designed to land on the deck of an aircraft carrier, one of aviation’s most difficult maneuvers.

What’s even more remarkable is that it will do that not only without a pilot in the cockpit, but without a pilot at all.

The X-47B marks a paradigm shift in warfare, one that is likely to have far-reaching consequences. With the drone’s ability to be flown autonomously by onboard computers, it could usher in an era when death and destruction can be dealt by machines operating semi-independently.

Although humans would program an autonomous drone’s flight plan and could override its decisions, the prospect of heavily armed aircraft screaming through the skies without direct human control is unnerving to many. ~ New Drone Has No Pilot Anywhere, So Who’s Accountable? W.J. Hennigan, Los Angeles Times

Take note of the headline of that piece, those exact words are later spoken in the movie.

THE ROBOT/INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

In the future, Congress is actually afraid of their constituents and that damn Dreyfus Act is keeping billions of dollars from Omni Corp coffers. What’s a powerful, ruthless CEO with no ethics to do?

Perhaps they could call in their best scientist working robotic prosthetics and get him to create a cyborg to showcase the new technology; get some poor chopped up cop and put him (and your technology) back on the streets. The perfect loophole!

Enter Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman) who gives amputees new life, including the unbelievable rehabilitation of a double-arm-amputee guitar player who can miraculously play again (thanks to some convincing CGI).

But there’s a problem: extreme emotions foul his robotic interface yet he needs emotion to play.

The character is painted with excellent shades of grey. Norton has vowed never to give military applications to his research and Sellers is forced to bribe him with thoughts of unlimited funding for the next 10 years.

Oldman is perfectly cast as Dennett Norton who is, himself, a controversial figure. Oldman has called Nancy Pelosi the c-word and vociferously defended Mel Gibson. The word “Jew” has been bandied about often and I think the mature actor is either an anti-Semite or perhaps is reacting to the control wielded in Hollywood by a cabal of what we might call “the synagogue of satan”. These are very difficult waters to navigate because it is easy to slip into a morass of prejudice so let’s just say there’s something there and I hope you can be clear-minded as to what it is.

So who is the best candidate to combine man and machine? The selection process is appropriately brutal; one officer who’s lost his limbs has become obese in depression, a paraplegic Olympian is found to have deep-seated anger issues. No one is suitable.

On the other side of town, Detective Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is trying to put the squeeze on Detroit’s criminal kingpin, Antoine Vallon (played by Patrick Garrow). He uncovers a lackey hoodlum who shows him they have a large number of military-grade weapons that were apparently stolen from the DPD evidence locker. Murphy tries to make a buy from Vallon but is tipped off by dirty cops and his partner, Jack Lewis (played by Michael K. Williams), gets wounded.

Shortly, we are introduced to the Chief of the Detroit Police Department, Karen Dean (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) who is butch and black. Thoroughly annoying and disgustingly realistic.

I do have to point out that we have several key black characters and none of them have “black names”. Not very racially sensitive, guys, but we’ll overlook it for the sake of your artistic license.

We see that Murphy has a wife Clara and a son David whom he loves very much…until he’s literally blown limb-from-limb by a car bomb planted from a Vallon henchman and set up by the dirty cops.

So far, everyone but the Senate is dirty and they’re actually afraid of the voters. B+ on realism.

Messing up Alex Murphy is infinitely better done in the remake than the original and, sadly, a very well-known experience for many veterans of America’s military.

Next Omni Corp interviews Clara Murphy to get her to sign the waivers necessary for the radical procedure. CEO Sellers is almost always flanked by his head of marketing and a vicious career-woman “Liz Kline” (Jennifer Ehle) who seems to be the head of Omni Corp legal. She ruthlessly pushes Murphy’s wife into acquiescing.

We then fade into a dream sequence flash-back that was a little creepy for me as the viewer; Murphy is having a patio party that is neither blue collar nor aristocrat. His partner and wife are there and he slow dances with Clara to Sinatra singing Fly Me To The Moon. The Chairman of the Board is a big favorite for the author when we need to go to our happy place.

Reality is more like a horror movie when Murphy awakens. There’s almost nothing left of him and that is then encased in metal.

RoboCop what's left of Murphy

Murphy’s every function is now completely controlled by “scientists”.

He very understandably asks to be killed but is convinced to go on for his family. He is assured by Norton that his intellect and emotions are still his.

murphy before meltdown

“What kind of suit is this?” he asks. “It’s not a suit Alex,” Norton says, “it’s you.” Cool? Not even remotely. At least I didn’t immediately think so and that impressed me with how the movie was written and directed. RoboCop 2014 comes across as much more adult and somber with these difficult messages.

But there is still a lot of loyalty to the RoboCop faithful as the original suit is similar in color before Sellers war-games some necessary changes. “The people don’t know what they want until you give it to them,” says the PT Barnum-esque demagogue. “Give them black.”

Robocop-2014-vs-1987

Murphy is put together at the Omni Corp production facility in, where else? —China!

After being shocked by the unveiling of what he has become he runs into a rice paddy until he is remotely shut down—another disturbing assurance that absolutely everything about his new existence is completely controlled from the outside.

Later, when Murphy reconnects with his family, first by video teleconference and later with an actual visit, it is difficult for all involved. Definitely a mature script.

robocop-2014-coming home

Next, Murphy must be tested, but he turns out to be much slower than his EM-208 counterpart in the simulation for a brilliantly-communicated reason; as the EM-208 is thrust into a hostage situation, it assesses and acts almost instantaneously. Murphy’s brain takes time to assimilate all factors, to ask and answer tens of questions before finally resolving to act.

