Am I supposed to care about that robot?

*EDIT* I was going to address everything in this one reply, but I'm going to space it over several, as I don't want to rush over your points trying to keep this short.

Whoa mate, hold your horses! I respect you now, I don't want to let you hanging there. So, I'll do my best, but I can't make any promises. Not that it isn't a delight to see this discussion evolving. It is. Time is the issue here.

I must admit, I had you pegged wrong. Some like to complain, which is understandable if they didn't like the film, but I rarely come across someone willing to provide their perspective. Most just respond to me with insults. I'm kind of a dick, and have an abrasive writing style, and yes I did attempt to provoke you a bit. Rather than taking a standpoint of "F-this movie and F-anyone who likes it", you've opened up and made your opinions accessible to someone who doesn't understand the disdain for this film. I absolutely respect that.

Well I admit that I started that thread out of anger. I should have chilled down, counted to 10, had a stroll around the park and smelled some flowers before trying to describe my emotions over this movie. Part of me wants to be convinced that it was not a complete waste of my time, but my mean half wants to downright vent frustrations to the winds.

Unless you can accept Chappie as a sentient life form, equal to or greater than a human being, the film just won't work for you. If all you see is a "whiny toaster", that's all he's going to be. This movie was my flavor from start to finish, but it's not a taste suited to everyone. So now I'm honestly answering your OP's main question. Yes, you are supposed to feel for Chappie. Sure, he's synthetic, but his consciousness is real. If the film couldn't win that battle with you, then I could imagine the movie as a whole as a fairly grating experience.

I still believe that the "whiny toaster" issue is not about the way I look at the character, but it's a consequence of how the character was presented to me. Or both, maybe, but I'm quite sure that's not 100% my fault.

Philosophy- The core is Die Antwoord's ZEF ideals of self expression. From the costum "FOKOFF" license plate to Deon's motivational cat poster, "Craft Life Don't Let Life Craft You", and more. This mindset is the polar opposite of conformity for popularity's sake. Deon is the most simple example, but it can be applied to each character large or small, with Chappie being the full on "personification" of their black sheep take on life. If you are just living to serve others, then you aren't living.

Now I fell like I should admit something else that puts some more distance between me and this movie (and its peers for that matter). I know nothing about South African culture. That's something. About Die Antwoord, I knew he's kind of a hip-hop culture celebrity, but I have no idea how good he is at that. All I know is that pop stars-ish celebrities usually suck at movies. They're not actors. They are entertainers. And it baffles me when directors/producers/whatever think both things are the same. Good entertainers who are good actors are a rare kind. I'd even call them geniuses. Is Die Antwoord a genius? I don't know, but surely I didn't expected him to be one.

ZEF/Deon- He was successful in the beginning but not happy. All the praise in the world couldn't change the fact that his creativity was being stifled, simplified, and packaged for combat. In order to be himself, Deon had to turn his back on success, and become a criminal. He stole Scout 22, and pursued his creativity regardless of the corporate/gangster obstacles he faced. Before fully letting go of his past, Deon was kind of in denial about completely giving up his former life and position, and developed a touch of a god complex. In the end, Deon quite literally transcended his old life and preconceived BS.

And there's Deon. Oh my god, I could have related so much with this character. And again, the movie presets him so badly to the audience. For me it was like "here, take this guy who is a heavy stereotyped nerd genius, bullied by his workmates and unacknowledged by his employers who obviously fail to see he's single-handedly about to change the history of humankind". I'm so done with this. But yeah, if the movie ever took its time to present him properly, develop him carefully, I would be glad to turn a blind eye to all those stereotypes easily. The same could be said by Chappie and Zef.

Psychology- Not all of this is surface either, but integral whether topical or subtext. The largest aspects being Nature Vs Nurture in regard to a developing mind, and trust. In this arena psychology goes hand in hand with the ZEF philosophies of self expression. IE: Chappie only wanted to be "good", do as he was told, and be popular with the people he looked up to. Eventually he found that the only way to be content with himself, was to turn his back on many things he was taught. Namely, Deon's god complex driven black and white morality. Deon created Chappie "broken", cast him into a sh!tty environment, and commanded him to be "perfect". Sure, "denying god's word" took Chappie down a slippery slope of trusting in a complete "A"-hole, but that double disillusionment caused the young robot to start thinking for himself. He didn't throw away all his teachings, he simply took the initiative to craft his own life.

