Chappie Movie Cast- a critique by Chris Stuckmann

Full-text transcript of the Chappie review:

[00:00:04] Chappy is directed by Neill Blomkamp and stars Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, Sigourney Weaver, as well as Sharlto Copley as Chappy and Deontae heard the band as themselves, sort of. This movie’s about the very first ever sentient artificial intelligence created by Dev Patel. He’s been working for quite some time on this and he finally creates Chappy. Chappy is the very first ever robot that can learn for himself, that can decide what he thinks about a piece of art, who Jackman’s character is working on, a giant robot that is piloted by humans that he thinks should replace all of the new police robotic guards that are so popular in this futuristic world. So from the trailers and the plot synopsis that I just gave you, you’re probably thinking the Hugh Jackman character in Dev Patel are going to be butting heads throughout the film. It’s going to be about human controlled robots versus a human robot. The ideology of that, all of the issues of that situation and the big questions that that would ask. But that’s not what this movie is about. It’s actually about the two band members of Danford Stealing Chappie from Dev Patel and then forcing him to be an asshole and chapping becomes a giant dick for like seventy five minutes of this movie. Yeah, he helps them steal cars. He’s planning heist. He’s throwing Chinese stars at police officers. He’s doing everything that this robot shouldn’t do.

[00:01:23] And the movie’s trying to make you feel sympathy for Chappie during this moment. And then eventually the movie even tries to make you feel sympathy for these two gangsters. And you just don’t. I wanted the movie to be about Hugh Jackman as character and Dev Patel and their scientific advances and how they are trying to both do two different things, because that was by far the most riveting storyline in this movie. But the movie keeps reverting back to these two gangster characters who are honestly two of the most annoying characters I’ve seen in a movie in quite some time, as well as terrible actors. District Nine is kind of a contemporary sci fi classic. I even for the most part, enjoyed Elysium. A lot of people didn’t like Elysium that much. Even Neill Blomkamp recently said in an interview that he was disappointed with the way Elysium turned out. I’m curious if two years from now he’s going to say the same thing about Shappi, because this is by far his worst movie. And there are certain things about this movie that are very derivative. There’s a lot of stuff about Shappi that really copies off of very good entertainment that’s already in existence. And Blomkamp has even said in the interviews that he was inspired by certain things. And I’m about to mention, however, there’s a big difference between being inspired by something and then attributing it and just copying off of it for one chappie pretty much looks exactly like the cyborg from Appleseed, a very good manga and anime from Masamune Schiro, the creator of Ghost in the Shell.

[00:02:39] And Blomkamp has recently said in interviews that he was very inspired by that cyborg character. That’s great. I’m glad. But why not make an Appleseed movie with that character in it instead of just taking that character and essentially putting his look in your movie Short Circuit, a movie about a guy who creates a sentient robot. Last year’s Big Hero six, a movie about a guy desperately trying to create a scientific robot character, even sitting down and recording himself as he does it, just like in Chappie with Dev Patel and the robot that Hugh Jackman is creating, looks literally exactly like the Ed 209 from Robocop. It’s actually kinda blatant. So some of the character designs, as well as the overall story just feels like something we’ve seen before. Except this movie focuses on the wrong characters. Danford, the band. OK, so if you like their music, that’s cool, but playing themselves with their exact same names. But they’re not playing themselves because they’re not in a band, they’re actually just gangsters. What the hell is up with that idea? I don’t really get it. And it keeps going back to them rather than the riveting storyline of Jackman versus Patel. And Sigourney Weaver is barely in this movie.

[00:03:40] I think the largest problem with Chappy is character motivations, the choice of which characters to stay with and the fact that eventually they try to make you care about some of these characters and you don’t. I was actually rooting for Jackman the whole time, who’s kind of the main villain in the movie. That’s not good. Now, at one point, there’s this montage in which you think the film is going in a certain way. Chappie is learning about art. He even watches a bit of the Heman cartoon. Now, this is not the older man. This is the newer hey, man, I don’t have the older one yet, but I do like him, man. And when I saw him watching him, man and then mimicking humans actions, I was like, oh my gosh, this is going to be really cool. He’s going to learn from cartoons. He’s going to learn about art, but he really just learns how to steal cars. Why would you do that again, I’m going back to the characters, none of the characters in this movie feel like people, they all just feel like devices to make certain plot points happen. I suppose the most entertaining thing about this movie is Sharlto Copley as Chappy. He has great mannerisms. The things they did were astounding to look at. There are some Semin well done action sequences in this movie. But the problem is you just don’t care about anyone that’s involved with it, even in Elysium.

[00:04:52] OK, Lessem had some piss poor characters. Jodie Foster’s villain was awful, but I did care about Matt Damon. I did care about his plight and he brought some humanity to that role. So I cared about the action scenes. You don’t care about anyone in Chappie because almost every character is annoying as hell and you’re kind of just waiting for the movie to end, which is very disappointing from such a promising filmmaker. Guys, I got to give Chappy a D plus. It’s very disappointing for me to say, but by far the best part of the entire night was the fact that I actually had some fans come and meet me at Shappi as I posted about it on my Facebook and my Twitter. These guys were so much fun to me. It was so great meeting you guys. One of them even drove 90 minutes with his dad to come meet me. And I talk with him about college and his ideas about film. And that was truly, truly humbling. I’m telling you, I was humbled meeting you guys. That was so awesome. I’m looking forward to doing more stuff like that in the future. Guys, if you did see Chappy, let me know what you thought of it below. And as always, thank you so much for watching. And if you like this, you can click right here and get stuff organized.