Anaraphla’s Movie Mayhem : Chappie

Imagine Robocop combined with Short Circuit combined with, I don’t know, Dumb and Dumber ?  First there is the  expositional opening with Anderson Cooper. Personally I would have preferred Winnie Cooper from the Wonder Years or an owner of a Mini Cooper. I know we should have got Stephen Colbert.

In the future, crime is out of control. Uh excuse me but when has crime NOT been out of control in  future movies? From the way things look Judge Dredd  could probably handle it. Unfortunately, we couldn’t even get Frank Stallone’s barber for this movie.

So human cops are replaced by robots. I can just see the police union going for that. Anyway, we open up with a tech working on Scout #22, which is critically damaged. Scouts what the police robots are called.  Do they get merit badges for writing parking tickets? The tech concludes 22 is finished, but replaces a damaged ear thing with a red ear thing. Oh yes that’s so going to help. Then again, “Rudolph the red eared robot” Might work.

You’ll notice a few things in this movie. None of the crooks have a house or hideouts. All the bad guys seem to have their own pile of rubble and nothing else but tons of ammunition. You would think surrendering and going to jail would a step up from their current situation. Just how are these guys holding out against the police anyway?

Tetravaal, the creator of Scouts is doing quite well. They are getting orders from everywhere. Deon, one of the Scouts’ programmers, totally ignoring every movie where artificially intelligent systems have gone uh you know frackin bonkers, decides to create an artificial intelligence for the scouts that will allow them to create art, poetry, and supposedly replace movie actors. The boss played by Sigourney Weaver doesn’t see the value in this. I cannot imagine why, unless there is someone who wants to make a remake of Dead Poets Society with the  robot Robin Williams from Bicentennial Man

Then there is Vincent Moore played by Hugh Jackman, proving once again he doesn’t do so well without the rest of the X-men. Old Vincy is pushing another idea. He has this ED-209 (Called Moose in the movie so no one will guess it came from OCP. Why Moose? Maybe he‘s a Rocky and Bullwinkle fan)  painted blue and controlled by a mind-control helmet. I don’t want to give things away too quickly but this guy ,like the head villain in the movie Robocop, is a real Dick.

Now we meet the other two uh “protagonists” Ninja, and Yolanni. It seems they owe this other crook a million dollars, even though it is obvious they can’t afford  decent haircuts, or acting lessons. They get the idea that if they can abduct a Robotech, that can find a way to disable all the robots so they can have their crime spree.

Of course they run into Deon. Deon tells them that he can’t deactivate the robots, but they of course find his robot parts in his van and they build Chappie. Deon thinks the world needs more artistic robots. This goes over with Ninja and Yolanni almost as much as it did Deon’s boss. Ninja pulls a gun on Deon and sends him away, which is what I would do to someone who could identify me to the police and give them my location.

Well, Deon returns. Apparently, Deon is a brilliant programmer but not very smart in other ways.. Chappie is now a trash talking mofo thanks to his “mom” and “dad”.  We have almost everything we need for a remake of the old Carol Burnett spinoff “Mama’s Family” except we would have to recast Sigourney Weaver as “Eunice”.

In the mean time, Dick Jones… I mean… Jackman is tired of trying to act without his metal claws and finds a way to shut down all of the robocops except Chappie. Fearing a visit by Jesse Jackson, Weaver won’t send in the ED-209, that is until Chappie is turned into a Rob Bot and nicely robs an armored car.

    Of course Jackman takes out the big crooks with no difficulty at all, but of course he hates Deon most of all. Needless to say though, Chappie destroys the ED-209, but not before everyone is fatally wounded. Not to worry. Apparently having seen the movie Transcendance, Deon and Chappie are both uploaded into new robot bodies. Yolanni’s mind had previously been saved to a USB drive. It probably didn’t take a very large one. Sarah Palin’s mind  would fit on a 256 MB drive with room to spare.. Yolanni is uploaded to the robot factory where a new body is being made for her.


So what are we learning here? That all robots should have Asimov’s “3 laws”? No, we have been there, and once robots realize that in order to protect us they have to rule us, we’re boned. What we have learn from this movie is that before we create artificial intellegences, we need to be sure we have a good supply of  the natural kind.