I just watched Chappie for the first time. For those who haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.
The film takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa, a city notorious for it's crime and violence. A robotics expert creates a police force of robots that work alongside their human counterparts. One of these units is damaged and destined for the scrap heap. The creator of these robots has developed a new advanced form of AI, and, to see if it works, uploads it into the damaged unit. Part of the damage is that it's battery is fused to it's body and will run out in five days.
Some local gangsters kidnap the creator under the assumption that the robotic police force, as machines, have an off switch, and want to force the creator of this police unit to give them the means to turn the robots off. The newly uploaded AI robot is taken by these gangsters and basically raised by them and called Chappie. As a brand new AI, Chappie has, for all intents and purposes, just been born.
It has lot of reviews saying the film fell short as it asked profound questions without giving any answers, but that was what I loved about it. It asks these questions but it has no answers. There's no answers for Chappie on why he was raised by these people other than wrong place wrong time. When he realised his battery will run out and he can't replace it, he becomes scared and asks his creator why he would bring him into the world in the first place. Why create him just so he can die? There's a lot of questions with no answers. Chappie was born into a world he never asked to be born into and raised by people he never asked to raise him. The lack of answers is what makes this film so emotional. You get dealt a shitty hand. It's unfortunate, but that's what happened.
This is not to say Chappie is in any way a bad film. I enjoyed it more than I've enjoyed a film in a very long time, and rather than try to answer these profound questions that prophets, priests, philosophers and poets have tried to answer since the dawn of time, it doesn't pretend to have the answers. But life still goes on.
This is not a kids film. It's full of profanity and violence, including someone being ripped in half. But it's very enjoyable and in not trying to answer these unanswerable questions it's eerily relatable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyy7y0QOK-0
Topic: Movies you watched and would recommend