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First reviews for Neil Blomkamp's Chappie

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B

Bobby Roberts

Banned
Anton Sugar said:
Isn't there also the cut scene from Alien where Ripley finds Dallas cocooned by the xeno? I believe that was supposed to be an alternate method of reproduction, as there was no queen nor method for producing eggs/facehuggers on the Nostromo.
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Yeah. It got reintroduced in the "Director's Cut" (not really a Director's Cut) but it's probably the scariest part of the lifecycle, and no director has ever really tried to go back to it.

Essentially, the Alien secretes... SOMETHING. And that something incapacitates you while you slowly, while still alive, morph into an egg.
 
J

jhmtehgamr20xx

Banned
Camwi said:
Look a couple posts before you.
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But aren't there fan reviews on pre-2000 movies on RT too? I know they're there.

Jacob said:
It's more that with pre-2000 movies, most of the reviews were written years after the fact, which introduces biases and follow-the-leader effects that aren't (as) present in reviews written when a movie first comes out. If a movie is remembered as shit, it gets a lot less positive reviews down the road, but if it's remembered as great, it gets a lot less negative reviews. The two Star Wars trilogies exemplify both of these trends.
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But that happens with films today, too. RT could try and find reviews for older films that were written when they came out; they're out and about. And if it's a phenomenon that does happen with them, it's bound to also happen with today's films down the line.
 
S

shaki123

Member
Toothless said:
Inarritu doing a blockbuster would absolutely terrible. The guy is less subtle than Nolan or Blomkamp and has really no idea how to stage things either. It'd be pretentious crap with dull action scenes. At least Blomkamp ensures the latter won't happen.
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The LAST thing an Alien movie needs is action scenes. IF you want to have action, there is a new Rambo coming out I heard :p.
 
F

Fancy Clown

Member
BobbyRoberts said:
Yeah. It got reintroduced in the "Director's Cut" (not really a Director's Cut) but it's probably the scariest part of the lifecycle, and no director has ever really tried to go back to it.

Essentially, the Alien secretes... SOMETHING. And that something incapacitates you while you slowly, while still alive, morph into an egg.
Click to expand...

I always thought this was much scarier than the idea of the queen. The queen, and all of Aliens really, cemented the Alien as just a giant (albeit still very scary) space bug, whereas in Alien it was this truly foreign entity that was intrinsically tied to human sexuality and physiology in very terrifying ways.
 
C

Count of Monte Sawed-Off

un33dab@dpu$$y
BobbyRoberts said:
Yeah. It got reintroduced in the "Director's Cut" (not really a Director's Cut) but it's probably the scariest part of the lifecycle, and no director has ever really tried to go back to it.

Essentially, the Alien secretes... SOMETHING. And that something incapacitates you while you slowly, while still alive, morph into an egg.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's way worse than anything else the alien does. Dallas did not look too happy.
 
CassidyIzABeast

CassidyIzABeast

Member
Not the biggest fan of Devin Feraci but I remembered he was championing D9 so his Chappie review is pretty scathing

Chappie

When District 9 came out we were hungry for a visionary, an auteur who could do original science fiction with a message but also give us thrilling action, a guy who proved that blockbusters didn’t just have to be Transformers movies. Two films later it’s become very clear that guy isn’t Neill Blomkamp; instead Blomkamp is the victim of the auteur theory, a casualty of our need for visionaries. Too much has been placed on him, and too much freedom has been given him to make movies from frustratingly undercooked scripts with grade school social messages. It’s hard to imagine that Blomkamp could make a film worse than Elysium, but here we are. Chappie plays like a shitty remake of Robocop done in the style of Neill Blomkamp, an internet parody on the level of those “What if Wes Anderson made a genre film?” shorts.
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http://badassdigest.com/2015/03/05/chappie-movie-review-throw-this-robot-on-the-scrap-heap/

For reference, his closing paragraphs from his District 9 review

As is the entire movie itself. I fear giving in to hyperbole, but District 9 invites
it to the extent that I am more afraid of underpraising a movie I’m
sure will be regarded as a science fiction classic. Walking out of the
theater I knew I had seen history being made; at the very least
Blomkamp is going to be a major force in the film industry. The FX work
is impeccable; there were no practical alien suits or animatronic
heads, something I found hard to believe. Between the excellent FX and
Blomkamp’s skill at making the Prawns into characters and not just part
of a CGI showreel I utterly forgot I was watching a movie with special
effects. That’s an astonishing feat.

