The 2014 reboot of the classic 1987 RoboCop ran into trouble with fans early on. Rumors that director Joel Kinnaman would shoot for a PG-13 rating and the early shots of a high-tech black suit had purists taking to Twitter to malign the film in 2012. A year—and several trailers later—some reviewers are willing to hold their words to see exactly what this new RoboCop has to offer, and many are interested in the modern tech that will make the film more believable for today's audiences.
As with Iron Man, the most important piece of tech in RoboCop is the suit. Unlike the Stark suit, which Tony can jump in and out of at will, the RoboCop gear is less suit and more exoskeleton. The badly injured Alex Murphy is put into the suit as a way to save his life. Although he can remove certain elements, like the faceplate, he essentially becomes one with the suit.
The original suit was heavy and slow; since modern audiences used to fast tech like that seen in Transformers would probably yawn at the sluggish robot stride, the new suit is swifter. According to a slip made by Samuel L. Jackson at a Comic-Con event, the new suit is also connected. Jackson called it RoboCop Wi-Fi. It should be interesting to see how Internet connectivity affects Murphy's ability to deal with the suit, especially since it gives suit makers an additional control mechanism.
Both a leaked script and recent trailers indicate that Kinnaman will pay homage to the 1987-style suite with an early rendition of the silver tech. During the course of the movie, however, designers tweak the suit to make it more aggressive and modern. The result is sleek black robotics with the characteristic red eye panel. Although it's definitely RoboCop, there's also a little bit of a Tron look to the suit.
How do you make a robot-man hybrid faster? Obviously, you give him a motorcycle. To match RoboCop's new suit, the motorcycle features an almost all-black paint job. Red lights cast a questionable glow, alluding to the dual nature of the character, and a few small badges identify it as a law enforcement vehicle instead of a road racer. You can actually get a bike that looks a lot like RoboCop's—a Kawasaki Z1000 bike with a black paint job would be a good match. Gear shops like bikebandit.com carry hundreds of helmets, boots and other motorcycle clothing, so it shouldn't be too hard to mimic RoboCop's all-black look when you're ready to hit the streets on your own speed machine.
You can't redesign the central character and toss him into a futuristic world imagined in the 1980s. The modern reboot features realistic technology like drones and some futuristic features such as the ED-209 Battlefield Control machines. On first glance, these look like smaller versions of the Imperial Walkers from Star Wars, but it's likely they'll move a bit more like something from Transformers if the filmmakers follow through on making all the tech more believable for audiences today. There's also the NI-408 gun, which appears grid-style out of RoboCop's belt in what is a clear borrow from Transformers special effects.
The Suit
As with Iron Man, the most important piece of tech in RoboCop is the suit. Unlike the Stark suit, which Tony can jump in and out of at will, the RoboCop gear is less suit and more exoskeleton. The badly injured Alex Murphy is put into the suit as a way to save his life. Although he can remove certain elements, like the faceplate, he essentially becomes one with the suit.
The original suit was heavy and slow; since modern audiences used to fast tech like that seen in Transformers would probably yawn at the sluggish robot stride, the new suit is swifter. According to a slip made by Samuel L. Jackson at a Comic-Con event, the new suit is also connected. Jackson called it RoboCop Wi-Fi. It should be interesting to see how Internet connectivity affects Murphy's ability to deal with the suit, especially since it gives suit makers an additional control mechanism.
Both a leaked script and recent trailers indicate that Kinnaman will pay homage to the 1987-style suite with an early rendition of the silver tech. During the course of the movie, however, designers tweak the suit to make it more aggressive and modern. The result is sleek black robotics with the characteristic red eye panel. Although it's definitely RoboCop, there's also a little bit of a Tron look to the suit.