[Sci-Fi Cinema] Hugh Jackman In Neill Blomkamp‘s 'Chappie'

some of the dialogue was super corny.. like cringe worthy..

but a good mix of humor, action, and real themes. I liked it a lot.

 

The Robot looks like a man in a robot suit. That was the immediate turn off for me. As well as looking like a doofy rabbit. So I was out. It seems like someone should have gotten a little more ambitious there. All that said, given that some people are liking it I will probably watch it on demand. I made it through movies like the robot that boxes so I'm willing to take a look see to see if something delivers here.

I recently watched the 5 part Halo movie. The first part turned me off but it turned out to be pretty decent by the end of it. I never even new it existed until it popped up on Netflix. Glad I found it.

Also watched Primer recently. This was very good movie. I had to watch it twice. You feel more involved in the discovery of the tech than say Interstellar's big budget event where you just get thrown in and go along for the ride.

 

Which Halo are you talking about? There's Legends and Foward Unto Dawn, which I thought were both very good. But the recent Nightfall really sucked imo. Couldn't even finish it.

 

Pretty sure I was watching forward unto dawn. The one with the cadets. Maybe I'll check out legends now that I know it exists. Good movie that forward unto Dawnn.

 

Yeah Forward Unto Dawn I really enjoyed and was a nice bridge to Halo 4. And definitely check out Legends. It's in the same mold as the Animatrix if you ever watched that.

Watching Blomkamp's Halo short film again, it's clear he's got a good feel for action. Just needs better writing.

 

My girlfriend and I both enjoyed it. She almost cried during some of the scenes.

 

We really enjoyed it, watched it last night at santikos palladium.

 

Spoiler

so what happened 18 months later?

 

Lol oh yea....

 

Watched this last week.

I think it is a bit ahead of it's time and -really- foreign/different than what most Americans are used to; two of the main characters are RaveRap musicians (Die Antwoord) from the South African music scene. Honestly, I can't think of an English-Speaking country that is more different in terms of culture from America.

But that's part of it's charm. It's weird. It's different. I loved it. I loved how Chappie is this weird South African street kid getting roped into doing bad things by his Mommy and Daddy. I honestly didn't feel bad for Chappie the way I did with other robots-turned-sentient characters in other movies, but maybe that's because I never thought he would actually get killed.

Oddly enough, Jackman and Weaver were rather dull and I think the movie would have been much better without Jackman as the foil. I guess they were there for Hollywood flash. Brandon Auret was great as the scary guy, as usual.

Great flick. I think if it were Blomkamp's first movie it would be lauded as an indie breakout. I'll watch it again, soon.

 

Uh...dammit...if that is the fate of Chappie, please spoiler that!! Haven't had a chance to watch it yet. Was hoping this would be an update about the DVD/Ondemand release date.

 

Sorry about that, but I can't spoiler your quote at any rate. It's kind of a given that there are spoilers in a thread for a movie that's been out for a while, but I wouldn't say there are any big spoilers in what I wrote. I never implicitly stated that Chappie dies....or not.

 

Blomkamp is brilliant at styling and action, not so much at dialogue... and he really needs to leave South Africa at some point. Someone get that man a passport.

 

Agreed. His movies look great. Even Elysium, which otherwise was a disappointment.

I liked this movie a whole lot more than I thought I would, though.

 

Not sure why people were so dissapointed with this or Elysium. I enjoyed both movies.

Also after watching it, I looked up Die Antwood and boy do they have some wicked videos....

 

liked Elysium.. Chappie was boring.

 

Haha I laughed and good to see Dev Patel again besides Marigold Hotel

 

Elysium took place in Los Angeles. And Space. And was filmed in Mexico City and Vancouver.

 

Both movies I think presented themes that were a little too big and broad. But that may have been ok if Elysium had better action scenes and better utilized the exoskeleton thing Damon was wearing, and if Chappie had more sympathetic and like-able human characters, a better overall story and a LOT better ending. But they sure were shot well.

 

the movie did little for me. I never really connected to it. Each characters fl flaws were realistic though, the programmer wanting to go to the next level of AI, Jackman getting jealous and sabotaging everything, and Chappie getting all gangsta, but never had a chance to understand or become emotionally involved in why they took those actions. So needed that personally. You essentially had three characters that one could not root for. I did like the reverse engineering at the end as that is an important them in terms of human evolution. And they took that on but too late. I think it was confused between an action movie and a think piece, never really gaining any traction.