I'm consciousness. I'm alive. I'm Chappie. -Chappie
From the guy who gave us the magnificent District 9 comes his next project Chappie. Where A.I. is just beginning and a police droid now turns alive, this film asks the big questions on what is life and what authority do we have over it with stunning effects and a great concept. But like most films recently the concept is more interesting than the film....
I'm always up for a Neill Blomkamp film, but after seeing this you start to question if this guy was a one hit wonder. Everyone loved District 9, people were split with Elysium, and now it seems like the majority don't like Chappie. The visual effects were stunning, like I said, but the biggest problem with Chappie is the story and the characters in it.
Before delving into that, I want to go over what I loved about this film. To cover the basics this is a very well made film. Cinematography, editing, and directing is all good and if they had a good script then this could have been great. The visual effects look real, you really believe that Chappie is a robot that someone is controlling to act. Then, Chappie himself is amazing. The character is so lovable, and his mannerisms are amazing. His adultness, yet childlike mind, really make you want to like him and he is the most likable character in this film.
The story overall is simple and we've all heard it before. This was a big reason why this film just didn't do much for me, that and this whole film just felt off. There was something poking me in my head trying to tell me what was wrong with this film, and in the middle of the movie it hit me: this is an adult disney film. If you strip this down to the basics and make it an animation, this could easily be the premise of a children's film. That made me feel very conflicted when watching this film because it's not a kids film (even thought there were a few kids with their parents in the movie theater watching this when I went O.O) this film is gritty, bloody, and then Chappie has literally the mind of a child. While I do like movie where the clueless protagonist has to learn the harsh reality of life, I just thought they could have gone a different route for this movie.
Then we have a major problem when it comes to characters. First off I'd like to get the main ones out of the way: Ninja and Yolandi, played by.....Ninja and Yo-landi who are rap stars. Yeah, these characters have the most screen time and they are not even actors. It was painful watching Ninja on screen. I did not feel any sympathy for him, and I hated every moment he opened his mouth to talk. These character's are not even fully fleshed characters, their ideas are grade school level and their motivations are all over the place. Yolandi was a tough gansta chick who suddenly falls in love with Chappie (not literally) and acts as a mother figure. Ninja then takes the father figure and they both try to shape him to be the biggest, baddest, criminal around....yet Yolandi wants him to be good whenever ninja is around, but a criminal whenever Chappie's creator appears? Yeah, these characters are a mess.
Now lets talk about Hugh Jackman, the guy who plays Wolverine, the most badass guy who you would love to see as a villain and boy was he underused in this film. Jackman's character is another roboticist that creates a human controlled robot (that looks exactly like the ED-209 from Robocop) vs Patel's A.I. robot(s). I liked every time he was on screen, he owned the shots. However, the big problem is his character isn't fully fleshed out, and his character wasn't in the film as long as you'd think. In the trailer you get the impression that his and Dev Patel's character will be competing and going against each other....nope that doesn't happen, but it would have been way more interesting than what is in the film.
Warning: The following few paragraphs are spoilers, if you don't want to be spoiled scroll down to find the 'end of spoiler' banner and proceed after that.
In the film there is a topic/scene that happens that I have to talk about, and that is the last 10 minutes. The third act is where Chappie learns that he will die, and he has no way to survive. He comes across a nuero-helmet where he gets the idea that he can locate his consciousness and download it into another body. In the final fight against Hugh Jackman's ED-209 robot, Dev Patel's character is mortally shot and Chappie tries to save him. He brings him to Patel's lab and actually, successfully, downloads Patel's consciousness into a test robot. Chappie then downloads his consciousness into another robot to save himself and both robots go off to find Ninja. When they find Ninja we learn that they will download Yolandi's consciousness (who died back in the ED-209 fight) into the newest model in the robot factory.....then the movie ends.
Those last few minutes of people turning into robots and gaining immortality is the most interesting part of the movie, and creates so many story avenues to go from. I really wish they started the second act of this film as this and just quickly go over what the whole film decided to do, and what people have seen over and over. That would have made the film so much more powerful and creative and above all else interesting! I learned after researching this film that it was written to be a trilogy. Having in mind that it is a trilogy, this first film makes sense on why the decided to go this way, however, that falls into the pitfall that all trilogies make: they expect there is another film so they have to lay groundwork that everyone has seen before as the first film. I really wish, even though there may be 2 more films, that the film just shortened or bypassed the whole Chappie getting used to the harsh world. The reason that they shouldn't do this is that Chappie may never get a sequel, so they should have started right off with the creative awesomeness that is humans turning into robots!
Warning: End of spoilers. For more spoiler free paragraphs read on after this. Everything above this bold banner is spoilers.
Overall, Chappie is not a horrible movie; in fact the effects and talent in the film is incredible, but the story really drags what could have been amazing down into the depths. With lack of defined characters, excluding good characters, uncompleted character arcs, uncertain character motivations, a cliched premise, and overall Disney feel at some points really bring this story down from amazing to okay or average. There are aspects that I really like, but there are just too many negatives and actions that take me out of the story and that is a big problem.
