These are adventure stories, ultimately, so why not set cloned dinosaurs and predatory androids loose on civilians? Someone or something has to be vanquished by heroics.

So the new RoboCop movie poses the usual rhetorical questions, about the price of progress, and the consequences of playing God, as well as some more specific ones, such as the dangers of building killer robots and mucking around in a person’s brains. Whether it’s a quality film isn’t for me to decide, and the reviews, for what they’re worth, are mixed. Surprisingly high-quality, however, is RoboCop’s most chilling conceit: that a brain implant could turn a human into a pliable cybernetic slave.