Chappie (film)

Chappie (stylized as CHAPPiE) is a 2015 American dystopian science fiction action film[4] directed by Neill Blomkamp and written by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell. It stars Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Sigourney Weaver, Hugh Jackman, and Ninja and Yolandi Visser of the South African zef rap-rave group Die Antwoord as metafictional versions of themselves. The film, set and shot in Johannesburg, is about an artificial general intelligence law enforcement robot captured and taught by gangsters, who nickname it Chappie.

Chappie
Theatrical release poster
Directed byNeill Blomkamp
Produced by
Written by
Starring
Music byHans Zimmer[lower-alpha 1]
CinematographyTrent Opaloch
Edited by
Production
company
Distributed bySony Pictures Releasing
Release date
  • March 4, 2015 (2015-03-04) (New York City)
  • March 6, 2015 (2015-03-06) (United States)
Running time
120 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States[2][3]
Language
  • English
  • Afrikaans
Budget$49 million[4]
Box office$102.1 million[4]

Chappie premiered in New York City on March 4, 2015, and was released in U.S. cinemas on March 6, 2015. The film grossed $102 million worldwide against a $49 million budget.

Plot

A skyrocketing crime rate leads the city of Johannesburg, South Africa to buy a squadron of scouts—state-of-the-art armour-plated attack robots—from weapons manufacturer Tetravaal. These autonomous androids are developed by British scientist Deon Wilson and largely supplant the overwhelmed human police force. A competing project within the company is the remotely controlled MOOSE, developed by Australian soldier-turned-engineer Vincent Moore. Deon is praised for Tetravaal's success but Vincent grows envious when the police are unwilling to give his heavy weapons platform equal attention.

At home, Deon creates a prototype artificial intelligence that mimics a human mind to the point of feeling emotions and having opinions, but Tetravaal CEO Michelle Bradley refuses to let him test the A.I. on a police robot. Undeterred, Deon steals a recently damaged robot before it is destroyed and puts it in his van, along with the "guard key" needed to update the robot's software.

On his way home, he is kidnapped by three criminals, Ninja, Yolandi, and Amerika, who threaten to kill him unless he reprograms a police robot to help them steal. Deon installs the new software into the damaged robot, which responds with childlike trepidation upon powering up. Deon and Yolandi calm the robot, teaching it words and naming it "Chappie". Despite Deon wanting to stay with the robot, Ninja forces him out of their hideout.

Ninja's gang only has a few days to pay a debt of 20 million rand to Hippo, a powerful gangster. Yolandi sees Chappie as a child and wants to mother him, but Ninja grows impatient with his development due to both the impending deadline for the debt and Chappie's irreplaceable battery running out, giving him days to live. Ninja tries to train Chappie to be a gangster by leaving him in a dangerous neighborhood to fend for himself. After being wounded by thugs, he is followed by Vincent, who plans to deactivate all Tetravaal scouts except for MOOSE. Vincent successfully extracts the guard key for his own use, but the traumatized Chappie escapes and returns to the hideout. Yolandi scolds Ninja for this mistreatment, but he manages to earn Chappie's forgiveness by training him in martial arts and weapon handling. Ninja and Amerika trick Chappie into stealing cars for them, and lie about needing the money to replace his dying body.

At Tetravaal, Vincent uses the guard key to upload a virus, thus sabotaging and disabling all scouts including Chappie. Johannesburg's criminals immediately run rampant in the streets, and Deon brings Chappie to the Tetravaal factory to fix him. After being restarted, Chappie notices a helmet used to control MOOSE. At the hideout, he re-engineers it to allow him to transfer his consciousness into a computer, so he can change bodies when his current one dies. Ninja's gang uses Chappie to rob an armored car, an act which is caught on the news, prompting Tetravaal to pursue him. When Chappie learns that Ninja's plan to acquire the body was a lie, he prepares to kill Ninja for betrayal. However, Deon arrives to warn them that Michelle Bradley has ordered that Chappie be destroyed. At that moment, the MOOSE robot (controlled remotely by Vincent) is launched to assassinate Deon and Chappie at the hideout, at the same time that Hippo arrives to collect his debt. Amerika and Hippo are killed in the ensuing battle, while Deon is mortally wounded. When Ninja is about to be killed, Yolandi sacrifices herself to save him and Chappie destroys MOOSE by detonating a bomb.

Enraged by Yolandi's death, Chappie drives Deon to the factory, storms into an office, and fiercely beats Vincent close to death. He then transfers the dying Deon's consciousness into a spare robot through the modified MOOSE helmet. In return, the now-robotic Deon wirelessly transfers Chappie's consciousness into one of the nearby disabled scouts. Deon and Chappie go into hiding as the police discontinue their contract with Tetravaal. While burning memorabilia of Yolandi, the grieving Ninja finds a box containing a doll copy of her and a flash drive marked "Mommy's Consciousness Test Backup" which contains a copy of Yolandi's consciousness that Chappie took while testing the device on her. Chappie hacks into Tetravaal's manufacturing facility, builds a robot resembling Yolandi, and uploads the drive's contents.

