Question: What do you get when you
combine Short Circuit with Robocop and the intent to take the results
seriously?
Answer: CHAPPiE.
Be advised, of course, that going
forward, there will be spoilers aplenty, folks. So, quick sum-up for
those who may want such a thing: I really enjoyed this movie and
would highly recommend seeing it if you're looking for something to
makes you think for a change.
Whereas Short Circuit was a movie about
a robot who gained sentience where everything was pretty much played
for laughs, essentially a straight-up comedy, and Robocop was meant
as satire and social commentary about how we kinda were in the 1980s,
CHAPPiE takes a good many elements from both and plays it relatively
seriously, asking what it would be like if this really happened
instead of playing it mostly for laughs or using it to make
statements about how us meatbags are scum.
As the story begins, we find that a
roboticist named Deon Wilson, played by Dev Patel, has created a
robotic police drone with a surprisingly advanced artificial
intelligence system, which has been mass produced and deployed in
Johannesburg, South Africa, by VaalTech Robotics. It seems that
Scout #022, as our title character is originally known, has the worst
luck ever, and keeps getting the crap kicked out of it. In fact, we
see him get busted up beyond repair pretty much first thing in the
movie, after the exposition about how the Scout droids have otherwise
virtually eliminated violent crime in the city. Deon, meanwhile, has
been developing the next step in the Artificial Intelligence program
for the Scout droids in a bid to make them think like real, living
people.
Back in his apartment after having #022
scrapped, Deon pulls an all-nighter and finally makes his upgraded AI
work just before he needs to be to work the next day. When he
arrives, he goes to tell his boss, played by Sigourney Weaver, to
tell her what he's done and ask if he can use the scrapped out
remains from the night before to test the program on. Upon being
rejected, Deon decides he's going to steal the parts and try it
anyway, as he's got nothing to lose. As it happens, #022's battery,
while still intact and fully charged, is fused to the chassis of the
robot and can't be replaced or recharged, so even if the new AI
doesn't work, the robot body will shut down permanently when the
battery runs out in five days or so, give or take.
Throughout the film, Deon is hounded by
fellow roboticist Vincent Moore, played by Hugh Jackman, who has
designed the Moose enforcer tank, which bears no small resemblance to
the ED-209 in the original Robocop movie. The major difference, as I
understand it, is that the Moose needs a human pilot, whereas the
ED-209 was entirely autonomous. Moore wants to show off how his
kill-o-tron is a good addition to the scouts. While the boss, as
well as the police department, rightly keep saying no, Moore goes
rouge as well, doing everything to sabotage Deon's Scouts.
The plot only really gets started when
Deon himself is kidnapped by Ninja, Yolandi and Amerika, three drug
dealers who need to raise $20 million to pay off a drug lord, who's
shipment they'd wrecked while attempting to deliver it. Ninja and
Yolandi are, from what I can tell, rappers essentially playing
themselves in this move, which really makes them fit their roles
well. Amerika is played by Jose Pablo Cantillo, who also does an
amazing job.
As the three force Deon to reactivate
and reprogram #022 for them, they explain that they want to use it as
a means to steal the money they need to pay off their boss. Deon, in
return, explains that his new program will allow the robot to think
for itself and make it's own decisions, and that once it's turned on,
it can't be turned off again, so once the battery dies, that's it.
Along the way, there's quite a lot of
debate about how #022, who eventually gets named CHAPPiE by Yolandi,
should be taught about what it means to be sentient, conscious, and
essentially a person, albeit a mechanical one built in a factory.
Deon wants CHAPPiE to be a peaceful, productive member of society,
just like the organic beings he'll be pretty much living with.
Yolandi and the others, meanwhile, want to teach him to be a tough,
streetwise sort who helps them with their criminal ways, seeing it as
a fitting way to re-purpose the junked police droid. And yes, I'd
say that CHAPPiE is a he, as he's played by Sharlto Copley.
