Chappie

Oh boy... how do I talk about Chappie...

Chappie was directed by Neill Blomkamp, a South African director responsible for the film District 9, probably one of my favorite films of 2009. District 9 was nominated for Best Picture that year and I think it probably should have won. While Blomkamp wasn't nominated for Best Director that year, he had a pretty great start to his career. Four years later he came out with the film Elysium... I honestly don't remember Elysium. I did a review for the film back in 2014 but that was very early on in my blogging days and the review isn't that good. One day I want to go back and check that film out again but from what I've heard people aren't wild about it. But still, Blomkamp had one film that was nominated for Best Picture and one film that people were lukewarm about. That's no reason to quit.

And then Chappie happened.

I saw trailers for Chappie and I didn't think it looked that bad. I heard the bad reviews about Chappie but I couldn't believe it was that bad, especially from a guy who made one of my favorite movies of 2009. There has to be something redeemable about that film...

And then I watched Chappie.

Chappie takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is 2016 and the crime rate has risen immensely. To combat that rising rate, a private company called Tetravaal creates law enforcement robots. They have been mainly programmed by a company employee by the name of Deon (played by Dev Patel). Because of his work, crime has gone down.

But Deon has his own pet project in the works, a project his boss (played by Sigourney Weaver, she really doesn't have much of a role in this film at all) does not sanction. Deon wants to install a program into one of the robots that would create consciousness and create the first real Artificial Intelligence.

Now Deon seems like a smart guy. He goes to Sigourney Weaver and asks her if he can use one of the robots that have been set for dismantlement. When she says no because of insurance reasons... you know instead of being afraid of creating Skynet, Deon decides to steal a robot set for dismantlement and install the AI into it. This is confusing because Deon is doing something illegal... very illegal. We've also seen Deon with robots in his house, there really isn't a reason why he couldn't create a new robot and install this program there instead of using company property. This is one of many moments you will hate Deon throughout this film.

However, Deon is captured by a group of gangsters (played by Jose Pablo Cantillo, Yolandi Visser, and a South African Rapper named Ninja... I'll get to him don't worry). They want Deon to give them the off switch to the robots so they can pull off a heist and get money to pay back a drug lord. Deon, instead of lying to people who clearly don't understand Artificial Intelligence, bargains with these people that instead of killing him, he'll give them the robot he stole from the company and turn on the artificial intelligence, you know, instead of just giving them the robot and testing the AI on another robot he steals once he's out of this very dangerous situation.

It is at this time that Chappie is born.

Chappie (voiced by Sharlto Copley) starts his development very much like a child. He doesn't totally understand words at first, he doesn't understand social interaction at all, but he does start learning very quickly.

And this is where Blomkamp's heavy handed social commentary comes in because it asks the question where do we learn behavior. Chappie has influences from a lot of people in this movie. He of course learns from Deon who says from the beginning that he is Chappie's maker and his authority comes from that title. He also starts to learn from Yolandi Visser's character who inserts herself as Chappie's mother figure. And then you have Ninja.

Yes, there is a character named Ninja in this movie. He's played by a South African rapper named Ninja.

While Deon and Yolandi are supposed to be the nurturing figures in Chappie's life, the ones who will put him on the straight and narrow, Ninja is the drugged out step father that Blomkamp assumes all criminals have.

It's not really a surprise that this guy was a pain in the ass on set, but he's just a horrible, horrible actor. He and Jose Pablo Castillo's characters are horrendous stereotypes and just annoying characters overall. They want to teach Chappie to be a gangster and help them pull off this heist. So there's this tug of war for Chappie's humanity throughout the film and it's just cringe-worthy. As much as they portray Yolandi Visser's character as this motherly figure, she does absolutely nothing but talk in a "Motherly" voice to Chappie, and Deon, my god Deon is annoying as hell.

He leaves Chappie with the gangsters but comes back with development toys and exercises to mold Chappie into a functioning member of society. He yells just the most cringe-worthy lines to Chappie like FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS and BE ALL YOU CAN BE.