Cast

Production

Chappie is Blomkamp's third feature-length film as director. He wrote the screenplay along with his wife Terri Tatchell, who also co-wrote District 9. It was unofficially based on Blomkamp's 2004 short film Tetra Vaal.[9] They wrote Chappie in two weeks, while Blomkamp was doing Elysium.[10] Filming began at the end of October 2013 in Johannesburg, South Africa.[11][12] One scene was shot at the Ponte building.[13] Filming was completed in February 2014.[14] Re-shooting for the film took place in British Columbia, Canada in April 2014.[15] The film was shot with Red Epic cameras, using Panavision anamorphic primes.[16] Richard Muller said:

Panavision jumped in with four brand-new PVM-1741A OLED monitors, as well as a PVM-2541A for more critical evaluation work in the DIT van. Jacques McDonald from NLE managed to get FilmLight onboard by adding a prototype of the FLIP. It was technically a four-camera show, not counting the six GoPros, two [Sony] EX3s, FLIP, [Canon] 5D on a drone and the [Sony] HDC-1500 in the Cineflex, which sometimes all played at the same time. The FLIP would handle at most two cameras, so we had to supplement that using Pomfort LiveGrade running through several Blackmagic HDLinks.[17]

Lighting was handled by Kino Flo Celebs.[13] The visual effects company was Image Engine, located in Vancouver.[16] The name of the weapons company in Chappie – "Tetravaal" – is a reference to Blomkamp's 2003 short film of the same name, which centers on a police robot in Johannesburg with a similar design to Chappie. Blomkamp has said that Chappie is "basically based" on Tetra Vaal.[18] Blomkamp also employed a robot with a similar design in his 2005 short Tempbot, and both Tempbot and his 2006 short/advertisement Yellow deal with a thinking and learning robot which tries to assimilate into society.

Blomkamp has cited the Appleseed character Briareos as an influence on the design of Chappie.[19]

Release

On February 6, 2015, IMAX Corporation and Sony announced that the film would be digitally re-mastered into the IMAX format and released into IMAX theatres domestically on March 6, 2015.[20] The film was released in the United States on March 6, 2015.[5]

Box office

Chappie grossed $31.6 million in North America and $70 million in other territories for a total gross of $102.1 million, against a budget of $49 million.[4]

The film earned $4.6 million in its opening day, $5.3 million on its second day, and $3.5 million on its third day, totaling $13.4 million in its opening weekend, while playing in 3,201 theaters. It had a $4,155 per-theater average and finished first at the box office.[21]

Critical response

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 32% approval rating, based on 221 reviews, and a rating average of 4.88/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Chappie boasts more of the big ideas and visual panache that director Neill Blomkamp has become known for — and, sadly, more of the narrative shortcomings."[22] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a score of 41 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[23] According to CinemaScore, audiences gave the film a grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[24]

Justin Chang of Variety wrote, "Intelligence, artificial or otherwise, is one of the major casualties of Chappie, a robot-themed action movie that winds up feeling as clunky and confused as the childlike droid with which it shares its name."[25] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "With unappealing one-note characters, retread concepts and implausible motivations, Chappie is a further downward step for director Neill Blomkamp."[26] Tim Grierson of Screen International wrote, "...despite his ambitions, Chappie is a bucket of bolts, Blomkamp's desire to say meaningful things outdistancing his ability to say them compellingly."[3] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that Blomkamp "struggles with the material" but "even at his shakiest, Mr. Blomkamp holds your attention".[27] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called it "cartoonish and preposterous, and not in a good way".[28]

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle rated it three out of four stars and wrote of Blomkamp, "It's hard to say how much he's doing consciously and how much he's doing through intuition, but he's doing really interesting things in Chappie, and right from the beginning."[29] Tom Huddleston of Time Out London rated it four out of five stars and wrote that "this hugely entertaining oddity could never be mistaken for the work of any other filmmaker".[30] Ryan Lambie, from denofgeek.com, gave the film a positive review stating, "Despite the ragged edges of its story, Chappie nevertheless has real heart beating under its shabby exterior. If you liked the director's previous films, you owe it to yourself to see this one too."[31] IGN reviewer Josh Lasser also gave Chappie a positive review, with a 'Good' score of 7.6 out of 10. He praised Sharlto Copley's performance and the "big questions" it asks, but criticized its failure to answer those questions.[32] Several reviewers compared the Chappie character unfavorably to Jar Jar Binks of Star Wars.[33] Sameen Amer of The Express Tribune opined that the film disregards logic as certain "existential quandaries" are randomly thrown in without straightening out any of the themes before moving on to the next.[34]

Accolades
Award Category Recipient Result
Visual Effects Society[35] Outstanding Animated Performance in a Photoreal Feature Earl Fast, Chris Harvey, Mark Wendell, Robert Bourgeault Nominated

Cancelled sequel

Blomkamp said he "wrote Chappie as a trilogy" and expressed interest in making sequels if they were "economically feasible".[36] As of November 2016, no sequels are planned. Blomkamp said the film did not perform well enough.[37]

