Fw: Chappie (SF-List 6 Mar 2015)

   
 

I saw Chappie this past weekend and found it to be the least of Blomkamp's features, all of which I have experienced in theaters. It almost was like a South African set spin off of the film maker's previous, even more epic Elysium, which featured brutish police droids. Beginning with District 9, Blomkamp has resolutely remained within his particular milieu, which are broken down sub-cyberpunk urban landscapes populated with or visited by Technicolor weapon toting barbarians (some of which are establishment drones but they are just as reprehensible as their slum town rivals).


 

The film maker managed to flesh out some of his speculative concepts in the previous two movies, even with his adherence to the SF action movie staples of chases and splashy violence. However, Chappie's 'sensawunda', already thin, is further diluted by Blomkamp's rote ghetto barbarians (this go round, hip hop punks who turn into slightly more humanized dicks by the end of the story but remain dicks all the same), crazed action sequences, and a climatic redux of ROBOCOP 2.

 

I'm not necessarily sold on the conceit that droids could be made functional or get adopted into the police force that near into our future or that they would be permitted aboard when they were so vulnerable to sabotage. I wonder if the corporate technology on display would really be able to transfer human awareness into a computer before uploading it into an artificial brain, sort of like a digital version of what occurred organically in AVATAR? 

 

Not a terrible movie, by any means, but not worthy of the potential demonstrated in District 9 or even Elysium (with its more or less open-to-the-void space habitat). If only Blompkamp had focused on the implications and wonder of artificial consciousness and less on his past cinematic obsessions. I like colorful characters, loud chases and pointless violence as much as the next viewer but there are times when they interfere with hard speculation, especially since Chappie is far from the only movie that has grappled with the subject matter. 

 

Jeff

 

 


----- Original Message ----- 

From: Holger Hellmuth<mailto:[email protected]> 

To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 

Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2015 8:14 AM

Subject: Re: Chappie (SF-List 6 Mar 2015)



Very devastating review, but remember that humor is very subjective and 
no two movie reviews are alike. I checked out a few other reviews and 
found a wide range of opinions, the last one summing it up this way:
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This eclectic mix has flummoxed many reviewers with review scores 
ranging from very low to high.

Viewer feedback however seems to be positive, I was certainly impressed 
and am already looking forward to seeing Chappie again.
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I don't expect Chappie to be a master piece but I have read enough bad 
reviews of movies I liked to not take them too seriously.