Joel Kinnaman justifies doing a Robocop remake, talks working with Gary Oldman

June 4th 2012, 6:52am

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

José Padilha’s ROBOCOP remake still has a long way to go with a tentative Summer 2013 release date, but the project is moving along at a brisk pace, having recently added the great Gary Oldman to its cast. Joel Kinnaman, this version’s Alex Murphy, spoke to Collider recently, presenting his take on remaking such a beloved film, as well as sharing the screen with an actor of Oldman’s status. Here’s what he had to say…

…on the reasons for doing the remake:

I used to be like “Why are we doing a remake? What are remakes being done for?” But then, we do that all the time in the theater. If we weren’t doing remakes, nobody would know who Shakespeare was. I’m not saying that Robocop is Shakespeare, but it’s a way to … we’re retelling. That’s what we do as human beings. We retell our favorite stories. That’s what we’ve done since we were sitting around campfires. It’s a part of the human spirit. It doesn’t have to be negative to creativity. It can be completely opposite. That’s how you can break new ground by rethinking something that’s already been done. José has a completely different take on this than Verhoeven had, and with all respect, everybody that’s involved in this movie loved the original and we have a lot of respect for it. We’re going to have a lot of throwbacks and there’s going to be a lot of fun stuff for the fans of the first movie. It’s a new story within the old one.

…on working with Gary Oldman:

That feels about as surreal as me being RoboCop. I couldn’t be happier. He’s pretty much the grand master of the game. (…) He’s in his golden age. So, I’m very, very excited and we have great scenes that have a lot of the substance that I was talking about. It’s very much a relationship between Gary Oldman’s character and Alex Murphy.

While I don’t usually get excited for remakes (not necessarily because they’re remakes, but mostly because… well, most of them tend to suck), this one seems to have its cybernetic heart in the right place. Now all I need is badass a pic of Kinnaman in full Robo-mode to get officially stoked.

Filming is set to begin in September.