Indeed. And more. And he’s finally getting proper remuneration for his awesome work!
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I don’t know German, but care to relay the story? Was he not paid royalties for his work on that film?
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on the one hand I like Verhoeven’s material. On the other hand i hate his ‘americans are idiots’ nose upturned bullshit attitude.
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Considering who our president is i can’t say i’m remotely upset.
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That’s what boggles my mind so hard. Yes it’s diffrent. Yes it’s PG13, but I’d taken that in of itself as part of the joke. ‘Here you demanded we make something Not R Rated? HERE! LET’S LITERALLY TEAR THE CYBORG HERO DOWN TO NOTHING!’ that scene where all the parts are pulled away is more horrifying than Bodigar’s shotgunning murphy apart as faux christ symbolism.
And the remake itself hit the nail on the head. 80’s corp culture was ‘fuck you I got mine.’ Modern corp culture is still ‘fuck you I got mine’ but it has to have a PR department now.
Also I liked the talking head section. The bought and paid for goon very obviously stumping for the corp agenda yet pretending to be impartial whiele shouting oponents down. that is also modern.
I’m never going to look at a guy going ‘you’re a stupid piece of shit’ and go Yeser can i have another sir? I fucking hate that kind of ‘here I think your entire everything is shit’ mentality. The fact we have an orange muppit sociopath in office doesn’t give anyone an excuse.
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It comes off that way because that’s the market he started serving when he moved to Hollywood. He strikes me more as someone who thinks most people are idiots. For example, that “I’d buy that for a dollar!” line is a call-out to C.M. Kornbluth’s story “The Marching Morons” [PDF], which also heavily informs the movie “Idiocracy.”
If Verhoeven singles out Americans, it’s because (like Kornbluth and Mike Judge) we’re the undisputed masters of advertising, an industry that exists in large part to promote and exploit idiocy. That’s why he loves dropping in parody commercials and propaganda into his movies.
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Nono. He’s actually stated that we’re morons. At least I remember that from an interview or possibly even an audio commentary track. I may be misremembering but that always stuck with me.
There’s likely some snobbery involved but having grown up in Latin America the attitude of being confused and bemused by some eccentricities from Americans is something i get. Not that i’m using that to defend his attitudes on that, but on some level i get it. Though like all stereotypes, just because that’s the standard American idea he might have it doesn’t make it necessarily true either.
Still you do have to realize that there’s a very distinct American attitude. Just how Japanese people have a very distinct way about them.
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I think the problem with the 2014 reboot is that it didn’t go far enough with the characters. I feel that Michael Keaton’s character wasn’t fleshed out enough to give us a reason to hate him other than it was the cardboard baddy. Like I want to see some scenes with him being a corporate a-hole and then some where he tries to cover it up with some philanthropic work or charity ball. There needed to be a contrast between Murphy/Robocop and Sellars (Keaton) which give us a reason to feel bad for Murphy and to hate Sellars. Without that kind of contrast I think the film just feels too murky and grey. It’s not that Murphy/Robocop is a hero, he’s not in any iteration such a person, but he’s not a bad guy and he’s more of a victim of circumstance that makes him an appealing character at least to me.
Perhaps he was talking about the American reaction to his brand of satire (e.g. “ZOMG|Hurrah, ‘Starship Troopers’ glorifies fascism!”). I couldn’t really blame him in that case.
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Maybe I’m just a diffrent kind of person but I got a feeling Keaton had no soul. This was a very driven man willing to turn a human being into a puppet for the sake of making a fuckton of money with how many robots he’d be able to sell as US law enforcement if he could get the drifus act repealed.
‘Do you know what people love more than a Hero? A Dead one!’
There’s a reason I love his movies, because they make fun of the things in culture I find stupid especially if taken to their logical extremes… even if I do hate how cameron in starship troopers absolute got away scott free while rico got run face first through a shit covered meatgrinder… even though that was intetionally likely a ‘here let’s look at how women are treated vs how men are.’ I kept hoping if nothing else Rico would see footage of how the meteor torching their home was her fault and even if he couldn’t expose her to the wider world because they needed the bug war, he could put two in her brainpan and walk away from it all.
Would you like to know more?
Possible! I have other problems with Starship Troopers, but it is even with my own grumping one of if not the best sendup of action movie/war scifi ever… and is a complete absolute middle finger to the source material (which is one of the earliest examples I’ve seen where you have power armor/mecha.)
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My German is very old and was pretty awful when it was new. But it seems he was paid a fee, reasonable at the time, for his work. But German copyright law has a “fairness provision” in the event a work becomes wildly successful.
If anyone on here is familiar with German copyright law, I would love to know more about this lawsuit and that aspect of German copyright law in general.
Yeah, sounds like it’s a royalty type of situation. Videogame voice actors are currently fighting to get similar type of clauses on their contracts. They’re usually paid a fee and don’t see any additional money if the game becomes massively successful.
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But this seems built into German copyright law itself which, if I understand correctly, would solve the videogame issue you cite regardless of how the contract is drawn. I guess unless the copyright provision is explicitly waived.
That part of their law seems kind of awesome.
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Ah, but will the new sequel prompt any critics to say “I want my money back, I want my time back, but most of all I want my innocence back” ?
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Its definitely a big frustration i’ve seen from voice actors on games not getting the same level of pay that other voice actors do for more involved work and less recognition and pay. I would 100% be for giving them and other artists that kind of compensation if a product is very successful.
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The single most powerful image I remember from the OG Robocop is thug Antonowsky getting doused in toxic waste, then getting hit by the car and splattering into a puddle of goop.
“Helllllp meeeee!!”
“Ewww. Don’t touch me man!”
That, and the family playing “Nuke Em.”
In fact, all the TV clips might be the best parts of the film.
“It’s the law of the jungle, ooohhoohhh.”
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@Heraclito summed it up nicely. I am neither an expert in German copyright law, but according to the article there is indeed this “fairness clause” coming into effect, which grants creators the right to additional remuneration in case of a “striking discrepancy” between agreed remuneration and commercial success. I hadn’t been aware of this clause before reading of this case either. Vacano is apparently the first director of photography in Germany to successfully get this additional remuneration, after a several years’ fight. He first had to sue the producers for revealing how much the movie actually made (turned out, 40 million between 1995 and 2013 alone), so he could sue for his fair share of it (438 000€ plus ca 150 000€ of accrued interest on of top the agreed remuneration of ca 100 000€).
(edited for typos)
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