In my point of view, you are fixing the movie for yourself. What you are describing is perhaps how the movie was intended to be displayed but not what the final product really is. You are fixing the movie for me too, and I'm very ok with this. You grabbed all the little pieces, clues and nuances scattered over the movie and you put them together in a way that the movie should have done. But don't get me wrong, I can relate to that like there's no tomorrow. In fact, this is how weird movie appreciators like us are supposed to appreciate our movies. However, it's hard to explain but I do expect the movie to scatter these clues in a smart and "artful" way. Not only that. Flaws, wrong decisions, amateurism, bad cuts and corporate influence further hide and malform these very clues.

In short, LOL. . . I love Chappie because it is more than just a film about a robot gangster. . . in the same way that Robocop is more than just a movie about a robot cop. They are both fairly simplistic in presentation, and hide nicely in their culty-B action sci-fi genera. . . However both films are riddled with satire, humor, and philosophical implications, and serve as sci-fi allegories more akin to modern fairy tales than other entries in the genre they emulate. Neither film outwardly begs to be analyzed, and for that many take them at face value.

Yeah, Robocop is a great example. I was shocked specially by the innocence of its production. You can't find a single trace of arrogance anywhere in it. It is exactly what it was supposed to be, in-your-face, take it or leave it. And it worked beautifully. It has bad acting, it has stereotypes, it has bad camera work, it has everything critics love to hate. But flaws are what distinguish art from engineering. When done "right".

I have no intent to "change" your opinion. At this point my aim is to gain and give perspective, so even if we agree to disagree we know where the other is coming from. I'm seeing that much of your trouble with Chappie is identifying with the black sheep protagonist, on which 100% percent of the film relies. Without that, you're just left with the absurdity of it all rendering the movie unenjoyable as a whole. Am I getting close? I think that's closer than any of my cheeky "insults" or "jabs". On the other hand, I hope I have displayed in part that "ME LOVE ROBOTS" only plays a very minute roll in my love for this film and its protagonist.

Sorry but no. I'm dying to relate with the "black sheep" concept. But the movie is trying too hard to establish that Chappie is the black sheep. I knew that. I expected that. Hell, they even kept a huge yellow sticker saying "REJECT" in his very forehead, for god's sake! Not every dimension of the character should be about that. Yes, I know, he's different, he's deviant, he's recessive, I get it. And again, that's the problem with all main characters. The movie tries too hard to fit each one on their stereotypical category, like it was assuming that its audience is comprised of dumb people, and that servers only to offend those who aren't. The controversy about Blade Runner ending's voiceover comes to mind.

Again, sorry about my "dickishness". Your articulate negative voice is a rarity on this board, and IMDb in general. I wrongly assumed you to be a troll attempting to piss off the fans, solely based on my past experiences here. I see now that trolling was not your intent, and I apologize, mycello.

Don't apologize. Trolling is not always a bad thing. If I started this thread with an educated, thoughtful and exclusively constructive way, I'm sure I wouldn't get any replies at all. Hell, no one would ever finish the first paragraph. Because Internet.

Kind of sort of, yes. Self preservation is an instinct that universally defines life and consciousness. Chappie's "fear" displays that he has already transcended the perceived scope of his "programming", and is in fact alive/sentient/self aware.

Exactly. There's my trouble. Self preservation is NOT the only attribute that tells apart a robot from a self-aware robot. But the movie chooses this particular instinct to make its point and keep hitting on that. If the movie ever tried to develop any other attribute defining its self-awareness, it was overshadowed by how hard the movie wants us to feel pity and nothing else.

