RoboCop (2014)

RoboCop is out and it's the reboot of the previous RoboCop. The movie stars Joel Kinnaman, Michael Keaton, Gary Oldman, Abbie Cornish and Samuel L. Jackson.
The movie starts with 'robot soldiers' being used overseas as to in the US. OmniCorp wants to sell their products in the US but is stopped by the Dreyfuss Act. The Act disagrees with having robots as law enforcers because it lacks the compassion and feeling of a human. OmniCorp CEO Raymond Sellars decides, in order to get around the Dreyfuss Act, decides to put a man in a machine. In order to find a man that can interact with the machine, Sellars gets Dr. Dennett Norton to assist. Dr. Dennett is the doctor in helping people using robotics to their body, such as a man using his robotic hands to play a guitar.
While searching for the right candidate, Officer Alex Murphy and his partner, Jack Lewis, investigate a case of guns from the police evidence room gone missing. However, they get ambushed and Jack Lewis gets injured. Murphy poking in deeper into the case gets the attention of 2 other officers who are corrupted and working with Antoine Vallon. Vallon is the top guy in the missing guns. As Murphy returns from the hospital, visiting Jack, his car gets planted with explosive. And as you can predict, the car exploded, leaving Murphy with burns and missing limbs. He became the perfect candidate for OmniCorp's program. Dr. Dennett convinces Murphy's wife, Clara, to consent to the program.
As Murphy is introduced into the new outfit, he first, rejects the program. With Dr. Dennett's help, he is able to overcome the program. As he goes through a series of test, Murphy began to show that his emotions gets the better of him. Sellars instructs Dennett to take out Murphy's emotion (there's a scene of a brain surgery) and making Murphy believe that he is in control of his own body, where in fact, it's not. Rick Mattox is assigned to test Murphy. Mattox is OmniCorp's military technician. Mattox does not like RoboCop.
Upon the reveal of RoboCop by the police force, Murphy gets downloaded with the police database into his brain. It gets overwhelming and RoboCop goes into a seizure. But OmniCorp needs him up and ready for the reveal. Hence, Dr. Dennett gets forced into subduing RoboCop's emotion. As a result, RoboCop's becomes unemotional.
At the press conference, RoboCop does not recognise his wife and son. He apprehends a criminal among the crowd using his new database download. He becomes the new hero of Detroit. More of a robot than a human. As he continues with his duties reducing crime rate in Detroit, Clara is prevented from seeing Murphy.
Clara confronts RoboCop and tells him that he needs to see his son. RoboCop search deeper into who Clara and her son is. His emotions level starts to increase causing him to be more human than robot. He search deeper into his own case. He discovers that Vallon is behind his death and goes on a hunt for Vallon. Upon arriving to Vallon's warehouse, RoboCop gets ambushed. It was revealed that Vallon got a tip of RoboCop's arrival. The tip came from the police force. Vallon gets killed but not before injuring RoboCop severely. RoboCop returns to the police station and exposed the corrupt cops, the two officers that they meet at the beginning of the film. RoboCop also reveals that the Chief of Police is also one of the corrupt police. Before his arrests the Chief of Police, his system is shut down and Mattox.
Sellars goes on air with Pat Novak at the Novak Element show and uses RoboCop to his advantage in turning people against the Dreyfuss Act. As the voting goes underway for the Dreyfuss Act, Sellars announces that RoboCop is dead, which, in fact he is not dead. Sellars wants RoboCop offline because he starts to show his human side, going against the program.
Clara creates havoc by going to the press. Sellars calls to meet Clara and reveals that RoboCop died in the operation to fix him. Sellars orders Mattox to kill RoboCop. Dr. Dennett revives RoboCop and reveals that Sellars was behind the scheme to misuse RoboCop and gain the trust of the people to go against the Dreyfuss Act.
Sellars closes down OmniCorp's building and calls for the drones to kill RoboCop. Dr. Dennett seeks help from Jack. They helped RoboCop enter into OmniCorp. As RoboCop reaches the roof of the building, he confronts Sellars but is unable to kill him due to the device that tags people that OmniCorp robots cannot kill. However, RoboCop, or rather, Murphy, overcomes the program and kills Sellars.
At the end, it is reveald OCP, OmniCorp's parent company withdraws the RoboCop program and will review it until further notice (perhaps a hint to RoboCop 2?). Murphy gets a new body with the same colour as the original RoboCop.
In one scene where Sellars marketing is deciding on Robocop's look, we see a glimpse of the original RoboCop suit.
Here's a trailer:

