WARNING:
The following review may
contain spoilers.
“I am Chappie,” reads the tagline for the one of the newest movies to hit the big screen.
In this film, you find yourself loving a robot capable of feeling emotion. It quickly takes a turn for the worst.
In the beginning, you see these robots fighting crime and bringing good to the South African community. The police force has been filled with a majority of robots. They are so successful that you have hope at the beginning. You follow Chappie from the crime-fighting robot to the loving, sacrificial robot.
The acting is below par for the supporting actors. Chappie himself is a better actor than some of them. Ninja, played by Watkin Tudor Jones, is a mess and inconsistent throughout the whole story. He overacts through the entire movie and makes it hard to connect with him emotionally on any level. It’s a huge step down from the big-name actors such as Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver.
The moral is inconsistent throughout the movie. At first, I believed it was showing that we should appreciate humanity. By the end, the moral seemed to be that humans are awful, and it’s best to just take them out completely.
In some scenes, you see human teenagers bullying Chappie. In others, you see adult men beating him. The ones who love him are criminals and are only using him.
SPOILERS: This movie tries to put the human consciousness and soul into data. I have a problem with that, because humans are far more complex than numbers and statistics. A human cannot simply have his or her consciousness transferred into a robot in order to live forever.
I am an open-minded person most of the time, but it was hard for me to accept the premise. I believe I am created uniquely and not capable of being fully understood. It is a beautiful thing that we all are so diverse. You cannot simply calculate emotions and feelings.
It should scare people that there is an idea that you could do such things. It is the idea that humans are expendable and that eventually, robots will need to intervene to control us. I am personally sick of these worn-out, overdone movies portraying humans as evil and saying we all should be eradicated.
On a positive note, the graphics and special effects are spot on and believable. Every time someone is shot, it looks lifelike. There were times that I cringed because it looked so believable. The explosions, gunfights and the rest of the action scenes are well executed.
I was disappointed with this movie overall. I really liked it until the end, and then my moral and ethical beliefs kicked in.
Overall, I give it a thumbs down.
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