In the course of his development,
CHAPPiE finds emotions, personality, and a love of painting from
Yolandi, primarily, but also from Deon. From Ninja and Amerika, he
learns to be something of a fighter as well, that the real world is
not all sunshine, flowers and bunny rabbits, as Deon spends most of
the movie trying to convince him.
As the final act approaches, Ninja and
Amerika dump CHAPPiE in a bad neighborhood, in front of a street gang
that doesn't realize that he's not exactly what he seems. As a
result, the gang pummels the robot, doing quite a bit of damage. On
his way back to the hideout with Yolandi and the others, CHAPPiE gets
kidnapped by Moore as well, who needs a special chip called a God Key
that Deon left in the robot's head when Ninja chased him off the
first of many times at the start of the movie. Moore wants the God
Key so he can send out a software update of his own, which will knock
out all the Scouts in town with the intent of forcing the police and
his boss to activate his Moose tank to take care of the trouble.
Alongside this, Moore intends to call the Scout program as a whole
into question, because by this point, Ninja has promised CHAPPiE a
new body for when his battery dies, and he's willing to help them rob
an armored car to get the money to buy one from VaalTech.
Part of the climax involves CHAPPiE
becoming his own person and deciding that all humans are liars
because Ninja lied to him about getting a more functional body and
Deon, who finally got a gun for the end, had neglected to tell his
creation that he didn't know how to make the repairs or do a
transfer. I can at least sort of forgive Deon, because he didn't
have much a chance to say anything, and even if he had, there was no
way of knowing how far or how fast CHAPPiE would develop before his
battery died.
At the end, the Moose is launched with
Moore piloting it by way of a special neural interface helmet that
gives him complete control over the kill-o-tron. Moore does manage
to take out most of the drug ring that CHAPPiE and the others are
involved with, but he has his sights set on doing away with CHAPPiE
as well, because a fully sentient robot would be a huge threat to his
own project. Moore's violent rampage kills or gravely wounds our
heroes, with Amerika and Yolandi dead, Deon mortally wounded, and
Ninja about to sacrifice himself to save CHAPPiE and Deon from Moore.
The ending, though, is where this movie
really gives us something to think about. In his efforts to save
himself, CHAPPiE figures out how to digitize living minds and
transfer them between devices, partly by way of the interface helmets
for the Moose. This was conveniently tested on Yolandi, who CHAPPiE
sees as his mother, and it seems that a person's consciousness fits
on a thumb drive. Hey, I've seen sillier things in sci-fi movies.
Just check out the time travel mechanic in a movie called Time
Chasers.
The big reveal of all this comes as
CHAPPiE saves his creator by putting his mind into the one robot body
they've got available to them before he dies. The new Robo-Deon then
tells CHAPPiE that they can do the same for him by transmitting him
into a still otherwise-functional Scout that was deactivated during
Moore's attack.
All in all, this is a movie I'd
certainly recommend to my parents and Internet buddies, many of whom
I know are into this sort of thing. It raises a lot of good
philosophical questions, like just what is this thing we call life,
anyway? Or what happens if we actually do manage to code it into a
computer? If we can put our own brains into computers like this,
should we?
Deep stuff, really. It made for a
great movie, one I'd really recommend checking out. It's also one of
those that I'm surprised is already in second-run theaters, at least
in my area. Are there that many other, more “A-list” movies
coming out this time of year?
Anyway, I'm glad I ponied up the ten
bucks it cost me to go see this movie, and I'd recommend it to most
folks I know.
Five of five stars.
Technicals:
Starring:
Sigourney Weaver as Michelle Bradley
Hugh Jackman as Vincent Moore
Sharlto Copley as CHAPPiE
Dev Patel as Deon Wilson
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Rated R for violence, gore, brief
nudity
Runtime: 120 minutes
Released March 6, 2015
J. Michael Shearer's Viewing: 9:30 PM
April 8, 2015 showing at West Mall 7
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