Neill Blomkamp, the science-fiction director behind the excellent District 9 and the confused misfire Elysium, brings us another not-too-distant future view of his native South Africa that you won’t be seeing on tourism posters.
In Chappie, Blomkamp’s Johannesburg has devolved into an almost Mad Max-level of disorder and violence that’s only been contained by the introduction of an all-robot police force built by the weapons conglomerate Tetra Vaal.
Behind this universally lauded effort is the ambitious engineer Deon (Dev Patel), who in his spare time has nearly perfected software to transform these automatons into true artificial life-forms. He pitches to his hard-nosed boss (Sigourney Weaver) the concept that these upgrades could allow the robots to think for themselves — to create, to paint, or to write poetry. She doesn’t much see the use in building artistic crime-fighting machines, so she nixes his project.
Dissuaded, Deon steals a damaged robot that’s been slated for destruction, planning to experiment on his own. Only he’s highjacked on his way home by a gang of small-time thugs looking to force him to teach them how to shut down the mechanical cops. He tells them that’s not possible, but to save his own skin, Deon offers to let them have his stolen machine — with the upgrades he’d planned to make. And so Chappie is born.
It’s not long before the film’s real intention becomes apparent: an exploration of what it means to be alive, and what the next step in human evolution might be. As in his previous work, Blomkamp camouflages these questions in a tale full of dramatic popcorn-movie action and comedic moments. Solid laughs are mined from Chappie’s early naivety, his willingness to believe all that the hapless criminals have to teach him. He adopts the swagger and language of a street tough.
But after only a few days of existence, Chappie poses an existential question that human beings don’t usually confront until they’re many years old: Why would his maker give him a body that’s predestined to die?
Because of damage suffered while he was a police bot, Chappie’s battery can’t be changed. His life, therefore, will be finite — no more than five days. And so he’s soon wondering about the meaning of life and the seeming cruelty of its brevity.
Deon doesn’t have the answers, but he encourages Chappie to explore his own mind and capabilities, even in the short time he has left. Standing on the other end of the allegory from Deon is Vincent (Hugh Jackman), his rival at Tetra Vaal. Vincent learns of what Deon has done with Chappie and sets out to destroy him and the rest of the robot police force, which he considers an abomination. He hopes this will lead to the adoption of the mechanical law enforcers he’s developed, each of which would be controlled at all times via remote by a human operator.
There are some definite New Testament God vs. Old Testament God — free will vs. an actively interceding deity — parallels to be drawn in the contrast between Deon and Vincent, but it doesn’t come across in a heavy-handed way.
I’m not sure the movie’s often hyperactively-paced story earns all the emotions it expects us to pour into the final scenes — in which Chappie is revealed as a sort of superhero origin story, the launch of a new franchise. But, still, I’m reminded again how much more fun a big-budget spectacle flick is when it also challenges its audience to use their own minds.