If you are in the proper mindset you should be able to mentally replace the robot with a human child, and understand the level of trauma imposed on a developing cognitive mind. . . as a large portion of his innocence is forcibly stripped away.

That's another facet of the point of our disagreement. I don't need to be in the proper mindset. The movie is supposed to slowly build my mindset to the appropriate state. However, we are blatantly TOLD that Chappie is a child, Chappie is self aware, Chappie is this, Chappie is that. I don't like to be told what I should figure by myself. Mostly.

He can't be hurt in the sense that he does not feel physical pain. Although his body and brain are synthetic Chappie's emotions are real, and in no way a product of programming. They are a byproduct of consciousness/sentience, which was also not programmed. This aspect touches on a seemingly innocent real world technology which is currently in its infancy. Learning Algorithms, of which "Deep Learning" is currently at the forefront, more closely represents Chappie's inspiration, rather than traditional notions of AI. Rather than me just assuming what you mean by "developed that badly", and possibly arguing a misconception, I'll straight up ask this time. What do you mean by "developed that badly"?

For me, the notion of self-awareness is not well understood by whoever wrote that history. I know for a fact that this is not how an allegedly self-aware individual would behave. Worse, you cannot just create a self-awareness "juice" in your lab, inject that juice in something with arms and legs that will suddenly be alive. That is factually not how it works.

For example, take a baby. Babies sometimes cries when they are born. That's not fear nor pain. That's a reflex. That first cry is meant to open his airways. He has no clue of what he's doing but he does. Babies are not afraid of anything because they have no idea of what they should be afraid of. If something goes toward a baby's eyes, they blink, but they don't know yet that their eyes could be hurt. That's reflex. That's PROGRAMMING. That's something acquired with millennia of evolution. We are only consciously afraid of traumas that we previously experienced. If a newborn bird was afraid of falling flat on the ground it would never learn to fly.

Therefore, our reflexes (or programming if you will) are something tailored specifically for the body that we dwell. Each one has the exact dosage and placement in a way that they keep the longevity of our body without hindering the development of our life. Even if that could be engineered in a lab - it can't, it's a consequence of evolution - you couldn't create a formula that would fit anything, anywhere, any time. That's way too much of a stretch.

But! That's yet not exactly what didn't work for me. I can accept anything if presented in the right way.

LOL. You're pretty funny, mycelo. I'm glad this didn't devolve into throwing insults back and forth. Most would have taken my abrasiveness in that manner. It was a fair amount of "conclusion jumping" on my part, combined with joking and sarcasm (which doesn't play too well outside of spoken word). In all truth, a sociopath wouldn't be able to identify with this film's protagonist because it requires a great deal of empathy which they lack by definition. However a sociopath wouldn't be able to relate to very many characters in cinematic history. . .period. . . except maybe villainous or bully characters. I actually read one user's argument about Chappie, in which he stated Blomkamp did a terrible job fully presenting Vincent Moore (Jackman) as the protagonist. He honestly believed that was the intent, but Jackman's character had too many flaws to be a believable good guy.

That's how I see things. Dickish-ness, abrasiveness, sarcasm and whatnot. For that, you need passion. You need heart. You need love to have hate. Therefore, if you hated me for trying to debunk this move, you should have love in your other hand. For that love, you have your reasons, and that's what I was willing to uncover.

I don't wish to convince you that you are or aren't anything, nor have I convinced myself of this. I believe a lack of empathy for the protagonist hindered your enjoyment of this film because you honestly didn't like the character. Not because you are actually a sociopath, of which I have met many on this forum. The act of taking my jokes, making jokes of your own, and discussing proves you aren't one, and displays my claim for the shallow joke that it was.

Agreed.

Truthfully, this is a good portion of what the movie is about. Chappie wasn't supposed to be convincing, he was the real deal with genuine emotions he developed on his own. People aren't, and will never be, ready to accept that. Metal, wires, and no organic components equals something that can't be alive by definition, and even the most convincing display of sentience must be some form of emulation. See Ex Machina and other similar cautionary tales of manipulative mechanical psychopaths, and robot apocalypses.

