Robocop (2014)

Director: José Padilha

Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson

Have I Seen It Before: Sure. I was essentially obligated, wasn’t I? Although one could imagine me sitting in the theater, stone-faced and with my arms crossed, waiting for disappointment to unfurl.

Did I Like It: Even now, I’m sitting at the keyboard and ready to trash the film. On spec, a PG-13 remake of Robocop (1987) should be one of those ideas that just shouldn’t be. The kind of thing that Rob Zombie is content to ignore, and Zemeckis has protections against written into his contract*.

Surely, this film, long before The Flash (2023) puts The Michael Keaton Rule** to the test.

And yet, here it is. No, it’s not as good as the original. Few things are, not just in this franchise, but on the planet earth.

Is it a passable action film? Sure. Should anybody be embarrassed that they cashed a check from this? Na, although exactly nobody is here for any other reason. Does it have anything to say about the nature of the ghost in machine that has only become more relevant in the decade plus since its release? Not really. If it did, it would have re-entered (or entered for the first time) the cultural conversation long before I broke down and re-watched it for review. Is it forgettable? Yeah, pretty much.

It isn’t bad, necessarily. Then again, maybe it’s awful and certain elements manage to save it. Maybe the Michael Keaton Rule works better than even I thought.

*Which probably makes up for a lot of his future missteps.

**My notion that Michael Keaton automatically improves a film’s quality by 15%. Whereby I still apologize for The Flash, and consider Multiplicity (1996) to be the mathematically—if not emotionally—perfect film.

The Suicide Squad (2021)

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. The drips and drabs of COVID-era new movies keeps coming. Didn’t make it out into the theater for this one. Don’t know when I’ll make it out to the theater for a new movie again the rate things are going. Oddly enough, the last new movie I caught at the theater was likely Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020).

Did I Like It: About a day after screening the film, I was struck by the perfect encapsulation of my positive feelings for the film:

I enjoyed it so much, and wanted the good feelings to continue, that I was halfway tempted to watch the original Suicide Squad (2016). 

And I never thought it would even kind of occur to me that I might want to watch that movie again. But this one moves at such a lean and economical pace—despite its army of charaters all begging for a moment in the sun—that everything Jared Leto-related is forgiven.

Seriously, if you had told me as I was walking out of that movie that Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Quinn will be the most consistently enjoyable part of DC’s attempts to make a connected cinematic universe, I would have told you you were crazy.

Bringing all of the sensibilities from his work on Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and its sequel, along with its sequel, but also blending in the raucous influences of his work with Troma impresario Lloyd Kaufman, this film cuts to the quick and never quite lets the viewer get comfortable, much to this particular viewer’s delight. I laughed throughout, and yet, somehow the film isn’t a spoof of the genre. There’s a fine line between taking potshots at a genre and engaging it both fully and irreverently, and I can’t immediately think of a filmmaker working in blockbuster entertainments who is straddling that line better than Gunn.

It’s not just the best DC movie in recent memory; it is the most purely enjoyable superhero movie since Thor: Ragnarok (2017), easily the most relentlessly fun DC film ever made (and I am far from someone who is down on the DC films as a whole), and easily in the upper echelons of the superhero genre.