C
From the guy who gave us the magnificent District 9 comes his next project Chappie. Where A.I. is just beginning and a police droid now turns alive, this film asks the big questions on what is life and what authority do we have over it with stunning effects and a great concept. But like most films recently the concept is more interesting than the film....
I'm always up for a Neill Blomkamp film, but after seeing this you start to question if this guy was a one hit wonder. Everyone loved District 9, people were split with Elysium, and now it seems like the majority don't like Chappie. The visual effects were stunning, like I said, but the biggest problem with Chappie is the story and the characters in it.
Before delving into that, I want to go over what I loved about this film. To cover the basics this is a very well made film. Cinematography, editing, and directing is all good and if they had a good script then this could have been great. The visual effects look real, you really believe that Chappie is a robot that someone is controlling to act. Then, Chappie himself is amazing. The character is so lovable, and his mannerisms are amazing. His adultness, yet childlike mind, really make you want to like him and he is the most likable character in this film.
The story overall is simple and we've all heard it before. This was a big reason why this film just didn't do much for me, that and this whole film just felt off. There was something poking me in my head trying to tell me what was wrong with this film, and in the middle of the movie it hit me: this is an adult disney film. If you strip this down to the basics and make it an animation, this could easily be the premise of a children's film. That made me feel very conflicted when watching this film because it's not a kids film (even thought there were a few kids with their parents in the movie theater watching this when I went O.O) this film is gritty, bloody, and then Chappie has literally the mind of a child. While I do like movie where the clueless protagonist has to learn the harsh reality of life, I just thought they could have gone a different route for this movie.
Then we have a major problem when it comes to characters. First off I'd like to get the main ones out of the way: Ninja and Yolandi, played by.....Ninja and Yo-landi who are rap stars. Yeah, these characters have the most screen time and they are not even actors. It was painful watching Ninja on screen. I did not feel any sympathy for him, and I hated every moment he opened his mouth to talk. These character's are not even fully fleshed characters, their ideas are grade school level and their motivations are all over the place. Yolandi was a tough gansta chick who suddenly falls in love with Chappie (not literally) and acts as a mother figure. Ninja then takes the father figure and they both try to shape him to be the biggest, baddest, criminal around....yet Yolandi wants him to be good whenever ninja is around, but a criminal whenever Chappie's creator appears? Yeah, these characters are a mess.
Now lets talk about Hugh Jackman, the guy who plays Wolverine, the most badass guy who you would love to see as a villain and boy was he underused in this film. Jackman's character is another roboticist that creates a human controlled robot (that looks exactly like the ED-209 from Robocop) vs Patel's A.I. robot(s). I liked every time he was on screen, he owned the shots. However, the big problem is his character isn't fully fleshed out, and his character wasn't in the film as long as you'd think. In the trailer you get the impression that his and Dev Patel's character will be competing and going against each other....nope that doesn't happen, but it would have been way more interesting than what is in the film.
Warning: The following few paragraphs are spoilers, if you don't want to be spoiled scroll down to find the 'end of spoiler' banner and proceed after that.
In the film there is a topic/scene that happens that I have to talk about, and that is the last 10 minutes. The third act is where Chappie learns that he will die, and he has no way to survive. He comes across a nuero-helmet where he gets the idea that he can locate his consciousness and download it into another body. In the final fight against Hugh Jackman's ED-209 robot, Dev Patel's character is mortally shot and Chappie tries to save him. He brings him to Patel's lab and actually, successfully, downloads Patel's consciousness into a test robot. Chappie then downloads his consciousness into another robot to save himself and both robots go off to find Ninja. When they find Ninja we learn that they will download Yolandi's consciousness (who died back in the ED-209 fight) into the newest model in the robot factory.....then the movie ends.
Those last few minutes of people turning into robots and gaining immortality is the most interesting part of the movie, and creates so many story avenues to go from. I really wish they started the second act of this film as this and just quickly go over what the whole film decided to do, and what people have seen over and over. That would have made the film so much more powerful and creative and above all else interesting! I learned after researching this film that it was written to be a trilogy. Having in mind that it is a trilogy, this first film makes sense on why the decided to go this way, however, that falls into the pitfall that all trilogies make: they expect there is another film so they have to lay groundwork that everyone has seen before as the first film. I really wish, even though there may be 2 more films, that the film just shortened or bypassed the whole Chappie getting used to the harsh world. The reason that they shouldn't do this is that Chappie may never get a sequel, so they should have started right off with the creative awesomeness that is humans turning into robots!
Warning: End of spoilers. For more spoiler free paragraphs read on after this. Everything above this bold banner is spoilers.
Overall, Chappie is not a horrible movie; in fact the effects and talent in the film is incredible, but the story really drags what could have been amazing down into the depths. With lack of defined characters, excluding good characters, uncompleted character arcs, uncertain character motivations, a cliched premise, and overall Disney feel at some points really bring this story down from amazing to okay or average. There are aspects that I really like, but there are just too many negatives and actions that take me out of the story and that is a big problem.
C
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