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First reviews for Neil Blomkamp's Chappie

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SCULLIBUNDO

Banned
Fancy Clown said:
Agreed. The alien in Alien was exactly that, "Alien" with a capital A. In Aliens they were giant scary space bugs, complete with a queen bee to reproduce, rather than the horrifying "people get turned into the eggs" that was in the Alien directors cut.
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It's not that the aliens could no longer be scary. They WERE scary in Aliens. It's that after having seen Alien, they could no longer be that - alien. We've seen them. The unknown about their lifecycle was essentialyl revealed. We've encountered it and lived through that horror. What Cameron used to replicate that 'unknown' factor of a species that we had already experienced, was to place an enigma that bubbled under the surface throughout most of Aliens: Just where the fuck did all these eggs come from? He managed to create the unseen threat with an organism we were already familiar with.

And when Ripley accidentally stumbles into the nest with Newt and you hear THAT breathing (which is Cameron, btw), it's scary as fucking hell.
 
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CorvoSol

Member
Trailer kind of made it look like a cross between I, Robot and Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots starring Wolverine. Chappie's sort of a dumb name to boot, so I didn't really feel any interest in going to see it.
 
D

Dead

well not really...yet
Alien directors cut is not a directors cut. Egg scene is worthless.

Ripley entering the queens chambers is as tense and horrifying as anything in Alien.

People trying to rewrite Aliens as anything less than suspenseful masterpiece need to get fucking checked
 
W

Warm Machine

Member
Dead said:
Alien directors cut is not a directors cut. Egg scene is worthless.

Ripley entering the queens chambers is as tense and horrifying as anything in Alien.
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I don't think it is worthless by any stretch. The egg scene is actually pretty great if you take the movie as its own singular universe.

It is there as a reminder of what failure or lack of destruction of the Nostromo will bring. If Ripley is taken by the Alien she will too become an egg and the Nostromo will be discovered and there will be more Alien's threatening whoever enters the ship.

Remember that the egg sequence was known by Cameron and it set up the whole cocooning portion of Aliens. There is nothing else in Alien outside of that scene that sets that up.
 
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PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
Just saw it -- and, um, uh ... It was excellent. Like, critically excellent. It has something to say, beyond fear of AI. It's about cruelty and empathy and parenthood and childhood and innocence. I found it intensely upsetting in a number of parts and it affected me far more than I expected. 9/10.

Highly recommend giving this one a chance. Think it could be this year's Edge of Tomorrow.
 
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Demoncarnotaur

Member
I actually found Chappie to be pretty enjoyable. And I didn't really care for Elysium.

The movie has some leaps of logic, and questionable character motivations. Not to the point that it breaks the film, but it certainly holds it back from excelling. Unlike Elysium, the movie has a great flow, and was just enjoyable overall. However, like Elysium, the script needed tightening up, and some characters needed a little extra development or grounding.

It's no District 9, but see it.
 
O

orochi91

Member
HariKari said:
He is almost never slammed for the actual directing part though, right? It's mostly complaints about the writing. Get this man a top notch writer and let him do his visual magic.
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That's the same issue with M. Night Shyamalan.

Great director, but sorely in need of a quality writer :/
 
E

Enthus

Member
I saw this movie tonight and have no strong opinion of it. It just feels like something I'll forget about in a week. It was a nice concept, though.
 
way more

way more

Member
Jack Scofield said:
If Aliens taught me anything, it's that James Cameron was completely clueless as to what made the alien so terrifying in the first place.
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Well Cameron has never known what it means to "build" to a scene. For him it's sudden spectacle and giant reveals. He could never direct a horror movie because those are built upon subtle dread and deliberately plotted out tense moments. He could second direct a fantastic chase scene from a monster but to imbue a sense of terror you need a emotional person behind the camera.
 
I

Imperial

Member
PantherLotus said:
Just saw it -- and, um, uh ... It was excellent. Like, critically excellent. It has something to say, beyond fear of AI. It's about cruelty and empathy and parenthood and childhood and innocence. I found it intensely upsetting in a number of parts and it affected me far more than I expected. 9/10.

