Extreme violence in crayons
I watched Chappie this weekened. Despite all the violence and cursing it was weirdly like watching a cartoon. The story and villains were simplified and everything like drawn with bright crayons - from the guns painted in pink in yellow to Die Antwoord clothes to the orange robot and clouds over Johannesburg.
[Spoiler (click to open)]Die Antwoord played a weird alternate reality versions of themselves (they are even called Yolandi and Ninja) where they are gangster dealing drugs and robbing people instead of being successful musicians but they still dressed like themselves (one of the best things were their clothes - from Yolandi's American flag tunic to Ninja's dollar shorts and Die Antwoord tanks). Their guns are painted in bright colours and look like toys. They are evil in a general way that they go rob and kill people but they are also kind of parents to Chappie and sort of good guys in the film (compared to almost everyone else). This is the highest level of complexity in the whole movie.
For the rest the good guy is very idealistic and the bad guys are very evil. The main gangster is pure evil asshole - you can tell from the tattoos and almost unintelligible accent that gets subtitles (also because he played the mercenary bad guys in both D9 and Eysium). Hugh Jackman plays this weird caricature of stereotypical Australian (down to the Steve Irwin shorts). His conflict with cluelessly ideological Dev Patel character is ridiculous outside the cartoon story. So what if his robot is too big and powerful for police - why wouldn't Tetravaal sell it to armies. All armies would love it (and as American recent history and many dictatorships show a lot of police forces too). It almost feels like Tetravaal is a garage company not something that does AI level robotics. Not to mention their awful security procedures were anyone can get the super USB drive that can reprogram all the robots. Although this being very unsecure while company PR spouting assurances about how secure it was was the most realistic part of the film.
Dev PAtel character - a genius inventor who made all those robots for the company but still works in a same cubicle as everyone else and build AI in his home - is also very cliche. He is idealistic to the point of ridiculousness and even his heroic act in the end is useless. It feels like it's only there so he can be saved by Chappie. The same Chappie who grew up to be the most noble of all characters even though his only lesson in ethics is his creator telling him that killing and robbing people is bad for two minutes. The whole learning process is over simplified with Chappie magically understanding what people mean without any real explanation how (even understanding gestures of "come to me" and tone of voice requires brain structures that robots wouldn't have and than he just gets painting and ethics without even an example). And at the end you feel like "YAY Chappie!" but if you took away all the killing and swearing and made it animated it'd have more simplistic story than Big Hero 6.
The strength of District 9 was that Wikus was an asshole and he became sympathetic by loosing everything and changing. Here no one really changes. Some people just die. And some of them get reincarnated as robots. Chappie grows up but he is Christopher Johnson equivalent here. Everyone else stays who they were so there is no personal investment in their story. Just a little satisfaction when the bad guys got beat up.
But I have to admit that I like Neill Blomkamp letting actors use all their different accents - makes it feel like the future where people from all over the world meeting (even if it's really people from different English speaking countries). Another nice touch was making the guy called Amerika Latino - for the people outside US American passport is all that matters. Too bad that in the film happening in South Africa there is almost no black people.
[Spoiler (click to open)]Die Antwoord played a weird alternate reality versions of themselves (they are even called Yolandi and Ninja) where they are gangster dealing drugs and robbing people instead of being successful musicians but they still dressed like themselves (one of the best things were their clothes - from Yolandi's American flag tunic to Ninja's dollar shorts and Die Antwoord tanks). Their guns are painted in bright colours and look like toys. They are evil in a general way that they go rob and kill people but they are also kind of parents to Chappie and sort of good guys in the film (compared to almost everyone else). This is the highest level of complexity in the whole movie.
For the rest the good guy is very idealistic and the bad guys are very evil. The main gangster is pure evil asshole - you can tell from the tattoos and almost unintelligible accent that gets subtitles (also because he played the mercenary bad guys in both D9 and Eysium). Hugh Jackman plays this weird caricature of stereotypical Australian (down to the Steve Irwin shorts). His conflict with cluelessly ideological Dev Patel character is ridiculous outside the cartoon story. So what if his robot is too big and powerful for police - why wouldn't Tetravaal sell it to armies. All armies would love it (and as American recent history and many dictatorships show a lot of police forces too). It almost feels like Tetravaal is a garage company not something that does AI level robotics. Not to mention their awful security procedures were anyone can get the super USB drive that can reprogram all the robots. Although this being very unsecure while company PR spouting assurances about how secure it was was the most realistic part of the film.
Dev PAtel character - a genius inventor who made all those robots for the company but still works in a same cubicle as everyone else and build AI in his home - is also very cliche. He is idealistic to the point of ridiculousness and even his heroic act in the end is useless. It feels like it's only there so he can be saved by Chappie. The same Chappie who grew up to be the most noble of all characters even though his only lesson in ethics is his creator telling him that killing and robbing people is bad for two minutes. The whole learning process is over simplified with Chappie magically understanding what people mean without any real explanation how (even understanding gestures of "come to me" and tone of voice requires brain structures that robots wouldn't have and than he just gets painting and ethics without even an example). And at the end you feel like "YAY Chappie!" but if you took away all the killing and swearing and made it animated it'd have more simplistic story than Big Hero 6.
The strength of District 9 was that Wikus was an asshole and he became sympathetic by loosing everything and changing. Here no one really changes. Some people just die. And some of them get reincarnated as robots. Chappie grows up but he is Christopher Johnson equivalent here. Everyone else stays who they were so there is no personal investment in their story. Just a little satisfaction when the bad guys got beat up.
But I have to admit that I like Neill Blomkamp letting actors use all their different accents - makes it feel like the future where people from all over the world meeting (even if it's really people from different English speaking countries). Another nice touch was making the guy called Amerika Latino - for the people outside US American passport is all that matters. Too bad that in the film happening in South Africa there is almost no black people.