But beyond that this is a movie that will fire imaginations of
generations of would-be filmmakers. It presents a world so deeply
textured and thoroughly thought out that it will inspire years of
obsessive fandom to sift through every reference, to fill in every
blank. And it ends on a note that demands a sequel; while the movie is
complete and total in itself and can stand alone, the possibilities for
what could come next are so spine-tinglingly intriguing that I’m all
but begging for the next film. District 9 is an amazing
movie, one that will sweep you up emotionally and intellectually, that
will give you plenty to think over and even more to marvel at. It’s an
achievement that needs to be seen to be believed, and once it’s seen
it’s guaranteed to be beloved.
Click to expand...
 
F

Freewheelin'

Member
Oersted said:
Who are those people? How do they put too much stock in critics opinions? Who are you to decide that they do? Yes, some people enjoy/dislike some movies despite critical consensus.

IMDB and Metacritic are worth less. Especially IMDB. Hype inflated fanboy ratings. Why you put so much stock into them is beyond me.

Lets make it simple. If you have a compelling argument that Chappie is better than the critical consensus, I will listen.
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I don't put stock into them either. I haven't seen Chappie. But why people care about the opinions of 200 largely white middle aged American males is something I don't really understand.

If you think a film looks/sounds good, then whatever critical reception it gets shouldn't dissuade you from seeing it. I'm sure everyone has favourite films that the critical consensus has deemed is terrible.
 
S

Sho_Nuff82

Member
xtrasauce said:
People give the poor script a pass because of the amazing visuals.
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Speed Racer: 1886?

BobbyRoberts said:
With as much that's wrong with Prometheus, the fact people still feel compelled to stack the deck against it is weird. Why exaggerate/misrepresent what's wrong with the film when what's ACTUALLY wrong with the film is damning enough.

Plus whoever came up with that stupid infographic didn't even get the basic details of the shit right.
Click to expand...

Haven't seen the film since opening weekend, what's wrong with that infographic?
 
F

Freewheelin'

Member
jtb said:
If a film gets a 30% on RT, that means 30% of critics liked it. Or would recommend it. So what's the problem? We're dealing more in probabilities than black/white "this film is good/bad", more "there's a 30% chance you'll like it." that's how I look at it anyways.
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Because 30% of critics might give it 10/10 and 70% might give it 4 or 5 out of 10, so no one deems it a terrible film. It s a silly system. The average rating is better.
 
K

Kinyou

Member
Didn't have a good feeling about the trailers and this seems to confirm it.

I hope Blomkamp's Alien works out because I actually really like the style of his movies
 
B

Bobby Roberts

Banned
Freewheelin' said:
But why people care about the opinions of 200 largely white middle aged American males is something I don't really understand.

If you think a film looks/sounds good, then whatever critical reception it gets shouldn't dissuade you from seeing it.
Click to expand...

I don't think "film review as preventative measure" is really happening though. All that's happening is a forum full of people, who are interested in a movie, and would like to go see it. They're being told that people who watch a lot of movies don't really like that movie.

This is pretty obviously going to bother people who are going to the film, as they'd like the film to not be a bad one. It doesn't mean they still won't go, or still won't form their own opinions once they see it. It just means that hearing from others about what a not-good time they had is disappointing on some level.

It's not an adversarial sort of thing, no matter how strongly people continue to frame it that way.
 
D

DECK'ARD

The Amiga Brotherhood
BobbyRoberts said:
Yeah. It got reintroduced in the "Director's Cut" (not really a Director's Cut) but it's probably the scariest part of the lifecycle, and no director has ever really tried to go back to it.

Essentially, the Alien secretes... SOMETHING. And that something incapacitates you while you slowly, while still alive, morph into an egg.
Click to expand...

I disagree, I think it was good they cut that.

You have a very believable life-cycle, and a person morphing into an egg ... is not that.

I think the Queen was a much better solution, and using the cocoon idea as just keeping the host trapped while waiting for an egg to hatch was much more terrifying and relatable than the body-horror of the deleted scene.

Alien tapped into very natural human fears, and being turned into an egg isn't one of them really.
 
B

Bobby Roberts

Banned
DECK'ARD said:
You have a very believable life-cycle, and a person morphing into an egg ... is not that..
Click to expand...

I disagree about anything in Alien being "believable" on the face of it. In 1979, none of that was anything but horrifying craziness.

Average Viewer in 1979 said:
What the fuck are those round things. What the FUCK just came out of it? What the fuck it bleeds ACID WHEN YOU CUT IT? Why did it just fall off? WHAT THE FUCK JUST CAME OUT OF THAT GUY. How the FUCK did it get that big that fast? What is all that SHIT pouring off of it? Jesus fuck you can shoot it into SPACE and it still comes after you? You can hit it with a rocket engine and it just...floats away?
Click to expand...