Highly recommend giving this one a chance. Think it could be this year's Edge of Tomorrow.
Click to expand...

But Edge of Tomorrow has 90% on Rotten Tomatoes
 
JimiNutz

JimiNutz

Banned
I'm gonna go see it for the action alone.
I know there will be an awesome shoot out at the end and I know it will be glorious.
 
F

Flynn77

Member
mac said:
Well Cameron has never known what it means to "build" to a scene. For him it's sudden spectacle and giant reveals. He could never direct a horror movie because those are built upon subtle dread and deliberately plotted out tense moments. He could second direct a fantastic chase scene from a monster but to imbue a sense of terror you need a emotional person behind the camera.
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Um, the med lab scene in aliens?
 
C

Chichikov

Member
Dead said:
Ripley entering the queens chambers is as tense and horrifying as anything in Alien.

People trying to rewrite Aliens as anything less than suspenseful masterpiece need to get fucking checked
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I don't think Aliens is nearly as scary or suspenseful as Alien, but I don't think that's really a slight against the movie.
Aliens is much more of an action film (with horror elements), when Alien has pretty much a straight up slasher horror structure.
And while I personally prefer Alien to Aliens, I think that was 100% the right approach to take, Alien work in large part due to the unknown nature of the monster, and you can't really play it twice, so instead of trying to retread the first, Cameron took it to a different, less scary and suspenseful direction, but a direction and I think it totally worked nonetheless.
 
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subrock

Member
Yup, thought it looked like a turkey. I don't trust Blomkamp anymore. I feel like Jackson ruined him. Back to film school.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
Blizzard said:
I saw the movie as the only person in the theater at 11:30 last night, which was kind of nice.

Spoiler-free thoughts:

  • If you don't like Die Antwoord's music, bad news, there were apparently a bunch of their songs in this judging by the credits. The names were even censored because of the obscenities, for some reason, though the movie itself is full of obscenities.
  • Yolandi was generally tolerable, but Ninja is indeed INCREDIBLY unlikable. I don't know if this was the case, but I could almost imagine one of the early scenes where everyone else is telling him to get out and let them act like semi-decent humans, being somewhere Blomkamp decided he needed a break from the guy.
  • The tone wasn't actually QUITE as heavy-handed and preachy as Elysium, which was nice.

I'll post other spoilery thoughts and actor impressions in the reviews thread. Overall it actually wasn't as bad as I expected, and I liked it better than Elysium, even though there was still a scene with nursery music playing and a children's book being read that reminded me unpleasantly of Elysium's hippopotamus and elephant scene.
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I saw it tonight and it was better than I expected, but still annoying. Die Antwoord was one of the worst parts and they're ALL OVER the movie. I like Hugh Jackman but his part was also kind of dumb.

Continuing these thoughts with WARNING MOVIE SPOILER MOVIE SPOILER MOVIE SPOILER WARNING comments:

* Hugh Jackman looked like Chuck Norris in this. I feel like he tried to do a good job, and made the best of the character and writing, but that whole plot line was sort of dumb and contrived. It reminded me vaguely of the latest Planet of the Apes movie, where things could have gone along had it not been for the one plot-mandated totally crazy person.

* The scientist guy seemed like a decent actor. He was a big contrast to everyone else but I suppose they portrayed his personality reasonably well. Living with those little robot voices in his house would drive me insane though.

* There were probably a few logic holes, or motivation issues, or questionable things in the dialogue, but it didn't bother me as much as Elysium. I liked some of the little technical details they put in, like the PS4s, root console access, or the vi text editor. Not that anything technical is super believable, but at least someone was aware of some concepts like that.

* Like I mentioned above, Yolandi is kind of tolerable but Ninja is super obnoxious. And then he's all through the movie, AND he's the only one who doesn't "die" in the end. Decent lady? Shot. Inventor? Shot. Chappie? Battery runs out. Almost-likable gangster guy Americo? Stepped on and ripped in half by a giant robot. Ninja just gets his leg hurt though, and he can still hop around.

