Back in March, Electroshadow reported that upcoming actor Joel Kinnaman had been cast in the lead role of the "RoboCop" remake. Early response to him wasn't all that encouraging, and personally, I'll admit to being unconvinced this is the guy for the job. Kinnaman is keen to prove himself, and in between promotions for his latest movie "Lola Versus", he took the time to tell Collider's Sheila Roberts his feelings on taking the iconic sci-fi role, and why director Jose Padilha's retelling is a worthy one. He also made a good point about the whole notion of remakes. We've got the whole interview here for you…
Sheila Roberts: When do you start filming RoboCop?
Joel Kinnaman: In September. It's very exciting.
SR: Are you surprised by the level of interest?
JK: A little bit, yeah. It's like when you say one thing, it's everywhere, and that's pretty awesome and a little bit intimidating. It makes you realize you have to think before speaking. That's a quality I'm continuously evolving. For some reason, it seems like I'm bumping my head into the wall a little bit too many times, but now I think I'm doing alright. It's fantastic. I used to be like "Why are we doing a remake? What are remakes being done for?" But then, we do that all the time in the theater. If we weren't doing remakes, nobody would know who Shakespeare was. I'm not saying that Robocop is Shakespeare, but it's a way to … we're retelling. That's what we do as human beings. We retell our favorite stories. That's what we've done since we were sitting around campfires. It's a part of the human spirit. It doesn't have to be negative to creativity. It can be completely opposite. That's how you can break new ground by rethinking something that's already been done. José has a completely different take on this than Verhoeven had, and with all respect, everybody that's involved in this movie loved the original and we have a lot of respect for it. We're going to have a lot of throwbacks and there's going to be a lot of fun stuff for the fans of the first movie. It's a new story within the old one.
SR: Were you a fan of the original?
JK: I've seen it maybe 20 times before I got this part.
SR: Have you been reading the online sites and forums about the RoboCop reboot?
JK: No, not really.
SR: Were you nervous when you signed on for a few movies as part of a multi-picture deal?
JK: No. I mean that sort of comes with the territory, and so far, everything that I've been promised and everything that I've heard about the project has really come to life. Everybody is trying to make something real, something with a core of substance, and of course, an exciting action movie with a lot of terrific stuff and fantastic visuals and everything, but at the core of it, it's a movie with substance and something that is going to make people think.
SR: How excited are you to work with Gary Oldman?
JK: That feels about as surreal as me being RoboCop. I couldn't be happier. He's pretty much the grand master of the game. I still think it made everybody that voted for the Oscars look bad that they didn't vote for Gary Oldman, because what he did is so difficult in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It's a completely different kind of thing. I mean, I loved The Artist. I thought it was fantastic. I saw it early before the whole hype of it and I thought that French actor (Jean Dujardin) did a great job, but he's more like that guy. I've seen him in interviews and he is a bit animated like that character. But, Gary Oldman disappears into his character. It's so subtle. It's so difficult what he does, and it's something that I don't think maybe two or three other actors could do on their best day in the world right now. It was a master's performance and he's on top of his game right now. He's in his golden age. So, I'm very, very excited and we have great scenes that have a lot of the substance that I was talking about. It's very much a relationship between Gary Oldman's character and Alex Murphy.
"RoboCop" starts shooting this September.
