Chappie is an original tale about a robot becoming sentient and going out of control and transferring consciousness into computers and new bodies. Let's start out by acknowledging that there is nothing original about either of those things. The very first use of the word robot came in a story about a robot becoming sentient and going out of control. In truth, the concept is much older stretching back to Jewish folklore with stories of the Golem, a clay statue brought to life by magic. Stories about uploading brains into computers are newer, but there are still hundreds of examples. There really isn't any new land to mine in either of these concepts and Chappie definitely didn't find any. The most important philosophical question raised in this film came in tank top form: "Who need tits with a ass like this?"
What really pisses me off about Chappie is that is a story where very smart people do very stupid things. A fuckton of really fucking stupid things. We will start with the most important person, the corporate person, Tetravaal.
Tetravaal Corporate Strategy- Tetravaal's primary failure in terms of corporate strategy is its insistence that it is a weapons manufacture. It has three groundbreaking technologies with broad ranging capabilities (the mechanics behind the Scout and the Moose, the programming of the Scout, and the mind-reading helmet) that they have chosen to limit to their military purposes.
Walking robots are fucking hard to make. Really smart people have been trying to make them work for decades and have succeeded in making things that are very heavy and slow. The Scouts are fast and strong. They aren't especially heavy or big. They have created a nearly indestructible, but disposable labor force of supermen. The possibilities for a humanoid robot are endless. Anyone with a dangerous, physically demanding or repetitive job could very quickly find themselves out of work. You could use one for domestic work. Slap some skin on one of these and you've got a fucking sexbot. (I'll take three!!!!!!!!!) There's a reason slavery stuck around so long and still persists to this day (but let's just keep ignoring that issue). Slaves are pretty fucking useful. They're even more useful if you don't have any pesky moral issues to deal with and you don't have to feed them or let them sleep. It all comes down to the right programing...
Being a cop is hard. As human officers seem intent on proving, figuring out who to shoot and when is not an easy task. Police officers are asked to make dozens of potentially life-or-death decisions everyday while dealing with unpredictable people and complex situations. Scouts are shown improvising tactics with both human and non-human officers using non-verbal communication and informal language. (If that sentence doesn't blow your mind, you don't understand computers.) Scouts are also shown driving cars. Google has been working on a self-driving car for a decade now and they still won't let it on a real street. If they can program a robot to be a cop, no one's job is safe.
Tetravaal has also invented a helmet that can read the thoughts of a human (or a robot because, ugh, same thing) and instantly translate them to mechanical motion. Pair that with their robotic tech and you have the holy grail of prosthetics. It could be adapted into a VR platform. Used in microsurgery. Connect your brain to the stock market and make trades at the speed of thought. Oh, and it can upload your brain into a computer making your mind effectively immortal. There might be a market for that.
Tetravaal has also failed to properly market the Moose, a robot designed for breaching hardened military targets. It has no place in the hands of a civilian police force and yet Tetravaal insists on trying to sell it to the South African police. They should be selling to Americans.
Tetravaal HR- Having an open carry policy in your offices is fairly questionable, but isn't necessarily a terrible idea. (It probably is.) However, if one employee where to physically assault another, verbally threaten their life and then dry fire a pistol in their face in front of a dozen witnesses, that should be grounds for immediate dismissal in any corporation. ("I walk around with a handgun all the time. I verbally and physically harass my co-workers. But the gun's not loaded. This is an office. I'm not crazy."-Vincent)
Tetravaal Security- If your entire company is essentially built around a single engineer, it's generally a good idea to assign him some security, perhaps one of your killbots, in the roughest city on the planet. Especially, if you are going to tell everyone that this is the guy that designed and built the robot police force. The success of the Scout program is largely dependent on the Guard Key, which keeps anyone from reprogramming the robots. It is so important that there is only one copy which is kept behind multi-level security and access is limited to a small number of employees. They didn't know it was missing for three days. They never knew their killbot, equipped with GPS tracking was missing, until it made the news. IT security is so soft that the entire robot police force could be destroyed in seconds and an outside user could design and a build a brand new model robot within their factory.
This is already one of the longest posts in No Spoiler Tags history and there is still so much more to make fun of in this movie. So let's move on to the idiocy of a couple genius engineers...