I really like Dev Patel. He's a really good actor. But when he doesn't have a good script, it can really seem like he's not that good. Nothing about this film is Patel's fault though, it is all the script.

Deon has this weird dynamic between being Chappie's good influence and being his maker. There is a weird allegory going on with Dev Patel and God which never truly makes a lot of sense. It's a bummer because despite the horrendous dialogue he's given, Patel actually doesn't give that horrible of a performance in this film but overall his character is annoying and not very smart. Especially when we start to see Hugh Jackman come in as the main villain of the movie.

Now you might be wondering why I'm just now introducing Hugh Jackman. The truth is, this movie didn't need him. There was already plenty in this movie to talk about, especially regarding consciousness, nature vs nurture, etc.

But man I am glad they had Hugh Jackman in this movie and boy am I glad that Hugh Jackman really has a thing for fighting robots. I mean he basically has the same role he had in Real Steel and boy is he the most entertaining part of this movie.

Hugh Jackman plays a rival engineer at Deon's company. He's former military and he wants to push his own robot system but nobody seems to be a fan of it. Probably because it's a giant ED 209.

Seriously, Hugh Jackman spends the entire movie wanting to sell this to law enforcement agencies and they say no. And for good reason. Why doesn't he sell it to the military? This would be really great for the military, not preventing street crime.

But this is just one part of why Hugh Jackman's character is so ridiculous he becomes the best part of the film.

Jackman is sporting this weird mullet throughout the film, he wears kaki shorts, and he's always carrying a gun the entire film.

Hugh Jackman seems to be the only one having fun in this movie and it's because his character is a psycho.

I don't care if it's a spoiler because you really shouldn't see this movie, but at one point Jackman turns off all the law enforcement robots, creates mass chaos in Johannesburg, all for the opportunity to take his ED 209 out for a murdering spree where he brutally murders almost everyone in his path.

I'm pretty sure Jackman was locked into some kind of contract so he just went nuts with this movie and just had a ball.

And that's the main problem with this movie. This movie takes itself WAY too seriously.

I get that Neill Blomkamp tells stories with social commentary, that's kind of his thing. I don't want to give him too much shit for wanting to say something with his films. But at a certain point it goes way too overboard and it just feels heavy handed and overdramatic, especially in his use of slow motion and cringe-worthy melodrama.

A story about a robot gaining consciousness and going through human development starting from birth is an interesting concept, I think that Blomkamp had something here. I've heard that Blomkamp is starting up own movie studio to make short films and I feel like Chappie could have been a really good short film

But to pair it up with commentary on crime, militarization of the police force, and transformer like action just doesn't totally fit in your grand scheme of commentary. When you pair this movie with amateur actors who are South African rappers for some reason, it doesn't totally fit in your grand scheme of commentary.

To give credit where it is due, the special effects that went into this movie, especially making Chappie move and interact with the world was really, really well done. I think great visuals are something the Blomkamp has been able to use in his films very well and I guess I have to give him credit for creating a character that is fully CGI but still feels pretty real.

But it feels out of place and campy when they give it a gun, teach it to shoot "gangster" style and try and force feed us this message about consciousness and nature versus nurture.

Overall, Chappie is worse than I thought it was going to be. I don't even think the reviews I heard about it gave it enough justice as to how bad this film is.

Neill Blomkamp was supposed to direct an Alien movie and since this movie came out they have kind of backed away from that news. Before I saw this movie I thought that was pretty harsh, but after seeing this, I kind of understand.

I don't think Blomkamp is a bad director... yet. I still want to see more films from him especially since I've seen both District 9 and Elysium and don't think those movies were incredibly awful. We gave M Night Shyamalan countless of chances before we branded him a bad director, let's give Blomkamp one more chance before we shun him from the world.

But those are my thoughts on Chappie. What did you think of this film? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. So Chappie came out in 2015, since then we have had a couple of instances of Artificial Intelligence in the news. This is the news story of the Facebook robots that started making their own language and Facebook quickly destroyed those computers as fast as they could. Do you want Skynet? Cause this is how you get Skynet. Enjoy!