This week on the podcast, Glenn and Daniel are pleasantly surprised by another unnecessary remake of a 1980s film that manages to be a little bit more than the sum of its parts.

Check out our discussion below (49:00).

May contain some NSFW language.

FilmWonk rating: 6.5 out of 10

Show notes:

• Music for tonight’s episode includes the track “First Day” from the RoboCop (2014) soundtrack, composed by Pedro Bromfman. It also includes a brief snippet from the original 1988 RoboCop theme song, composed by the late, great Basil Poledouris. I kept this cut brief because the soundtrack is out of print, so I was unfortunately unable to find a decent digital copy of the original track.
• Read the full FilmWonk review of Elysium here.
• We made a brief reference to philosopher Jeremy Bentham‘s concept of the Panopticon – you can read more on Wikipedia if you’re interested in the topic.
• In case we lost anyone with our brief discussion on neurology and freewill, here is a quick rundown from Dr. Steven Novella at the NeuroLogica Blog regarding a 2008 study illustrating the decision-making phenomenon that we described:
  

  “The subjects were not necessarily consciously aware of their decision until they were about to move, but the cortex showing they were planning to move became activated a full 7 seconds prior to the movement. This supports prior research that suggests there is an unconscious phase of decision-making. In fact many decisions may be made subconsciously and then presented to the conscious bits of our brains. To us it seems as if we made the decision, but the decision was really made for us subconsciously.”

Listen above, or download: RoboCop (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play on a non-flash browser)