Director Jose Padilha Calls 'RoboCop' Remake A Disastrous 'Hell'

It sounded like a bad idea from Jump Street. Alleged excerpts from a leaked script draft seemingly confirmed it undeniably. When the director himself calls remaking "RoboCop" as "Hell," the entire idea can no longer be called anything except a bad, bad, BAD idea.

Director Jose Padilha has reportedly groused to friend and fellow filmmaker Fernando Meirelles that production has nose-dove south before shooting even a single solitary frame. Meirelles told CinemaComRapadura.com, "He is saying that it is the worst experience. For every ten ideas he has, nine are cut. Whatever he wants, he has to fight. 'This is Hell here,' he told me. 'The film will be good, but I never suffered so much and do not want to do it again.' He is bitter, but he's a fighter."

Let's rewind a few weeks, so we can all put two and two together on the same page.

As reported Aug. 14, rookie HitFlix correspondent Drew McWeeny tweeted his impressions of what he claimed was a leaked draft of the remake of Paul Verhoeven's 1987 action hit starring Peter Weller. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that it really was a once-accepted draft, McWeeny is on the level, and that according to Padilha's claims and Meirelles.' It then stands to reason that these are a smattering of the typical "nine ideas out of ten" that MGM decided were worth keeping.

• Scene in which focus group of criminals calls model similar to Verhoeven's 1987 design stupid and toy-like.
• Adversarial ED-209 robot prototype now debuts subduing suicide bombers in Iran.
• RoboCop takes down Al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan.
• Designers are told to keep RoboCop "PG-13" and merely incapacitate criminals in all scenarios.

This thing being passed off as "RoboCop" is set to star Joel Kinnaman as Detroit police officer Alex Murphy/RoboCop himself, alongside Gary Oldman as RoboCop's creator, Samuel L. Jackson as a charismatic TV personality, Abbie Cornish as Murphy's wife, Michael Kenneth Williams as Murphy's (now male) partner, Jackie Earle Haley as Murphy's military trainer and Jay Baruchel as the director of OmniCorp.

In a bit of casting frustration, Hugh Laurie was rumored to join up as OmniCorp's owner, but has dropped out of negotiations. Clive Owen is now the rumored target to step into the role.

Directors, for obvious reasons, often maintain this public veneer of optimism toward their projects. Depending on how one views it, Meirelles has either tossed that under the bus and maybe left Padilha to answer for now-publicized pessimism, or said what Padilha himself would've eventually said anyway.

Either way, if this is truly Padilha's demeanor toward the project, then this is reminding me quickly of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."

Oh, what a disaster it was. In 2003, 20th Century Fox supposed that adapting Alan Moore's beloved graphic novel mashing up classic literature's most heralded mythical figures from Captain Nemo to Alan Quatermain would birth a new tentpole franchise. What it got instead was a production so frustrating for director Stephen Norrington - in particular, his on-set squabbles with star Sean Connery - that the aggravating experience and ensuing critical and box-office turkey drove both Norrington and Connery into cinematic retirement. Connery stayed true to his (even backing out of a return to "Indiana Jones" that he once favored), whereas Norrington has been attached to several projects through the years that never materialized.

This is a sign, Mr. Padilha. The Universe favors the original. Trust your gut. "RoboCop" is a product of its time, and transposing it while mocking it leaves its audience much like Phil Hartman's Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer: frightened and confused. Just walk away. Let the abomination die quietly.