Symptom 105: Chappie Like Podcast

Blomkamp month wraps up with a review of Chappie, the movie that starts deep discussions but doesn’t really finish them. This movie seems to want to talk about so many critical social issues, nature versus nature, how a child’s behavior can be equally influenced by his parents and his own experiences and how that same child can overcome that conditioning. It toys with the idea that a robot has to be taught evil and tricked into harming people, but humans seem to figure out how to be evil naturally. It also wants to discuss corporate greed and how creative genius is stifled in the name of profit. At times this movie is echoing RoboCop and discussing the dangers of contracting vital public services to the private sector.

The problem is that in trying to discuss all of these things the movie discusses none of them very well. What we are left with is a decent action film with a philosophy 101 discussion of major social issues. The movie is a potential science fiction epic that needed a re-write forcing the story to focus on the primary point - is evil a taught or natural state. Are we who we are or are we the product of our environment and experiences. There is also probably room for a good discussion on what it says about humans that the synthetic intelligence Chappie has more compassion for human life than the humans in this story do.

All in all this is movie has some really good moments but it falls short and falls apart because it suffers from shiny ball syndrome and tries to discuss to many topics for one film.