* I listened to the soundtrack on YouTube and my favorite song, the only one that really stood out to me, was a chiptune one. I didn't even notice it in the movie, if it shows up at all. A bunch of Die Antwoord music gets used.

* I was pleasantly surprised that the decent lady, the scientist, AND Chappie all get to "live" in the end. I was expecting some sort of tragic sacrificial end for at least one of them. Too bad Americo didn't get himself scanned as well.
[/LIST]

If I had to put a number, maybe 6/10, where Elysium is 4/10 and District 9 is 8/10. Something along those lines.
 
S

shaki123

Member
Jack Scofield said:
If Aliens taught me anything, it's that James Cameron was completely clueless as to what made the alien so terrifying in the first place.
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Alien 3 and especially Alien is loads more terryfying then the Hollywwod Action Blockbuster that is Aliens. It's a good movie, but not a tense, scary one.
 
S

shaki123

Member
Scullibundo said:
Oh yeah? Tell me what that is. Then tell me why Alien 3 wasn't scary. Because Aliens is the only film I can think of that has 90 minutes of pure ramping, suspended terror that doesn't relent.
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You must be talking about Alien here? Because Aliens is in no way a more tense or ramping movie then Alien.
 
D

duckroll

Member
Okay this is getting overboard. If you guys want to talk about Aliens, make a thread talking about that or whatever. I will be deleting all further posts from this point about Aliens mythos and stuff which has nothing to do with Chappie at all.
 
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IdreamofHIME

Member
Dude binged on Frankenstein, Short circuit, Robo Cop and Red Bull..went to bed and in the morning wrote Chappie.

Great movie when it wasn't being oreaxhy, so about 17%, great.

Wolverine was awesome as the bad guy, even if his character was as shallow as Jodie Fosters in Elysium. He needs to be a baddie more in future.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
I forgot to mention that Chappie as a character worked well. I'm guessing motion capture was used, and it conveyed personality effectively along with the "ears" and the "eye" screen. I couldn't tell what was real and what was CGI.
 
D

DECK'ARD

The Amiga Brotherhood
duckroll said:
Okay this is getting overboard. If you guys want to talk about Aliens, make a thread talking about that or whatever. I will be deleting all further posts from this point about Aliens mythos and stuff which has nothing to do with Chappie at all.
Click to expand...

No worries, I'll move it to the other thread.
 
P

PHOENIXZERO

Member
We've got a generation of cynical little shits, not surprising with the Alien stuff.

As for Chappie, eh a lack of originality was pretty obvious from the start and that big robot still reminded me way too much of the 2014 Robocop ED-209 with the original movie's sound effects for it. I'll watch it when it comes to DD/home video/whatever.
 
A

aerts1js

Member
PantherLotus said:
Just saw it -- and, um, uh ... It was excellent. Like, critically excellent. It has something to say, beyond fear of AI. It's about cruelty and empathy and parenthood and childhood and innocence. I found it intensely upsetting in a number of parts and it affected me far more than I expected. 9/10.

Highly recommend giving this one a chance. Think it could be this year's Edge of Tomorrow.
Click to expand...

Edge of Tomorrow is critically acclaimed.
 
J

JB1981

Member
mac said:
Well Cameron has never known what it means to "build" to a scene. For him it's sudden spectacle and giant reveals. He could never direct a horror movie because those are built upon subtle dread and deliberately plotted out tense moments. He could second direct a fantastic chase scene from a monster but to imbue a sense of terror you need a emotional person behind the camera.
Click to expand...

LOL. He directed a horror movie. It's called Terminator.

edit: just saw Duckroll's post. Sorry will drop it.
 
M

More_Badass

Member
I tend to trust the audience rating over critics and Chappie's rating on RT is at 68%
That seems pretty decent to me. Will probably check it out this weekend
 
Sorcerer

Sorcerer

Member
220px-Real_Steel_Poster.jpg



What's up with Jackman and these robot movies?
 
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