New 'RoboCop' Suit Will Not Remind You Of RoboCop (Picture)

Abandon hopes that an '80s action favorite will be treated with respect, all ye who read onward from here.

I took the tweet with a grain of salt when my eyes wandered across it on my Twitter timeline: "RoboCop joins Amazing Spider-Man and Man of Steel in the list of films shamelessly knocking off The Dark Knight." It was a retweet from fellow cineophile Jerry Nava, a movie reviewer at Reviewtopia.com as The Film Renegado.

He's a sharp guy, but I've heard the accusation before: "Movie Y is hitting theaters after Movie X, and looks mildly like Movie X? KNOCK-OFF!" It's become somewhat of an internet knee-jerk conclusion.

In this case, it's really, really hard to argue against some shameless style-biting.

Indeed, DenofGeek.com has some of the first pictures from the set of Joel Padilha's remake of 1987's "RoboCop," which began production late last week. The shots unveil Joel Kinnaman's first appearances in his suit as the future of law enforcement. I'm no longer so certain the costume designer has seen the original.

Gone away is the metallic armor that Peter Weller donned in Paul Verhoeven's original. Here seemingly to stay is the latest hero to adopt a pretty shameless imitation of the carbon fiber-looking gear Christian Bale donned from 2005's "Batman Begins" up until this summer's "The Dark Knight Rises." How shameless? Kinnaman is sporting RoboMuscleture. The helmet more closely resembles some unfinished model from this month's comic-adaptation reboot "Dredd."

In total, it looks like something from a SyFy original movie, not something with millions of MGM dollars pumped into it.

Karl Urban's Dredd at least closely resembles the character he's supposed to portray. Spider-Man still resembled Spider-Man and Superman still looked like Superman, even with some rehashed textures.

This?!

If I hadn't seen the headline, I'd have guessed that the promised "Mass Effect" movie adaptation had started shooting and someone had fairly faithfully rendered the look of the Cerbus troopers.

The thing I'm told is supposed to be "RoboCop" hits theaters in August 2013.