Adding "Holy fuck it can coat you in something that turns you into one of those eggs" absolutely fits with that. And remember, the Alien in that movie wasn't a screeching, sprinting thing, either. It snuck around. It waited on you. It moved SLOWLY when it wanted. So this slow-moving, malevolent, unkillable grinning penis monster from outerspace secreting some sort of dna-altering goo that turns your body into nothing more than material and food for a facehugger? That's a damn good idea. The natural fear that taps into is essentially being buried/burned/drowned. Just a different way. What if you were dying, you knew you were dying, and you couldn't stop it. That's not an innate, natural fear?

It's not like it can't fit with a Queen, either. It's just one more backup for the xenomorph - you let one of those fuckers live, it's going to start a whole new colony anyway because it just needs to snatch up a living organism, and then turn it into an egg, and have that egg hatch a facehugger, and have that facehugger implant a queen...

Ta da!
 
S

Succinct Verbosity

Member
How much involvement did Peter Jackson have with District 9? At this point it seems like District 9 was made good by the team around the director rather than the director himself.
 
T

tcrunch

Member
BobbyRoberts said:
original.gif
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Yep I remember this scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs60aWyLrnI

e: woo we're back down to 40% on RT
 
Razorback

Razorback

Member
Just saw it. Didn't hate it.

Nothing about it is terrible, even Die Antwoord were fine. It's hard to say exactly why it's just OK and not great.

I thought they made the robot a little too cute. I think the movie was going for comedy most of the time but it never got a genuine laugh out of me, just some smiles.

I don't know, I think Bloomkamp still has potential. After District 9 I had such high hopes for this guy and Elysium was a huge disappointment, but Chappie was definitely a step up from that.
 
F

Fallout-NL

Member
BobbyRoberts said:
I disagree about anything in Alien being "believable" on the face of it. In 1979, none of that was anything but horrifying craziness.



Adding "Holy fuck it can coat you in something that turns you into one of those eggs" absolutely fits with that.
Click to expand...


Seems like a bit of a reach.
 
S

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
One hit wonder.

District 9 was basically his student film that had been kicking around in his head for years and clearly the one fully formed idea he actually had.

Everything else seems like half baked ideas that weren't given enough time to fully gestate before a concept was turned into a movie.
 
F

FTF

Member
StoOgE said:
One hit wonder.

District 9 was basically his student film that had been kicking around in his head for years and clearly the one fully formed idea he actually had.

Everything else seems like half baked ideas that weren't given enough time to fully gestate before a concept was turned into a movie.
Click to expand...

In all fairness, this is only is third film though. Not the biggest body of work, etc.
 
W

Warm Machine

Member
StoOgE said:
One hit wonder.

District 9 was basically his student film that had been kicking around in his head for years and clearly the one fully formed idea he actually had.

Everything else seems like half baked ideas that weren't given enough time to fully gestate before a concept was turned into a movie.
Click to expand...

He did a short which was very distinctly District 9.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1hI8c8HzxU

Chappie is sort of a combo of two other of his shorts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTnxP7e7-YA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCS0hNyJf6k
 
W

Warm Machine

Member
Kinyou said:
I wish he'd go back to that fake documentary style. Thought that was one of the most interesting parts about District 9.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't work for Alien. Best part about that style though is that as a film maker you don't have to write much of a narrative to support shots. It is a visuals first medium.
 
I

Imm0rt4l

Member
StoOgE said:
One hit wonder.

District 9 was basically his student film that had been kicking around in his head for years and clearly the one fully formed idea he actually had.

Everything else seems like half baked ideas that weren't given enough time to fully gestate before a concept was turned into a movie.
Click to expand...

Basically this.
 
A

Anton Sugar

Member
BobbyRoberts said:
I disagree about anything in Alien being "believable" on the face of it. In 1979, none of that was anything but horrifying craziness.



Adding "Holy fuck it can coat you in something that turns you into one of those eggs" absolutely fits with that. And remember, the Alien in that movie wasn't a screeching, sprinting thing, either. It snuck around. It waited on you. It moved SLOWLY when it wanted. So this slow-moving, malevolent, unkillable grinning penis monster from outerspace secreting some sort of dna-altering goo that turns your body into nothing more than material and food for a facehugger? That's a damn good idea. The natural fear that taps into is essentially being buried/burned/drowned. Just a different way. What if you were dying, you knew you were dying, and you couldn't stop it. That's not an innate, natural fear?

It's not like it can't fit with a Queen, either. It's just one more backup for the xenomorph - you let one of those fuckers live, it's going to start a whole new colony anyway because it just needs to snatch up a living organism, and then turn it into an egg, and have that egg hatch a facehugger, and have that facehugger implant a queen...

Ta da!
Click to expand...

Bingo.
 
P

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
Kinyou said:
I wish he'd go back to that fake documentary style. Thought that was one of the most interesting parts about District 9.
Click to expand...

