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CHAPPiE
Oct 4, 2015 13:11:18 GMT -5
Post by GRWelsh on Oct 4, 2015 13:11:18 GMT -5
I watched the movie CHAPPiE the other day. I liked it, the critics didn't. What many critics hated most was what I liked most: the acting performances by the rap group Die Antwoord. I liked Yo-Landi's relationship to Chappie as his "mommy" -- I thought that worked (and it also led to me watching a lot of Die Antwoord videos this weekend). If the movie had a flaw, I think it was that it tried to introduce too many concepts and juggle them all, unsuccessfully. Instead of just exploring the idea of a sentient AI and its relationship to humans... (spoilers below)
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Late in the movie, the story introduced the concepts of transferral of consciousness from robot body to robot body, from human body to robot body, and of storing a "back-up" consciousness to essentially bring someone back to life. It was too much. It just felt jumbled and didn't bring home any particular point.
The core idea -- that mankind's greatest achievement, the creation of sentient artificial intelligence, falls into the hands of criminals so they can raise it to be a gangsta rapper -- is hilarious and awesome. I think Blomkamp should have stuck closer to that. But instead the story kept trying to make CHAPPiE essentially good, and even have the criminals leaning in that direction by the end so that we were supposed to have sympathy for them... But that kind of muddles the whole point.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 5, 2015 9:04:04 GMT -5
I haven't seen it yet. The underlying, almost subliminal, messages of that guy's movies are always off-putting. I always think that if he just tried harder they'd be great but they always fall short with weird politically correct touches. That said, I like the effects and the acting in DISTRICT 9 (2009) and ELYSIUM (2013) so I think he's doing something right.
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