|
|
 |
The Bike - RoboCop's new ride
A blockbuster film like RoboCop doesn’t just envision itself. That job falls to someone like production designer Martin Whist, who has been responsible for conceptualizing and designing such films as Super 8, Cloverfield, and The Cabin in the Woods. Martin reveals here what went into designing RoboCop's new ride.
| |
Where did you draw inspiration from for the film’s design?
The bike was a very important element and a departure from the original film. It was in place before I started working on the film. Director José Padilha had already decided he wanted him solo on the bike, which I loved.
The bike was something that needed to be very much a part of him, since he and it were both machines. The two very much fuse together, but not in a literal, science fiction kind of way. We wanted to keep it more “real world.” The reality of the technology of RoboCop and everything in our film is close to real world technology. It’s a real motorcycle, a Kawasaki, that I lengthened the wheelbase on. It drove, though it’s not the easiest bike to ride because of the padding and the lengthened wheelbase, and I brought his center of gravity back over the gas tank, which is not ideal.
Unlike the Bat-bike, it was able to turn and take corners. I was very conscious of not making the wheels too large, like the Bat-bike – which looked fantastic on screen, but didn’t fit the needs of our film. The technology of making RoboCop was what we wanted to amp up a little bit, but nothing that farfetched. What is consumer grade in the movie is mostly lab technology in the real world. I looked into graphene, this super-material that’s extremely light, highly conductive, and extremely strong. If it becomes consumer grade, it could be the wave of the future, so a lot of our handheld devices are made of it. That’s what RoboCop is made out of, which makes all of the mechanics and “old school” circuitry obsolete because the information can be in the material.
Making the Remake
On September the 24th 2012, shooting finally began on the much anticipated RoboCop remake, almost seven years after it was first announced by Sony Pictures, way back in 2005.
|
Changes
While the biggest change is the suit, there are many other minor changes here also, some so subtle one might actually wonder why they did them in the first place. Here are the things we've noticed so far.
|
|
|
|
