'Robocop' rebooted: Can a remake of a great film ever be good?

I've been torn about the new version of Robocop. On the one hand, I loved the 1987 original, which is as much a hilarious satire of Reagan era hubris as it is a kick ass action film.

On the other, the new film boasts a great cast (Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson and my main man Michael Keaton in supporting roles) and an interesting director (Bus 174's Jose Padilha).

The trailer looked OK, so I figured I would wait for reviews. Well, now they're in and they're basically decent but not mind blowing. The consensus seems to be that while the film is far from an embarrassment it lacks the point-of-view of the original and adds nothing to its lore.

Needless to say I probably won't be seeing it and this experiment further proves the fact that it's incredibly hard to remake a film that was already pretty damn great.

This will keep happening because there is a lot of money to be made from nostalgic film audiences but could a Robocop remake (rated PG-13 no less) ever have worked?

The original Cape Fear (1962) is a terrific movie but it is somewhat burdened by the moral suppression of its time. The Gregory Peck character (Sam Bowden) never gets his hands dirty and so the conflict is pure good versus evil (personified by a creepy Robert Mitchum).

Scorsese's 1991 remake is superior not just because it ups the ante in terms of sex and violence but it plumbs the depths of all its characters. Nick Nolte's Bowden is corrupt and complex, the ambiguity raises the stakes and the impact of the narrative.

The Rat Pack version of Ocean's Eleven (1960) is fun as a time capsule and as an exercise in style but the closing caper is pretty unremarkable.

Robert De Niro in Cape Fear

Soderbergh's version, headlined by George Clooney, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt, is also mostly style over substance but they actually make the heist the centerpiece of their film and flesh out the Ocean character with more idiosyncrasies. Again the remake topped a solid original.

The 2004 Manchurian Candidate can't hold a candle to the 1962 original, but I still really enjoyed it because it played with your expectations enough that it surprised fans of the first film while entertaining the totally uninitiated. Consequently, they both work for me.

The new Spider-Man incarnation, with Andrew Garfield in the lead instead of Tobey Maguire, was clearly a money grab and yet it managed to be much better than the three Raimi films.

Garfield made for a more convincing and charismatic Spidey than Maguire. Plus special effects have improved so dramatically in just the last few years, making the CGI more seamless and less distracting in The Amazing Spider-Man.

When it comes to Robocop I'm not sure there was any room for improvement. I suppose the FX could be jazzed up a bit, but I watched the 1987 version on blu-ray recently and I didn't find it lacking in that department. The new film could have mocked the current state of the military industrial complex but if the early reviews are to be believed this new film doesn't quite do that either.

In fact, I read one review recently which made an interesting point -- the writer argued that this new film is perfectly fine but it's just not Robocop, and they should have given it another title. Of course, if producers did that they wouldn't get the hard earned dollars of fans of the first movie and its titular character.

On second thought I think I'll wait for Netflix.