Chappie provides a rare treat, a
biblical movie that fails to sound preachy. Perhaps this happens because the
movie performs more as a metaphor of religion (think Tron Legacy) than as a shallow, religious-based, scare-tactic (think The Lazarus Effect).
In Chappie, Dev Patel plays God. Well,
actually, he plays an inventor named Deon Wilson, who builds a robotic police
force.
These robots act
intelligently, but lack free will and creativity. Deon desperately wishes to
create life capable of these gifts. He eventually succeeds to create such a robot, which
writers Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell surprisingly named “Chappie” instead
of “Adam.”
Still, the writers
must’ve feared, on some level, that their audience might not grasp the
metaphor, so Deon often tells Chappie, “I am your Creator. You must listen to
Me.”
Chappie discovers himself influenced by people who act as walking
metaphors for greed, envy, and every other sin ever imagined.
One character,
played by Hugh Jackman, behaves as the embodiment of War.
Chappie quickly
discovers himself “adopted” by two criminal humans who tell Chappie to call
them “Mommy” and “Daddy.” Daddy afterwards behaves as the bad father, pushes upon Chappie gender roles and fear of the outside world.
This robot wishes to read, watch cartoons, and paint while the world's underbelly taints him . . . until he grows enraged and violent and loses all contact with his
Creator.
Chappie eventually
decides for himself the lines between right and wrong, but not without
humanizing irony.
He viciously assaults a characters for killing someone, beats
the attacker within an inch of death, all the while Chappie screams, “Violence is
wrong,” as if to stage a statement against . . . say, the death penalty.
Chappie also
discovers how to create life on his own, and thus he becomes a metaphor of
humanity's desire to create artificial intelligence, which brings the entire
movie full circle.
Chappie's Creator also creates him with a defected battery, which means that Chappie can only live for a limited time. The realization that he will die, further distances Chappie from his Creator.
SPOILER ALERT! THIS
PARAGRAPH! Deon the Creator dies, but Chappie manages to reincarnate him into
the body of another robot—which wears paint red enough to remind its audience
of a certain, infamous, false god (though I might read too much into that detail).
Chappie possesses no shortage of flaws
as a movie. Nearly every other scene ends in a way that makes little to no
sense, usually in the following formula:
Person A must stop Person B through any means. Person A possesses
every ability to stop Person B . . . and yet fails to do so for no apparent
reason.
However, Chappie still works as a film, so long
as its audience can suspend its disbelief and enjoy Chappie as an artfully constructed metaphor, rather than a solid
story with an acceptable number of plot holes.
The best part of
this movie remains the fact that I continue to revisit it in my head, to pull
at and twist it, rethink certain scenes. That seems a damn good experience for
twelve dollars and two hours.
Also, a bright
pink Uzi feels pretty entertaining.