Rick Mattox (Jackie Earle Haley), his robot expert moderator, has returned from Iran and mocks him mercilessly as a “gigantic step backwards” in technology. Mattox’s robots were deployed to Rio and the Congo where they worked flawlessly. He was there (on behalf of Omni Corp and America, of course!). Mattox’s exclamation point to his disgust is “I wouldn’t buy that for a dollar.” Another homagé to 1987 and, good grief was that movie cheesy.

Murphy’s performance is a big disappointment to Sellers who orders Norton to “fix” him. Murphy’s entire existence is controlled right down to the remote releasing of antidepressants for a “pleasant dream”.

Norton’s solution is to give Murphy a combat auto-pilot that takes over the process of locating, assessing, targeting and terminating threats.

Another Sellers/Norton/Kline/Marketer Tom Pope (Jay Baruchel) war room session produces some fascinating dialogue.

When Murphy is in combat and the machine is in control, who is accountable?

“You’ve circumvented the law by creating a machine that thinks it’s a man…”

“No, we’ve created a machine that thinks it’s Alex Murphy and, in my book, that’s legal.”

Later, Norton uploads the entire DPD database to Murphy’s system. The NSA database would’ve taken a couple of acres.

Unfortunately, this causes Murphy to relive each and every crime and it causes him to have a seizure and mental breakdown. He’s about to be unveiled to the public and Sellers and KIine again force Norton to compromise his ethics and give an immediate solution which is to reduce Murphy’s dopamine levels to a near catatonic state. He strides right past his wife and child to the dais where he quickly locates, identifies and apprehends a murder/rapist in the crowd.

first arrest

The sensitive viewer doesn’t know whether to be horrified or thrilled as justice is quickly and efficiently dished out…but at what cost?

At another war room session, Norton tells Sellers “We need to run more tests. Something was interfering with the system. Something beyond chemistry or physics.”

“What, his soul?” Kline mocks derisively. Yet that is precisely the writers’ inference.

As Murphy goes through all of his criminal data, he gains access to his own crime scene evidence. The Omni Corp team realizes they need to put a gag order on the uncooperative Clara Murphy but, too late; she confronts the RoboCop and their meeting starts Murphy “breaking protocol”.

clara confronts robocop

Murphy restores his dopemine levels and Norton is baffled as Murphy’s emotions return. How is he over-riding his programmed priorities?

This concept has been quietly broached by several movies previous to RoboCop. We all understand that transhumanism creates terrifying creatures; half man/half animal, half man/half robot, all of them with super-human abilities but at the cost of their very humanity.

But is it possible to create a “super soldier” with a conscience? Certainly, that is the furthest thing any good Luciferian would want. But what about a tank to battle other tanks? An attack sub to go after other submarines? Can the pure heart of Steve Rogers allow Captain America to serve the people or his masters?

Doom (2005)Even gory video games-turned-movies can sometimes imply this as Doom did in 2005. Unethical experiments have been taking place at the Mars colony where genetic manipulation has turned human guinea pigs into ravenous zombies (this is the age of the zombie, I’m afraid). Marines from the Rapid Response Tactical Squad (lead by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) are deployed and soon all hell breaks loose. The last man standing is John Grimm (Karl Urban) there to protect his scientist sister until he is gravely injured. Having no alternative to save him, she injects him with the zombie serum but he isn’t zombified, he’s healed and becomes the weapon to fight the hordes with—because he has a pure heart.

Don’t get me wrong, folks. I sure wouldn’t bet my soul on trans-humanism and once you start injecting humans with animal DNA you may just very well be disqualifying them for eternal Salvation. As far as we Christians go, the perfect God/man Christ offers His Blood only to other humans. This could also be the “mark” John speaks of in Revelation 13 and 14. There is no action in all of Scripture that disqualifies you from Salvation save taking the Mark of the Beast; perhaps because it changes your very humanity?

PAYBACK TIME

But now Murphy has his emotions and his evidence. He begins a ruthless and systematic take-down of Antoine Vallon.

From there, he is able to connect members of the Detroit Police Department and is seconds away from getting his butch boss to confess to crime when Omni Corp pulls the plug.

As Mattox imforms his boss of what he felt forced to do, Sellers asks of Chief Dean, “We got anything on her?” Mattox replies, “She’s the chief of the Detroit PD, what do you think?”

Do mega-corporations have intelligence operations for blackmail almost as good as the NSA or GCHQ? Give yourself the same answer to, “Is everyone who is allowed access to power today, kept, controlled or corrupt?”

Sellers has another mess but he sees a way out. The only thing bigger than a hero is a dead hero. It’s time to rub out RoboCop.

Sellers needs his Dr. Frankenstein on board and next is one of the best scenes in the movie. Norton ascertains what he’s being told and it’s the final straw.

But he doesn’t play it stupid like countless, endless lackeys before him, only to get whacked in the back as he walks out the room. He bargains for the Murphys to be completely taken care of (which doesn’t happen), for his own staff and full funding for the next decade.

Then promptly walks out, wakes up Murphy and turns him loose.

I’ve ruined enough of the movie for you. Go watch the climax yourself…then think upon the future of your nation.

robocop 2014 bar graph

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