Honestly thats probably the problem. Blomkamp can do those documentary style productions, but when it comes to telling a A through B story movie, he flounders. He needs a rigid structure imposed upon him rather than hoping he'll find the discipline to bring a story home himself.
 
J

jhmtehgamr20xx

Banned
BobbyRoberts said:
I disagree about anything in Alien being "believable" on the face of it. In 1979, none of that was anything but horrifying craziness.



Adding "Holy fuck it can coat you in something that turns you into one of those eggs" absolutely fits with that. And remember, the Alien in that movie wasn't a screeching, sprinting thing, either. It snuck around. It waited on you. It moved SLOWLY when it wanted. So this slow-moving, malevolent, unkillable grinning penis monster from outerspace secreting some sort of dna-altering goo that turns your body into nothing more than material and food for a facehugger? That's a damn good idea. The natural fear that taps into is essentially being buried/burned/drowned. Just a different way. What if you were dying, you knew you were dying, and you couldn't stop it. That's not an innate, natural fear?

It's not like it can't fit with a Queen, either. It's just one more backup for the xenomorph - you let one of those fuckers live, it's going to start a whole new colony anyway because it just needs to snatch up a living organism, and then turn it into an egg, and have that egg hatch a facehugger, and have that facehugger implant a queen...

Ta da!
Click to expand...
This reminds me: where does the Queen come from? There's only one and I always assumed the lifecycle process for a Queen had to be different than that of regular xenomorphs. Always kind of thought it involved from hot Xeno-on-Xeno action, too much for us to handle probably.

Btw, Chappie's at 38% now. I'm not saying this means the movie is good or bad on a personal level (since I haven't seen it yet), but it's safe to say it's not "misunderstood" in a traditional sense. Most critics just don't seem to be feeling it, and at least some of them probably have legit reasons.

Will be interesting to see the user reviews in comparison. I haven't read a review that makes me outright think I'd hate the film or find it worthless, but my expectations have been dampened both by the reviews and the trailers (though they're warming up to me). I'll give District 9 a rewatch to see how that holds up.
 
L

Lasthope106

Member
Well it is truly a disappointment that this film is being panned by critics and audiences alike. I was really looking forward to seeing the next film from Neil. District 9 was amazing. If he's going to get a chance to make Alien, then he should get a few more films under his belt and get more practice, and have the best people help him write a good script, which seems to be why his last two movies have failed. The guy can be the next Ridley Scott, he just needs some help.
 
A

Acinixys

Member
Kinyou said:
I wish he'd go back to that fake documentary style. Thought that was one of the most interesting parts about District 9.
Click to expand...

Yes I loved this

Plus the fact that every news reader in the movie was an actual South African broadcaster made it so much more real for me
 
N

NealMcCauley

Member
jhmtehgamr20xx said:
This reminds me: where does the Queen come from? There's only one and I always assumed the lifecycle process for a Queen had to be different than that of regular xenomorphs. Always kind of thought it involved from hot Xeno-on-Xeno action, too much for us to handle probably.
Click to expand...

Alien 3 introduced the super facehugger that could implant a queen, but Cameron thought it was just another part of the xeno's evolutionary chain.
 
C

Count of Monte Sawed-Off

un33dab@dpu$$y
jhmtehgamr20xx said:
This reminds me: where does the Queen come from? There's only one and I always assumed the lifecycle process for a Queen had to be different than that of regular xenomorphs. Always kind of thought it involved from hot Xeno-on-Xeno action, too much for us to handle probably.

Btw, Chappie's at 38% now. I'm not saying this means the movie is good or bad on a personal level (since I haven't seen it yet), but it's safe to say it's not "misunderstood" in a traditional sense. Most critics just don't seem to be feeling it, and at least some of them probably have legit reasons.

Will be interesting to see the user reviews in comparison. I haven't read a review that makes me outright think I'd hate the film or find it worthless, but my expectations have been dampened both by the reviews and the trailers (though they're warming up to me). I'll give District 9 a rewatch to see how that holds up.
Click to expand...

In Alien 3 Assembly Cut, I think there was a big ass facehugger that carries the queen or something.
 
J

jhmtehgamr20xx

Banned
NealMcCauley said:
Alien 3 introduced the super facehugger that could implant a queen, but Cameron thought it was just another part of the xeno's evolutionary chain.
Click to expand...

Count of Monte Sawed-Off said:
In Alien 3 Assembly Cut, I think there was a big ass facehugger that carries the queen or something.
Click to expand...
Really? Damn I just saw that cut only a few months ago, how could that slip by?

Thanks for the info guys. Will keep an eye out for that next time I watch Assembly Cut.
 
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