Chappie
Published July 18, 2015
Film info
- Title Chappie
- Director Neill Blomkamp
- Year 2015
- Run time 2hrs
- Genres Action, Science-Fiction, Crime
- Tagline I am consciousness. I am alive. I am Chappie.
In the near future, crime is patrolled by an oppressive mechanised police force. But now, the people are fighting back. When one police droid, Chappie, is stolen and given new programming, he becomes the first robot with the ability to think and feel for himself. As powerful, destructive forces start to see Chappie as a danger to mankind and order, they will stop at nothing to maintain the status quo and ensure that Chappie is the last of his kind.
Live blog
| Time | Comment |
|---|---|
| 1:29 | South Africa, that’s a nice change. |
| 2:04 | They can’t claim the first one… what about Robocop! |
| 5:22 | Quite scary they can just hang off the side of the helicopter like that. Imposing. |
| 8:09 | Those scout things are pretty darn cool. |
| 14:37 | Dev Patel does Big Hero 6. |
| 15:42 | Codes all day, comes home and codes all night. This is not at all familiar. |
| 18:53 | The motivational cat poster made him go rogue. This is a lesson for us all. |
| 25:04 | Sounds like an Apple product, unchangeable battery. |
| 32:33 | He-Man!! |
| 36:10 | “You’re making me as cross as a frog in a sock.” |
| 50:47 | Ugh, I found that really distressing. |
| 59:37 | I am not coping with this well at all. Maybe it’s the accent. |
| 1:06:22 | “I can’t do the heist. Heist is a crimes.” |
| 1:19:58 | He did say about not letting anyone stop him. Gotta be careful with advice like that! |
| 1:22:49 | When rogue AIs talk about the sum of human knowledge being on the internet, it doesn’t seem like such a great idea anymore. |
| 1:29:49 | Our Deon has somehow found a whole new level of rogue. |
| 1:34:43 | What the… that is a bit over the top for minor traffic offences and loitering. |
| 1:42:49 | “Chappie’s gonna thrash the man.” |
| 1:51:57 | Wouldn’t much fancy being the human police people having to clean up all the mess. |
Conclusions
This film solved all the problems that we had with Ex Machina, in that most (not all but a sizeable proportion) of Hollywood films about AI and robots involve them going rogue, taking over the planet, regardless of the human beings. Here, we had a robot actually saving the humans it interacted with, being for good rather than for evil.
It started out just like Robocop but quickly evolved into its own unique story, and I got totally involved. Days later, it is still painful to remember the bits that made me cry buckets - which must prove once and for all that I care more about robots than I do about people! Oops!
I liked that everyone got to use their own accents for a change, with Hugh being Australian and some lovely American, British and South African lilts as well. Yolandi and Ninja were sometimes a bit hard to understand, but otherwise it was a nice, eclectic mix. Hugh had terrible hair, though.
Overall, a really good film, but I can’t actually recommend it because it left me an inexplicable blubbering wreck.
Rating: 4/5.
Rating: 4 / 5