Sure. See Joshua, from War Games. It didn't even have a physical form (if it had one I don't remember). It didn't need to. We knew him from it's no more than 20 text lines on a monochrome CRT screen. Someone decided to put a voice synthesizer on an IMSAI (huh!) only to make the character more approachable for the general public. But you can easily take that away. The character will still be ominous, dense and downright convincing. It's never clearly stated that that computer is self-aware. But everything that the movie builds around the character really helps embracing it.

Consciousness in Chappie was given the very sci-fi explanation of a universal form of energy. His use of the neural helmet solidified that even though he was not organic, and didn't have traditional brainwaves, his consciousness was no different than that of a living being. Regardless, he would never be accepted by society. He was bullied and set on fire because he looked like a Scout, and abused by Vincent who believed his "convincing" emotional responses to be nothing more than programming. Chappie had every reason to lash out against humanity and become another cautionary tale, but instead the film took a different approach. If society isn't willing to accept you for what you are on the inside, then f#ck society. The portrayal of AI singularity (the point at which a synthetic organism absorbs and surpasses all known human knowledge, and is able to produce technology we could never conceive.) in respect to the very open ending implies one of two things:

A. Chappie, Robo-Deon, Robo-Yolandi, and Ninja completely forego society and live on the run. Creating an existence where they only need accept each other.

or. . . .

B. F#ck society in the most literal sense. Chappie and the gang shape society, largely by force, culminating in a lot of death, destruction, and countless human to robot conversions. Pretty much a robot apocalypse in the traditional cautionary sense.

The only saving grace is that Chappie knows mankind is capable of good. He developed empathy on his own, and has an appreciation for life. Most tales state that the machines won't care and will kill us all. Chappie states that outcome could be chosen by us. . . through our actions when/if facing an AI singularity event.

Beautiful. But that's you, again, fixing the movie. For me, the movie lost an amazing opportunity to present this dilemma, which would be awesome if done right. But for me, it didn't. It lost it's window by tiresomely trying to explain what everything was all about left and right. There's where it lost me. Chappie didn't need a whiny voice. It didn't need a voice at all. Take Real Steel's Atom. Bad movie. But when Atom stares itself at the mirror for 2 seconds, that's all we needed to relate to the character. The theater became silent like a tomb at that moment. It was just a little clue, but it's by far the best scene in the movie. And Hugh Jackman... *shrugs*

We may not have common ground on this film, but if you do like weird/cult/B/wacky/f#cked up-cinema we may actually have quite a bit in common. Most of my favorite films are despised by the majority.

I know the feeling.

I fear that too falls into generalization on my part. There are factors that add up. . . like it certainly helps being a fan of Die Antwoord, understanding and fully appreciating Blomkamp's previous two films, and possessing knowledge about life and culture in South Africa. There are more little things like this. As far as the bigger picture is concerned, inline with the movie's philosophies, I'd say the target audience is the black sheep. Those who were bullied and tormented because of the way they look or act. Someone who never really fit in with any popular crowds, never cared for popular trends. . .etc. This is for the black sheep who have embraced their differences, and chose self expression over popularity because they realized society's problem with them is society's problem.

There it is what I said before. I don't have the cultural and geographic requisites to bring the movie closer to me. But I believe I didn't have to have. As for the bullied weird-looking bad-at-parties black sheep thingy, yeah, that's me right there with open arms.

(continues...)

reply share

add reply

formatting help

Not particularly. Chappie's target audience is Blomkamp and anyone who completely agrees with him pretty much. Its a fringe fan base, and a risky film.

It's a sure bet when you fit into "anyone who completely agrees with him pretty much". But is the movie really targeted for these 3 people? Sorry! Just kidding.

Elysium is technically superior to D9. Much grander in scope and scale. He baffled a ton of people who were just in it for the sci-fi action though. It touched on many aspects too broad for D9, while brining the fairy tale aspect closer to the forefront. After watching all of his films several times, and analyzing every bit, I can say with a perfectly content straight face that Elysium and Chappie are made by the same misunderstood genius who lovingly crafted D9.

