Jose Padilha confronts automated death-dealing in his RoboCop remake
Jose Padilha confronts the morality of automated death-dealing in his RoboCop remake, writes Kavita Daswani
Up until he took on the task of remaking RoboCop, director-producer Jose Padilha was little-known outside his native Brazil, where his ultra-violent Elite Squad (2007) and its 2010 sequel were among the highest-grossing movies in the country's history, winning an armful of awards, and becoming something of a cultural phenomenon.
As far as budget and global reach go, RoboCop, his new version of the action-packed 1987 classic science-fiction satire directed by Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven and starring Peter Weller, is Padilha's biggest film to date. The 2014 edition's plot cleaves closely to that of the original, revolving around a policeman who would otherwise be an amputee in a wheelchair but is given new life as a virtually indestructible robot, assigned with fighting crime, and killing criminals whenever necessary.
But if a robot kills a kid, it makes no sense to punish the robot - so then, who is accountable?
A physics degree holder who has worked in high finance, the 46-year-old Padilha confers an intelligence to the film that isn't typically seen in the genre. "Hollywood ran out of original ideas a long time ago," he says about the current predilection for remakes, sequels and expansions of existing franchises.
"The original RoboCop was a classic, very bold aesthetically in its use of violence. But first and foremost, it created a character that encapsulates an idea that I think is pretty sophisticated. You might watch it and not get it, but it's there."
The Brazilian sees "the heart and soul" of both the original and his reboot being "the connection between the automation of violence and war, and fascism". When viewing the 1987 film, "It's what I thought about when I watched it, and it's easy to spot," he says.
Rather than veer away from this theme, his film embraces this concept and "that's the thing we should be wary about: that when there is automated violence, that is the door to fascism". That notion - of someone behind the scenes controlling human-killing machines - exists already and raises questions about morality.
"When you automate violence," Padilha says, "everything changes. If you have a policeman in Rio [de Janeiro] and there is a shooting and he kills a kid by mistake he can be arrested, judged and punished. But if a robot kills a kid, it makes no sense to punish the robot - so then, who is accountable? Is it the guy who developed it, or manufactured it, or the software? Accountability becomes fuzzy when you have automatic things making decisions in the real world. And in 10 or 15 years, countries will have to react to that."