First, I think people misunderstand Paul Veerhoven's sense of satire. Yes, the original Robocop is a satire. But the satire goes well beyond the goofy commercials and "I'd buy that for a dollar!"
The satire is playing a joke on you the audience, and we basically fall for it. Certainly, I did when I was a teenager. See, Robocop is kind of a fascistic power fantasy. (Well, arguabaly not "kind of" but rather "pretty on the nose about being"). Granted, in almost every instance, the criminals whom Robocop shoots have already opened fire on him, but the film goes to lengths to have Robocop dole out brutality and over-the-top (originally rated X!) violence in response. Veerhoven's stuff is visually exciting, and he knows it, so he messes with you about it. He's taking the kind of "tough on crime" premise of the Dirty Harry movies and taking them to ridiculous extremes, showcasing stuff that should bother you, but which he knows damn well is just gonna excite you and get you cheering for the fascist. Yes, the fascist. The machine-man who guns down criminals without a trial, who could easily restrain them without hurting them much, but instead will throw them through panes of glass or punch them across a room, who is functionally invulnerable but still feels it necessary to violently execute anyone who shoots a gun at him.
And we cheer it all on while stuffing our faces with popcorn. To me, that's the satire. That's Veerhoven's greatest trick: getting you to root for someone who, in other circumstances, you might think of as the bad guy. AND keeping it incredibly entertaining, the whole while!
Which brings me to the violence. Veerhoven is messing with us with that as well. He knows we tend to decry violence publicly, but he also knows we're titillated by it in film. And he goes way over the top with it in Robocop (especially if you watch the Criterion edition of the film). It's not that dissimilar to what we see now, but in 1987, that film was incredibly violent! Gory, even. And again, Veerhoven knows we're gonna love it. It's exciting! It's -- I daresay -- fun!
Even the technology gets in on the act. Robocop looks cool, right? So does the ED-209. It's all really neat stuff! But behind it all is horror and pain and dehumanization. Alex Murphy is murdered, then brought back to life in a mostly machine body and plagued by memories of his past. He's no longer a human, though; he's Robocop. This isn't a triumph; it's a tragedy. The ED-209 is one of the coolest mecha designs to hit the screen. And yet, what's it do? For one thing, it's incompetent at its job, but it demonstrates this in excruciatingly bloody fashion by blowing apart the guy at the demo. But still, SO COOL LOOKING, right? Another trick of Veerhoven's.
All of this goes back to Veerhoven taking something you should -- maybe even would -- probably hate in real life, and turning it into something SUPER DUPER COOL!!! And all of that, ultimately, is about exposing and exploring the dark fantasies that lurk in our minds, all without us even realizing it. That's the real satire, in my opinion, and it's what makes the original such a brilliant film.
Frank Miller's Robocop 2 is entertaining, but (especially knowing what became of him later), it's much more overt as satire, in terms of explicitly making fun of stuff, and doesn't seem to get the underlying joke of "You should hate all of this, but I've made you love it anyway."
When you know more about Veerhoven, a lot of this stuff starts to make sense. He was 2 years old when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. He watched the war happen in his back yard (and later made Soldaat van Oranje about the Dutch resistance). He's seen violence and the horror of war and what people can do to each other first-hand. I don't think he thinks it's awesome or cool at all. But I think he is willing to explore his own darkness, and he knows from having done so what people are likely to find as exciting. Plus, sitting in the comfort of the cinema, we have an opportunity to explore this stuff from relative safety. I didn't really realize a lot of this stuff about him until I listened to his commentary on the Starship Troopers disc. He tends to operate at two levels with that sort of thing. There's the obvious satirical aspects, but there's also the "satire of the audience" from my perspective.
Anyway, I....kinda doubt that Blomkamp will get the deeper layer. He's really good at the aesthetics and surface-level messaging, but that secondary layer, the one that really matters I think, isn't his style from what I've seen. Although, granted, I've only seen...uh....the Matt Damon one. And maybe part of Chappie?