A US$ 140 m Brazilian movie

01 Mar, 2014

Read in English here   |  Leia em Português aqui 

By Kamilla Fernandes

Translated by Jessica Whitfield

Made by the filmmaker José Padilha and 17 years after its première, a new RoboCop invades the movie theatres. The sci-fi cult movie from the 80’s – directed by Paul Verhoeven – comes back with the purpose of beating all the box office records as it was once back in time, but now the film was directed by a Brazilian. Its world première was on February 12th and it tells a story of a well-known character: the cop Alex Murphy, that suffered an accident and was turned into a cyborg by the technological company Omni Corp. He then has to defend the decadent and corrupt city of Detroit.

With some differences and script adaptations, Padilha’s remake keeps the same basic idea of the original film, but after some minutes of watching it, his political and social view comes to surface and it is obvious to recognize his style and ways of picturing violence. If you’ve seen “ Elite Squad ” you know what I am talking about.

A Brazilian movie

When asked if he considers his remake Brazilian or North-American, José Padilha smiles and says: “i t is a US$ 140 m Brazilian movie ”. The filmmaker tells that he’s already worked abroad on the documentary “ Secrets of the Tribe ”, shot in Venezuela and in the States. But he reveals that it is not so different to shoot in Brazil or elsewhere, as “deep inside all sets are similar”.

“ If you can isolate the set from the other external things, it is the same logic, the same way of thinking. You have the same lenses, the same equipment and you have to work with the actors and with the story you have in your hands ”, says Padilha.

For him, the big difference is in terms of financial resources, which interferes with the relationship between the director and the studio and the commercial interests regarding any cinematographic production. Padilha says that he agrees that “ the film has to be profitable ”, but sometimes this can generate a tension between the movie you want to make and the one that the studio wants to sell.

“ The biggest difference is that in Brazil making cinema is somewhat an independent process, for the good and for the bad. For the good because you have total control of what you’re doing. You write, you produce, you direct, and if you want you can distribute. For the bad, it is very difficult to get the investments that you need ”, tells the filmmaker.

But concerning “RoboCop”, Padilha says he didn’t have major problems with the studio. He learnt with the Elite Squad 1 and 2 how to be popular and even though insert some social ideas in the plot. Hence he could satisfy the expectations of MGM. Of course there were arguments, because “ the relationship between filmmakers and producers tends to be conflictive ”, he admits.

Besides Padilha, there were other Brazilians in the team, such as Lula Carvalho, DOP, Daniel Nascimento, editor, and Pedro Bromfman, composer. They have worked together in “Elite Squad”.

Foto: Studio Canal

Automatization of violence

The great advantage of this movie, according to Padilha, is that RoboCop is not anymore the conventional American super-hero character. In fact, it is not a blockbuster super-hero or a simple action movie. The plot touches issues such as imperialism and violence.

For Padilha, a normal super-hero movie has always a charismatic actor, cool action scenes that please everyone, because people would identify themselves with the main character. With “RoboCop” it is a different story.

“You want to be the Spiderman, children want to be the Ironman. This doesn’t happen with RoboCop, not even Alex Murphy wants to be him. Nobody wants to be RoboCop, it is a drama to be him. So the character’s nature implies in a different studio movie”, he explains.

The fact that it discusses automatization transforms the robot cop into a political character by nature; Padilha says that if he had decided to make a classical political feature, the outcome would be very bad. So, in addition to violence, it takes into consideration the North-American imperialism and it questions its relation with other countries too.

Regarding the criticism the movie has received, Padilha says that the patriotic nationalism exists not only in America, but also in Brazil and other countries, but due to its power, any decision that the United States take interferes in the future of everyone.

“ The United States have an immense power, it is a powerful nation that every now and then invades other countries; Brazil doesn’t invade other countries. What the US do, how they do, in terms of international politics, is pretty much important and relevant. This issue about the use of drones and the automatization of the army, substituting the soldiers for machines, when it happens, all will be a decision up to the United States to make, and no one can escape from that ”, says the filmmaker.

RoboCop X Lieutenant Nascimento

Padilha sees “Elite Squad” and “RoboCop” as very different movies, but it is impossible to watch them both and don’t compare the two stories. What he admits as a common quality is the cop’s training. That is the moment when the State demands for professionals that can act with extreme violence, that is the fact that “dehumanizes people and takes from them the capacity of critical reasoning”. But he tells that this is not exclusive of movies and gives the example of “Born to Kill”, that shows the same situation.

“ To dehumanize is to automatize, it is to transform into machines. This is an idea that you can find in the first ‘Elite Squad’, when Nascimento speaks ‘If you think that the BOPE is a sect, yes, it is a sect’. It is a sect if you think that you buy what you are told to do, you don’t think of that anymore ”, says Padilha.

And for him the biggest danger it to automatize violence, for the machines don’t analyze what they are doing, they only act: “ This is an open door to fascism, the concept behind RoboCop’s character and also behind ‘Elite Squad’, if you think wise. ”

Despite of those similarities, he insists on that the characters are very different one from the other. While RoboCop is a universal role of science fiction, who functions as a metaphor for automatization and the forces of the law, Nascimento is a “ carioca ”, under the pressure of the social forces that question his values on that context he’s in.

Foto: Lakwatseralovers

Remake’s construction

The idea of the movie came during a meeting between Padilha and the MGM, in which the studio offered him many scripts he wasn’t interested in shooting. “ But behind the CEOs, in the room, there was a poster of RoboCop, and I stared at it and said to myself ‘That’s the film I want to shoot. ” So, by the end of the meeting, he asked the CEOs about the copyrights of RoboCop. As Darren Aronofsky had abandoned the remake project years before, he told them his idea for the movie.

“ Two days after, my agent called me and told me: ‘I am not sure what you discussed but they want to do Robocop’. ” Although it is a cult movie with many fans, Padilha says he didn’t care about the pressure.

At first, the script was written in Brazil, but then he went to the States for seven months to finish it. Padilha says that the final version was ready during the rehearsal period with the actors, and that they had to alter it many times.

“The first big name was Joel [Joel Kinnaman]. We planned many auditions with many actors, and he was fantastic. Our RoboCop suffers from an existencial crisis. One day he wakes up and finds out he is a robot; he then wants to die because he doesn’t know how to interact with people. The role requires a lot of an actor; it is not any star that is able to do it”, says Padilha.

He goes on telling that he went after Gary Oldman for Dr. Norton, and later Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton joined the team. For the role of Alex Murphy’s wife, many actresses made the test, and Abbie Cornish was who they chose. The most difficult name to choose was David Murphy, RoboCop’s son: “It is very difficult to find such a sensible child as him [John Paul Ruttan]. We decided at the very last moment, during the rehearsals.”

Back to Brazil?

His future plans will be in Brazil: there is a script about Rickson Gracie, another one about the Brazilian limits with two other countries in the South, and a documentary about missing people in Rio de Janeiro:

“Each year 5,000 people are considered missing in Rio de Janeiro, it is too much, what is happening? Is this an error in the official data? Is this true?”

Also, Netflix Channel is preparing for the current year a series of 13 episodes called “Narco” and Padilha will be the director. The show will tell the story of the chief of the Colombian cartel of Medelín, Pablo Escobar, who became one of the richest men in the world due to cocaine traffic.