Notes
  1. Additional music by Steve Mazzaro and Andrew Kawczynski
gollark: Wait, bees' brains are effectively neural networks, right?
gollark: The power of automated bees.
gollark: What if we create a RocketRace neural network so it can automatically generate motivation?
gollark: > and at hating against capitalism<:bees:724389994663247974> you.
gollark: https://0ver.org/

References
  1. "CHAPPIE (15)". British Board of Film Classification. February 12, 2015. Retrieved February 12, 2015.
  2. "Chappie (2015)". Baseline. Archived from the original on February 28, 2015. Retrieved June 25, 2015 – via The New York Times.
  3. Grierson, Tim (March 4, 2015). "Chappie". Screen International. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  4. "Chappie (2015)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved May 10, 2015.
  5. Lee, Chris (November 4, 2014). "Watch the trailer for 'Chappie,' Neill Blomkamp's robot adventure". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved December 15, 2014.
  6. Vincent Frei. "CHAPPIE: Chris Harvey - VFX Supervisor - Image Engine - The Art of VFX". The Art of VFX. Retrieved November 28, 2015.
  7. "Sigourney Weaver Joins Neill Blomkamp's 'Chappie'". deadline.com. October 28, 2013. Retrieved October 29, 2013.
  8. "Hugh Jackman Joins Neill Blomkamp's Sci-Fi 'Chappie'". deadline.com. September 29, 2013. Retrieved October 29, 2013.
  9. Clark, Noelene (November 4, 2014). "Trailer: 'Chappie' brings Neill Blomkamp's childlike robot to life". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 15, 2014.
  10. Blair, Ian (March 10, 2015). "I, Robot". HD Video Pro. Werner Publishing Corp. Retrieved August 8, 2015.
  11. "Neill Blomkamp's Chappie Starts Filming, Adds Sigourney Weaver". comingsoon.net. October 28, 2013. Retrieved October 29, 2013.
  12. "Production Begins on Blomkamp's 'Chappie,' Adds Sigourney Weaver". firstshowing.net. October 28, 2013. Retrieved October 29, 2013.
  13. Blair, Ian (March 10, 2015). "I, Robot". Werner Publishing Corp. p. 4. Archived from the original on July 13, 2015. Retrieved August 8, 2015.
  14. "DIE ANTWOORD – Timeline Photos – Facebook". facebook.com. Retrieved February 12, 2015.
  15. Film and TV Production List (PDF), Union of BC Performers, April 4, 2014, archived from the original (PDF) on July 16, 2015, retrieved March 6, 2015
  16. Blair, Ian (March 10, 2015). "I, Robot". Werner Publishing Corp. p. 2. Archived from the original on July 17, 2015. Retrieved August 8, 2015.
  17. Blair, Ian (March 10, 2015). "I, Robot". Werner Publishing Corp. p. 3. Archived from the original on July 12, 2015. Retrieved August 8, 2015.
  18. Exclusive: Neill Blomkamp on his next sci-fi film, Chappie, June 11, 2013
  19. "Exclusive: Neill Blomkamp on his next sci-fi film, Chappie". Den of Geek.
  20. "Neill Blomkamp's Chappie is Coming to IMAX". comingsoon.net. February 6, 2015. Retrieved February 7, 2015.
  21. "Chappie Daily Box office". boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
  22. "Chappie (2015)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
  23. "Chappie Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved March 12, 2015.
  24. D'Alessandro, Anthony (March 9, 2015). "'Chappie' Presides Over Listless Frame, Vince Vaughn At Career Low – Monday Actuals". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved July 15, 2015.
  25. Chang, Justin (March 4, 2015). "Film Review: 'Chappie'". Variety. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  26. McCarthy, Todd (March 4, 2015). "'Chappie': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  27. Dargis, Manohla (March 5, 2015). "Review: 'Chappie': a Smart Robot in a Violent Future". The New York Times. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  28. Turan, Kenneth (March 5, 2015). "Review Oddly, the robot is the least robotic thing about 'Chappie'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  29. LaSalle, Mick (March 5, 2015). "'Chappie' review: sci-fi action with a soul". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  30. Huddleston, Tom (March 5, 2015). "Chappie". Time Out. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  31. "Chappie review". Den of Geek. Retrieved March 6, 2015.
  32. Josh Lasser (March 4, 2015). "Chappie Review". IGN. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
  33. Labrecque, Jeff (March 6, 2015). "Critical Mass: Chappie reviews let the Jar-Jar jokes fly". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
  34. "Film review: Chappie - brain dead - The Express Tribune". Retrieved July 13, 2015.
  35. ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘The Peanuts Movie’ Lead Visual Effects Society Nominations
  36. Lasser, Josh (March 7, 2015). "Chappie Director Neill Blomkamp on His Robot Sci-Fi Movie". IGN. Retrieved March 18, 2015.
  37. Blomkamp, Neill. "@sethstewart165 @Chappie2Movie no, I was just kidding. Chappie did not do well enough for there to be a sequel. There is no sequel". Twitter. Retrieved November 17, 2016.
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