TRON : Legacy

TRON Legacy is a sequel to the 1982 film, TRON. The story tells of Flynn, who now has a son, Sam. Sam grew up without a dad. One day, he stumbles upon the game his dad created, TRON and was digitize into the world of TRON. And he meets his dad, rivals, a gal and they all are in search to find a way out of TRON into the real world. As CLU (Codified Likeness Utility) is revealed in the likeness of Flynn, it is soon known that CLU is the baddie. CLU was built as to manage the digital realm. Tron was built as the security programme created by Alan. The disc on the back of each characters is their identify disc that contains all information of who they are. And the discs are use as a weapon. However, Flynn's disc is the main disc that contains all information and the key to escaping through the portal. Kinda like the master key to everything in digital realm. In one scene, as Quorra's hand was cut off (which makes you wonder, other programms will be derezzed (or killed, eliminated, deresolve) when they get cut off, but how come Quorra's hand is the only casualty), anyways, in one scene, we see Flynn opening the disc and playing around with some settings. Kinda like fixing the DNA of Quorra. As to CLU's objective was to create perfection, CLU soon realises that the ISOs (Isomorphic Algorithm) were imperfect of the digital realm. Hence, CLU destroys the ISOs. Flynn however, was in awe that there were ISOs appearing, to discover more as it may answer the questions of religion, science, and medicine. Soon CLU believes that Flynn isn't perfect, hence decides to eliminate Flynn. But CLU is stopped by Tron, which we see is about to be killed. As Sam is sucked into the game, after escaping CLU, he finds Quorra, an ISO that is looked after the Flynn. As they find a way to escape, through the portal, they encounter battles with CLU and his army, including his right hand man, or programme. Towards the end, we see the right hand man actually being Tron that was reprogramme by CLU to be bad. Tron soon turn good and dives into CLU's ship to give time to Sam, Quorra and Flynn to escape. However, CLU catches up with them at the portal. Flynn sacrifices himself in order to save Sam and Quorra. Sam and Quorra escaped into the real world. And Quorra's dream of feeling the sun's ray was fulfilled when Sam brought her on his bike in the morning as the sun rises.

Watching this movie, I would say it would fit for those into the cyber or gaming world. It would take some time to understand the lingo. However, for Flynn’s character, his lingo sticks with the ‘hey dude’ era because he has been trapped in TRON all this while. The effects for the film is cool and if only we had a stick that can be transformed into a vehicle of sorts.

However, after watching TRON Legacy, I went on to watch the original TRON (1982) and it was cool in the ’80 era days. Watching the 1982 version made me want to say the word ‘psychedelic’. There are similarities between both movies, example: When Flynn enters through the big door, he said ‘That’s a big door’, this was similar when Sam sneak into the office. Even though a short insertion of such, it was part of the essence of the first to the second movie. Besides that, of course visual effects was a huge difference. The technology they had in 1982 compared to 2010 was visually impossible to miss. Example: the cardboard-like suit to the computer-generated suit, and the light effects of the light cycle.

Overall, the movie’s main attraction for me was the visual effects and I would love to see a sequel.

After Earth

After Earth is a movie by M. Night Shyamalan starring father-son; Will Smith and Jaden Smith. It is basically a story about human beings forced to leave earth a thousand years after environmental cataclysmic events. One day a military father and his son crash landed on Earth. In this movie, it is also a story of a son proving to his father that he can be a soldier just like his father.
The story begins a thousand years after the environmental cataclysmic event. The Ranger Corps, headed by General Cypher Raige, fights the Skrel, an alien race who wants to conquer the Nova Prime. Nova Prime is the new world for humans. Cypher, in the fight with Ursas, Skrel's secret weapon to kill the humans, teaches 'ghosting' to the new Rangers. However, Cypher's son, Kitai, was not a pride of his due to his recklessness.  His sister, Senshi, was killed by an Ursa. Due to this, Kitai keeps training to prove his worth.
On a mission together, their ship crash landed on a Class-1 quarantined planet, known as Earth. Cypher and Kitai are trapped on Earth. Cypher encounters injuries to his legs causing him immobility. So it's up to Kitai to find a backup beacon that was part of the ship.
As Kitai embarks on his journey, he encounters wild animals. Kitai's weapon, Cutlass (long pointy stick like a javelin). As Cypher told his son, "Everything on this planet has evolved to kill humans.". In one incident, Kitai is attacked and his capsules (for oxygen) are damaged. Cypher accepting the reality, asked Kitai to abort mission and return back. However, Kitai ignores his orders because Kitai still feels that his father sees him as a disappointment. So, Kitai charges on with his mission. He is, then, captured by a condor when he skydives from a mountaintop (there's a scene in the trailer). In the condor's nest, Kitai encounters a group of tigers coming after the next. He defended the nest but still the eggs were destroyed. However, the condor understand Kitai's effort. In one scene, Kitai fell asleep on the raft he made to cross the river, Kitai had a dream of his sister, Senshi, whom assured Kitai it isn't his fault. As Kitai awakes, Earth experiences another thermal shift (it happens once in awhile throughout the movie. Thermal shift causes the temperature to drop). As he tries to survive the thermal shift, the condor returns to save him but it died in the process.
Kitai finally finds the backup beacon along with a weapon, communicator and more capsules. Kitai also finds that the ship was carrying Ursa that was meant to train the Rangers. But because the ship crashes, the Ursa escapes and kills all the crew. Kitai tries to activate the beacon but couldn't (there wasn't any signal). So Kitai had to go to the nearby volcano. He is attacked by the escaped Ursa. Kitai remembered his father's instructions and his sister's words. He 'ghost' himself and kills the Ursa.
It ends with Kitai launches beacon, Cypher respects Kitai, and both return to Nova Prime.
Throughout the movie, it explores a father-son relationship. It's a new take in father-son relationship-type-movie in a futuristic scene. It was average for a futuristic movie but wasn't the best especially coming from a director that has been seen to have taken a turn in making sold out movies. Shyamalan, in his early directing years, made good-thought-provoking movies, but nowadays, you'll probably think twice before watching his movies. Actors, however, were A-list actors but reports says that this movie was not the best for them.
Anyways, here's the trailer: