Chappie

Title - Chappie

Language - English

Genre - Sci Fi, Crime,

Set in South Africa in the near future where crime rates have rocketed. To combat this the police have boosted their ranks with robot police called scouts. The scout robots were chosen over a robotic tank called the moose. Vincent (Huge Jakeman), the creater of the moose has taken it's rejection badly and is still trying to get it to replace the Scout robots but the police are against this as they feel the moose would be overkill. Deon, the creator of he Scouts want to take his creation tho the next level and when Michelle (Sigourney Weaver) his boss refuses to let him he steals a damaged Scout and the master key needed to program it. He his kidnapped by a group of criminals who are looking for a way to turn off the Scouts whilst they carry out their final heist. Finding the damaged Scout the criminals (Ninja & Yo- Landi Visser, also known as the rap/dance band Die Antwoord) deiced to make Deon repair it and make it work for them. Deon convinces them that the only way to get the scout to work for them is if he loads his artificial intelligence program into it and then they can teach the Scout how to behave. Whilst this is going on Vincent starts looking for the master key so he can make the Scouts malfunction and force his Moose to replace them.

Chappie is a multi layered film. On the surface it has two main storie lines, Ninja and Yo-Landi trying to get the money they owe & Vincent trying to get his Moose tank to replace the Scout robots but the film also has a lot of depth covering family, life and human nature.

I feel that the Vincent story line owes something to the original Robo cop. In fact when i first saw the Moose I couldn't help thinking that it was nice that ED-209 had found work after so long. (ED-209 was a robot that was also designed for the job Robo cop took) and the whole 'wanting to replace the Scouts with the Moose' did seem to echo the ED-209 vs Robo Cop. This isn't a bad thing as the story line isn't necessarily the main focus of the film, it is just one of the two events which are there to move the story along by causing conflict.

The main story of the film follows how Chappie, the name given to the now sentient Scout, affects the three main leads, Deon, Ninja and Yo-Landi, as he learns what he is and what humans are. Through their interaction with Chappie Deon, Ninja and Yo-Landi form an odd kind of family which, by the end of film has an almost biblical feel to it (we even get a resurrection of sorts). Deon, who refers to himself as the creator to Chappie is, for the first part of the film not present in Chappies life much but when he is around he is attempting to guide the way Chappie run's it's life by giving it instructions and commands that affect it even when he is not around, all the while the is telling chappie not to let People stop it from doing what it wants. Yo-Landi quickly becomes a mother figure to Chappie and is torn between caring out the planed heist with Chappie or protecting it and helping Deon nurture it. Ninja's Part in the family takes it time to show. For a long time he just wants to use Chappie and is frustrated by it's unwillingness to use guns. However he slowly takes the farther role fighting and protecting the others when the Moose tracks them down. Ninja was the character I thought i was going to have a problem with at the beginning of the film. He starts off as an almost generic 'Gangsta' character which was alright as Chappie is, in many ways a gangsta film but to begin with his character did seem a bit to generic an just a bit blah. There are plenty of films with the 'criminal needs to get money to pay pay some one off/ get out of trouble with' and Ninja could easily have fitted in any of these but he did seem to grate against the other characters. This is until he starts to take on the farther role and we see his character changed, more slowly than the others. This is one thing Chappie does well , the four main characters affect each other and change. Even at then end of the film when characters who are forced together normal go their separate ways, the new family stay together. There are two characters who don't really develop, Michelle who apart form say no Deon and Vincent eventual lets Vincent use the Moose and then just seems to disappear and Vincent who just gets more angry and then sulkily try's to set Deon up when his plan fails.

Chappies development stats off as he is taught how to behave by the three leads and then develops into trying to understand. He could easily have become a 'Pinocchio' type character, trying to become human and fit in (Like Data from Star trek The Next Generation) but instead he try's to understand why humans do the things they do (Fight, lie and manipulate) and in doing so he understands more about himself and gains the desire, not to be human but to live, which makes him a more human character than some other robots.

One thing that initially put me of watching Chappie was the fact that Die Antwoord was in it, not because I don't like their music, in fact i have recently started to listen to them, but because i have found that films with bands in seem to become affected but the band mainly because the band is trying to get it's self as much screen time as possible, an example of this is Lordi's Dark floors which seemed to add unnecessary scenes just give every band member screen time. This is not the case with Die Antwoord in Chappie, although there is a little bit of self promotion, mainly by the band wearing there own t shirts, this does not affect the film as Ninja and Yo-Landri keep in character and don't seem to fight for screen time .

Chappie is an interesting film, part sci-fi, part gangsta with themes of family and the nature of humanity and it handles all the subject with out creating a mess.