MYST POST #2: Chappie

I loved science-fiction growing up. Everything from Star Wars: A New Hope, Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back… Star Wars: Return of the Jedi…

Ok I liked Star Wars growing up. Ok I liked Star Wars a lot. But as I've gotten older, I've learned that sic-fi has more to it than Action and Wookies. And through watching films like Aliens, Blade Runner, and even the recent Interstellar, I've learned that sic-fi can be used to tell amazing stories and transport you to different worlds. Much like Chappie's director Neil Blomkamp did with District 9.

I am a huge fan of District 9, the sic-fi allegory to apartheid that took place in South Africa is still one of my favorite films of the past 10 years, combining incredible special effects and action, great fleshed out human and alien characters, and an amazingly relevant film of that was a welcome return of classic science-fiction, in that it used a different world in a different time, to expose current societal issues and problems. I then saw Elysium, which still had great CGI and action sequences, but a little lacking in the character development department and the plot, when you strip away the new characters and setting, really kind of mirrored that of District 9. So although Elysium was little bit of a letdown, I was still super pumped for Chappie.

And after having seen Chappie, I can say that this, while more engaging and interesting than Elysium, still left me wanting more, and even a little disappointed at time. 

Neil Blomkamp still brings the visual flare that he's always had, and the final action sequence is spectacular, Blomkamp has not lost his touch here. But as soon as the plot starts to move forward, the great idea that Chappie started out with soon seems to spiral out of control. The basic plot of Chappie is this: In the future, police have been replaced with robotic officers, but when the creator of these droids steals one and reprograms it to have artificial intelligence, "Chappie" becomes a robot that can feel and think for himself. And that on paper sounds so cool, a robot learning to think and feel in a world that may not be ready for it. But soon the plot devolves into clichés and too much attention is given to bad characters. Those bad characters being Ninja and Yolandi. Ninja and Yolandi are a rap/hip-hop group from South America and have never acted before, and it's very apparent. Although they start off kind of cool as these gangsters with a little heart, they soon devolve into cartoons who actually are more among than cool and soon you begin to notice that there aren't many redeeming qualities about them. And then the movie makes a huge mistake by leaving Chappie to try to become a gangster with these two for more than half the movie instead of with Chappie's sympathetic and compelling inventor, played by Dev Patel. And the only human character that's awful is Dev Patel's really. Hugh Jackman is the villain in the story who is against the unpredictability of artificial intelligence, but acts like a typical high-school bully even though he's supposedly a competing scientist, and the only thing that makes him a compelling villain is his mullet. Granted, I think Jackman's a fantastic actor, but he is very poorly directed and his dialogue is hard to swallow at times, and the same thing happens to Sigourney Weaver who has literally 15 minutes of screen time and is just boring to watch. But maybe the biggest redeeming quality of Chappie, is Chappie. Played with voice-acting and motion-capture technology by Sharlto Copley, you do get a fantastic performance in which you see this robot go from being a baby, to an awkward gangster, to a loving son and companion. There are some great moments of seeing Chappie grow up, like when he watches "He-Man," and learns to be like him in morals and likeness. But these moments are few and far between and they should've been the main focus of the story. Overall Chappie has two good performances and great special effects and action, but the plot is a mess, the movie doesn't know what it wants to be, and every other character is either cartoon, boring, annoying, or a cartoon. If I had to describe Chappie in a word, it wouldn't be "bad" or "messy," I'd just have to say, "disappointing." I give Chappie 2/5 stars.