Chappie

I don't know what to say about Chappie, but I do know what to say about Neill Blomkamp. I love that Neill Blomkamp gets to keep making movies, even though, out of three, I've yet to see one that I would actively say is 'good'. But what the fuck does good mean? There's no greater rationale for the argument that it doesn't mean jack shit than Neill Blomkamp's filmography. His Metacritic score isn't the best you'll ever see, especially for Elysium and the aforementioned, and yet I dare you to tell me that each of them aren't really fucking fascinating to watch. District 9 was an intense, visceral alien flick that was kind-of-not-but-totally-was about Apartheid. Elysium was a big, dumb hammer to the head of Universal Health Care that had the first villain to genuinely scare me since The Dark Knight. And now we have Chappie, a story that borrows liberally from Big Hero 6 in the way that Big Hero 6 borrowed liberally from The Iron Giant, in the way that The Iron Giant borrowed liberally from *batteries not included, in the way that *batteries not included borrowed liberally from Short Circuit, that is also about the implications of a robotic police force (Robocop), the moral line that gets blurred as we approach sentient artificial intelligence (her), and the very real ways that childhood indoctrination can occur (take your pick). It's equal parts a harrowing and heartwarming tale of growing up in a cruel world, a real world story with intermittent documentary footage, a crime film with the inevitable all-out three-way gang fight, a corporate espionage thriller, and a feature-length advertisement for a hip-hop, performance art duo. To me, it doesn't eclipse the sheer originality of District 9, but in a lot of ways, it's better than all of the best parts of Elysium, and worse than all of its worst. But like I've said already, that doesn't, and shouldn't, matter. Really, the best thing I can say about Chappie is that I have no fucking idea what to say about it.

Seriously, I have no idea where to start. I guess if the impetus of this essay is that Chappie is fascinating, I should go through all of the things that left me so fascinated. So let's start at the end, where Chappie quietly drops the idea before stepping back and refusing to argue the point that if we find a way to transfer our minds into robot bodies, we should do it. Let's back up a bit. Slumdog Millionaire (Dev Patel) is an engineer at a robotics company, who has created a legacy for himself in a line of efficient, obedient police robots. But Slumdog dreams of more; he's on the cusp of creating a robot that can, as he says, "look at a piece of art, and tell you if they like it." Big boss Alien: Resurrection (Sigourney Weaver) gives him the thumbs down to a robot with feelings, as any CEO making a mint from gunbots would. Like that would stop someone on the brink of playing God, though. Slumdog steals a decommissioned robot on the scrap heap, who caught a rocket launcher to the chest in the film's opening moments. Neglecting the fact that the battery fused to the chest plate effectively makes the unit nonchargeable (read: mortal), Slumdog gives the robot sentience, and Chappie is born. For the first few days of his five day lifespan, he learns from his various parental figures about what it means to be human, for better and, mostly, worse. Eventually, he finds out that things die, including him, and he doesn't accept that. Utilising a VR headset and six PS4s, Chappie learns the whole Internet in seconds and works out a way to transfer his consciousness into ASCII art on a TV screen. He does a copy of his soul. The core conflict of the film's final act, or one of its three or four core conflicts, becomes finding a new body for Chappie before the battery goes dead. But then Slumdog catches a bullet in the stomach, and with only one spare robot body, Chappie does a soul copy on Slumdog and transfers his entire being into the bucket of bolts. Slumdog then performs a wireless transfer of Chappie's soul into one of the many dead robots on the streets of Johannesburg (big blanket virus, don't ask), and the two literally run off into the sunset together, happily ever immortal. I don't think I need to offer any needlessly verbose deconstructions of the implications to this conclusion, suffice to say that it's dangerous, terrifying, and kind of brilliant in its courage to have this happen, and present it as a happy ending, with zero follow-up on the potential consequences. Blomkamp has said he plans for this to be part one of a trilogy, but I think it's ballsier to leave it at this. The film opens with stock interview footage of people saying that Chappie rocked the world, and its up to us to work out how, and whether their statement was foreboding or celebratory.