I'm sure of that. I never doubted its potential. And that's what set things even more frustrating. I did not watch these films several times analyzing every bit. But feels like either the quality went downhill, Blomkamp surrendered a bit to corporativism, or some other third option that I can't tell.

Well. . . . Maybe not an insult battle, but I'd honestly like to throw some rhymes back and forth for the sake of fun. All lies aside, I dabble in wordsmithing. I was going to let you start and drop some science on you. I can't freestyle to save my life though. . . writing is a bit different. A rap battle may be what this board needs to break some of the tension. Something fans/non-fans could come together on.

Unfair for me. For starters, english is not my main language. I guess you already figured that out. Secondly, you seem to be better at insulting, for better or for worse! No, no, sorry, scratch that. Writing is not my thing as it is yours, let's say.

Your statement is both awesome and depressing at the same time. Awesome in that, yah. . . me too, man. . . .me too. Depressing in that pretty much any depiction of anything in any movie is a far cry from Kubrick's work. I would have loved to see Kubrick's vision of AI, without Spielberg Spielberg-ing it up.

Amen.

I find a profound difference between Chappie and . . .dammit. . .Eva?. . . from Ex Machina. I have still only seen that movie once, and I do plan to change that. I loved it. However, she wasn't fully sentient. She was by definition an artificial intelligence. Yes, she was self aware, but embodied your earlier comment of "convincing". She didn't actually posses empathy or real emotions. She faked emotions to get a logical calculated response from the humans she sought only to manipulate, for her own benefit. Ex Machina is a fresh spin on the AI cautionary tale. They may look and act like you, but they don't/can't care about you, nor do they wish to try. Humans are inferior obstacles standing in the way of robot goals.

Sure. I didn't mean to compare both things like that. Let's try Blade Runner. They are just plain human actors. But in their acting you can see tiny bits of weirdness that disclose the fact that they aren't humans at all. So they are humans acting like robots who act like humans. That's deep. That's hard. But they made me believe that they "dream with electric sheep". Chappie is kind of the opposite. He's a weird robot, barely humanoid. But to define him, I also expected nothing more than these little clues telling him apart from his kind.

Chappie was the equivalent of placing a baby's brain in a robot, and letting it learn and grow. His emotions were real and had nothing to do with a program mimicking our actions. The line or two about "conscious energy" all but stated he has a soul.

Yeah, the movie tells us that much right away. But it did it wrong for the reasons I explained above.

One of the few living movie machines in Chappie's ballpark is Short Circuit's Johnny 5. Even still, Blomkamp focused on philosophical and psychological implications Short Circuit blew over, posed as simplistic jokes, or just didn't go there, being SC was to largely be marketed to kids. Blomkamp, a child of the 80s himself, made a weird azz movie for the weird azz kids who grew up on Robocop and Short Circuit, to an extent. I can't help but to think that Chappie would have been more well received had it come out in 1987. . . or if it had been an anime.

Johnny 5 began with kind of the same problems with me. But the movie took it's time with the character. It grows over its flaws. Its misadventures end up giving depth to him in a way that we don't even have a chance to get a grip on its problems. And that's fine by me. Moreover, that's a comedy, right?

All I can say is I liked Chappie the first time. Reaffirmed my liking the second time. Loved it the third time, starting to completely understand it while focusing on the subtext. Still, it hinges on the viewers ability to see Chappie as 100% alive. . . as far as consciousness is concerned. If you can't take the protagonist possession of "conscious energy" (clever soul euphemism) "seriously", another viewing may not go any differently. No jokes, no ribbing.

Well you fixed the movie for yourself, and you might have fixed it for me too. Now I may be able to look to it in the right angle.

*now you see why I broke all of this up into separate replies.* Dude, we need to shoot some rhymes back and forth. I need the practice. Also, I'm really interested to know some weird movies you like.

Without going too deep and still kind of mainstream, lets say.. Eraserhead?

Sorry I really wrote everything in a hurry.

reply share

add reply

formatting help