I'm afraid I'm going to be on the negative asshole end of the AICN spectrum on this one. Here's the thing, RebootCop is not awful it just comes across as the homogenized, less interesting version of the movie we already know. It feels like they made character and world-building choices here that were considered and rejected the first time around. “Wouldn't it be interesting if after the accident Alex Murphy is still exactly himself, but flips back and forth between mindless robot cop and the passionate officer he was before? Hrmm... maybe it's better if he has... you know... a character arc. We'll start him as a machine and then slowly reintroduce his humanity. Yeah, that's the way to go!”

It doesn't help that they PG-13-ified all the violence (RoboCop's gun now fires electricity shots so he can taze some bros instead of splatter them) and restricted the satire to an unsubtle jab at America's drone program and the crazy 24 hour news cycle. In place of that fun stuff is a confusing Star Wars prequel-like focus on the logistics of a governmental vote that could allow OCP to replace local police with military robots and ED-209s.

Here's the problem... This isn't shown to necessarily be a bad thing. In the original, the ED-209 was glitchy, unproven and deadly dangerous. Here, the whole opening scene in Tehran shows us the robotic sentries and ED-209s actually doing a good job pacifying the region. The issue isn't whether or not they'll glitch and shoot innocent people, it's that they won't feel bad if one of the people they shoot happens to be a teenage kid holding a knife instead of a gun.

Michael Keaton plays the OCP CEO like Steve Jobs. He's animated about his work, he believes in it. Sure, he likes money, but you can tell he feels morally justified, proud of his products. This would have worked great if they showed him doing more amoral things, but his character only seems to change when the plot needs to escalate, not because he's motivated by anything in particular. At a certain point it's just time for him to do straight up bad guy stuff.

We're also not shown why there's a need for an upgrade to law enforcement. We're told over and over again about the crime, but what we see seems to be a pretty small drug operation in a big city. We got why Detroit/Delta City was so fucked up in Verhoeven's version. Here it's just any big city. When RoboCop is introduced he has a brief montage, but we actually don't see him have any sort of broad effect. We're told that the crime rate has dropped 80% a few scenes later, but that commits the cardinal screenwriting sin of telling, not showing. He's only ever really focused on solving his own attempted murder.

That's my overall problem with the movie in a nutshell. Every decision is pulling back from the ideas and themes of Verhoeven's original film, not pushing the envelope. Think of every remake you hold up as an improvement, whether it's John Carpenter's The Thing, David Cronenberg's The Fly or Frank Oz's Little Shop of Horrors, and you'll find a common thread. Each one takes the story further or in the case of the famous remakes of silent films (10 Commandments, Wizard of Oz) technology brought the story to life in a way that it just couldn't be done before.

With RoboCop 2014 there's no such jump. It's the exact opposite of the remakes that work. It takes the ideas from the original and waters them down, homogenizes them to be a kind of generic big studio movie, which the original miraculously avoided being.

Now, you may say it's unfair to compare the remake to the original and that's a valid point of view, but one I don't share. I personally don't think it's fair for the studio and filmmakers to take the iconography, characters and title and then ask us to come see them play in a world we already know and like and then say we shouldn't compare it to the original. Sorry, that's just not how I work, just like I view sequels and compare them to the other movies in a franchise or compare performances from my favorite actors from film to film. That's part of being a movie geek and I can't turn that off.

Over President's Day weekend, The LEGO Movie should hold on to first place ahead of three 80s remakes. With its strong Valentine's Day appeal, About Last Night will likely be the strongest of the newcomers, while Robocop will have a tough time bouncing back from its poor Wednesday opening.

With the East Coast buried under a nasty snowstorm on Wednesday and Thursday, there will be a lot of talk about the weather's effect on the box office. While some people will inevitably stay away from theaters, the aggregate impact is often overstated: comparing week-over-week drops during similar events suggests a 10-to-12 percent drop in box office is the worst-case scenario.

The RoboCop remake got a jump on the competition by opening at 3,372 locations on Wednesday. This is Sony/Columbia's second remake of a Paul Verhoeven sci-fi movie—the first was 2012's Total Recall, which opened to $25.6 million on its way to a disappointing $58.9 million.

Sony will still have the highest-grossing new release this weekend, though it's coming from Screen Gems, not Columbia. Opening at 2,253 locations, the About Last Night remake seems to have the recipe for Valentine's Day success. Featuring two couples exploring relationship issues in humorous ways, the movie will be the go-to date night choice. It doesn't hurt that marketing prominently features Kevin Hart, who is undoubtedly a box office draw following the success of last month's Ride Along.

With a similar tone and a few of the same cast members, About Last Night is reminiscent of 2012 Screen Gems movie Think Like a Man. That opened to $33.6 million on its way to $91.5 million; a similar result wouldn't be surprising for About Last Night. Sony is more modestly predicting mid-$20 millions for the four-day frame.