Chappie, the third movie written and directed by Neill Blomkamp, focuses on the use of artificial intelligence in a dystopian future and what it would mean if humans were able to make AI’s fully sentient. The film follows Deon (Dev Patel) as he discovers a way to make AI’s fully conscious. He implants a peacekeeping police robot with the Artificial Intelligence and subsequently creates Chappie. Deon wants to raise Chappie to be a well-rounded fully thinking robot, whereas the criminals Deon is forced to work with (Die Antwoord’s Yolandi and Ninja) wish to raise him to be a “crime-fighting gangster”.
The jealous antagonist Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman) is willing to do just about anything in his power so he can prove how his own police robot, the Moose, is superior to the Chappie police force. The subject of the film is something that is highly fascinating and had a lot of potential but, unfortunately, fell short in this instance. Where the visual effects rise, the writing falls: a film that would have excelled as a movie showing the concept of consciousness or the consequences of handing over police operations to robots is missed, and instead turned into an action movie with a forced ending. Even though Chappie (Sharlto Copely) is an artificially intelligent robot he is given to more feeling and depth than the rest of the characters on the screen.
A scene in particular is incredibly disheartening as we see a group of teenage boys gang up on a helpless, innocent Chappie and shows how the fear of what’s different can manifest into violence; Something that can relate directly to the world we currently live in. The relationship with between Chappie and Yolandi is indeed very moving, with Yolandi providing a motherly role and helping with Chappie’s character development. While the other characters throughout the film work well with each other, the motivations behind the decisions their characters make in the movie are deluded and questionable at best.
The rivalry between Deon and Vincent is there, but there is hardly time in the movie to properly flesh out their differing ideas. Not only that, but the tone of the film shifts drastically from science fiction to action, and then to quirky whenever the Die Antwoord characters are on screen. The idea behind Chappie is there, and in some ways it succeeds in showing the humanity of both people and artificial intelligence, but perhaps next time Blomkamp should stick to directing and have someone else write his ideas for him.
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