It's heavy shit, and it's as awkward with its delivery as that which came before it, but like District 9 and Elysium, it's hellbent on making sure you don't leave thinking you had a bad time. This go around, it's enlisted the help of Die Antwoord (Ninja and Yo-Landi Visser) to liven things up. To the uninitiated, Die Antwoord is a hip-hop group started by Watkin Jones and Anri du Toit, designed to be performance art satirising the lower middle class lifestyle prevalent in areas of post-Apartheid South Africa. They've been playing characters for years, and in Chappie, they continue the trend, playing themselves in the not-too-distant future, in which their music careers have tanked, and they've resolved to a life of crime, hiding in an abandoned factory while listening to their old albums, and eventually acting as surrogate parents to a sentient robot. It's fucking bizarre to watch as someone who knows Die Antwoord, I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like for someone who doesn't. They blend in well with Blomkamp's universe however - his films certainly weren't devoid of kooky characters before this. And speaking of, Russell Coight (Hugh Jackman) is the most ocker-inest Aussie villain you've seen this side of Uluru. If Die Antwoord and, to an extent, Chappie, are exaggerated caricatures of South African culture, Russell Coight is the Australian equivalent. He sports a mullet, a button up polo shirt and the shortest shorts you've ever seen, he threatens co-workers with pistols and fires at them before laughing, showing them the empty chamber, and exclaiming that no-one in the office can take a joke, and he literally utters the phrase, "Cross as a frog in a sock." I don't even know what the fuck that means. The only thing missing to make him more of an Australian stereotype that Australians don't identify with is a can of Fosters and a kangaroo for a car. This is not to sound like someone who can dish out it, but can't take it - his character is unbelievably entertaining in spite of his limited screen-time. And as per usual for a Neill Blomkamp film, there's an eccentric crime kingpin popping in occasionally, this time sporting a haircut not unlike Dennis Hopper in Super Mario Brothers, who is subtitled even though he only speaks Afrikaans once or twice, talking perfectly clear English for the rest of the film.

It's credit to how batshit crazy this movie is though that, in spite of the animated personalities on display, the most compelling of them all is the robot. People are going nuts for the quality of the motion capture, which once again serves to show how much Neill Blomkamp can do with so little. The motion capture isn't good - it's actually pretty cheap - but what's being motion-captured is a robot that behaves like a dog, full of jerky, erratic movement. And shitty mo-cap gets really good results if what you're after is jerky, erratic movement. An equal amount of credit should go to Sharlto Copley, who knocks it right out of the park as-per-fucking-usual. Watching him develop from a timid child emulating He-Man on the TV, to allowing himself to be brainwashed by Ninja into a crotch-grabbing, car-jacking gangsta, all with an adorably stunted vocabulary and syntax, is as good as it sounds, and Copley sells it beautifully. It should not be understated how easy it would be for this performance to tip over into the dreaded realm of "too much", but Copley deftly walks the line by committing to exactly what the role calls for in the moment. I genuinely wonder if he isn't, in time, going to be recognised as a critically successful Nicolas Cage (which totally sucks, Nicolas Cage is fearless and should be held in exactly the same regard as Daniel Day-Lewis). The fact that a montage in which Chappie steals cars from rich yuppies, believing them to have been stolen from "Daddy"(Ninja), can be equally parts hilarious ("You're a bad man! Don't steal cars from Daddy!" as he throws the driver across the road), and terrifying as parallels are inevitably drawn between what impressionable Chappie believes, and how something similar probably gets told to children in this situation, is testament almost purely to Copley's ability to sell it. But credit needs to go to Neill Blomkamp as well, for without him and his writing partner Terri Tatchell, District 9 would not have come to be and, by proxy, neither would have Elysium or Chappie. We come back to what I said about the man when I started this: you cannot say that his movies are not interesting to watch. Forget good and bad. Seeing a Neill Blomkamp movie is an experience only akin to his prior films. And they're fucking technical marvels. Say what you will about the quality of his storytelling, but his ability to squeeze every dollar out of a modest budget and turn out a beautiful product will keep this dude in the game for a long time. It's just a big ol' bonus that I happen to love everything he does, flaws and all. I don't think anyone should have any reservations about what he's about to do with the Alien franchise. As someone who thought Alien 3 was a flawed masterpiece and had a shit-hot good, dumb time with Alien: Resurrection, I don't think there's anybody better suited to the job today. If Michael Bay strived to achieve half with his stupidly large budgets that Neill Blomkamp achieves with his stupidly small budgets, the term "popcorn movie" would be in a far better place. Until that day, I'll keep singing his praises.