Deon- Deon's first blunder was attempting to pitch the fully autonomous AI to the CEO on its philosophical merits. The correct choice was to point out the potential adaptability of the Scout platform in non-military fields and to state that programing is the only obstacle to selling millions of units. He could then remind her how costly, slow and difficult the development of the cop program was. This is when he offers up his adaptive learning software as a solution. A robot could be taken into the field and taught to do a job in a matter of days then the program for how to do that job could be copied thousands of times. Some users may even want a model that they can re-train and adapt on the fly. And that is how you get the CEO of a weapons giant to make robots that can paint.
Skip ahead a few minutes and Deon's kidnapped and threatened by the gangsters. They've found the robot and they want Deon to fix it. The correct response in that situation is "I can't." Look, I know it sounds risky, but it's not. Everyone knows that machines can be damaged to the point they can't be fixed. And this gang is actually kind of smart and tech savy which Deon should know based on their plan and their awesome stereo set-up. The robot at this point is in multiple pieces, has a big hole in its chest, and stamped with stickers saying it should be destroyed. Deon doesn't have the tools and software he has at the factory. Deon should be able to convince these people that the robot can't be repaired.
So Deon fixes the robot. Why does he reprogram it? Chappie is being scrapped because it's going to break down in five days. Rebuild him to spec and unleash your robot supercop on your kidnappers. (Actually, that's a better idea than saying "I can't fix it.") Instead, Deon cripples Chappie with his consciousness software and making him worthless (at least in the short-term) both to himself and his captors. You've got a fucking killbot, Deon. You've also got people to fucking kill. Use your fucking killbot, Deon.
After reprogramming Chappie, Deon has to tell the gang that he's going to be worthless at first. What he doesn't have to say is that it will breakdown permanently in five days. "This robot is going to run like shit for a few days, but right when it starts to fucking work, it's going to fucking quit forever." These are the last words Deon should have ever said.
After inexplicably surviving this encounter, Deon decides it's okay to leave a killbot and the key to reprogram all of the city's other killbots in the hands of a violent street gang. The correct choice is running back to Tetravaal and saying you were kidnapped and coerced into stealing a Scout and the Guard Key for the gang. It's barely even a lie. Tetravaal then swoops in with their army of killbots and any potential crisis is averted.
Vincent- It's easy to dismiss Vincent as a fucking nut because he's a fucking nut, but he's also a genius. Vincent invented the Moose, a brilliant if slightly under-armored piece of military tech, and the mind-reading helmet. He is not a moron, but he does some pretty stupid shit.
Vincent has gotten a little too invested in office politics. He is upset that his pretty awesome Moose is being overshadowed by the even more awesome Scouts. He's right to be upset. The Moose is not a failed project. Tetravaal has failed the Moose. Instead of trying to convince Tetravaal to properly market the Moose or looking for alternate uses for the helmet, Vincent has decided to discredit Deon. At one point, Vincent learns Deon has stolen a Scout and the Guard Key. This is his opportunity. Go and knock on the CEOs door and tell her. Deon is fired. The end. There is no need for him to destroy the Scouts.
Jumping ahead, Vincent has Chappie in the van, he is going to take the Guard Key and kill the robot. For no good reason, he grabs a saw and chops of Chappie's arm. Much faster just to cut off it's head. Mission accomplished.
I'm going to throw in this ode to stupidity here as a break, because somehow, beyond all reason, there is still so much more material to cover.
This next segment is called "Do You Have What It Takes To Join A South African Street Gang?"
You have threatened the designer of the city's killbots into giving you your very own killbot. The designer expressed a desire to undermine your plans to make said killbot into a criminal killbot. The designer keeps coming back to further undermine your plans. Do you?
A: Shoot him and be done with it.
B: Allow him to keep coming back.
Your killbot is self-aware and emotional. It is strong enough to punch or kick trough reinforced masonry. You are with it in an small enclosed metal space. It is hours away from powering down permanently. You have been lying to it saying you intend to fix it. Do you?
A: Continue lying and allow it to run out of battery life.
B: Confess and tell it that you never intended to help triggering a bout of intense rage.
You are preparing to enter a combat situation. What do you wear?
A: Dark colors or camouflage.
B: Brightly colored armor. I even painted my guns. Fashion is everything.
If you answered B to all these questions, welcome to the gang.
Our final segment covers distracting directorial choices.
- By my count, there are eight key members of the Chappie cast. Every single one of them has a different accent. For some reason, the fifth most articulate cast member needs subtitles.
- There are exactly three black people in South Africa.
- The merchandising department decided to slip a Chappie T-shirt into the wardrobe for the final battle in the most distracting occurrence of self-referential product placement in cinematic history.
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