Slumdog versus Wolverine in REAL STEEL 2: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BOOGALOO.

Another day, another dystopian future. Neill Blomkamp IS the new Terry Gilliam. CHAPPIE is his third crazed metal masterpiece, pitting idealistic slumdog against capitalistic wolverine.

In 2016 (yup, “The Future”!) Johannesburg is the first city in the world to instigate an all-robot police force; humanoid in appearance, unthinking, unfeeling, undiscerning, just shooting and killing and arresting with their artificial intelligence. You know, like real police.

These “Scouts” are such a hit with the government that their creator, Deon Wilson (Dev Patel, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) becomes the golden-haired boy of the corporation. Meanwhile, scowling in a corner cubicle is Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman, THE WOLVERINE), because his crimefighter robot, The Moose, is passed over for funding. It’s expensive, gigantic (resembling the ED-209, those giant droids from ROBOCOP), and uses outmoded technology, i.e. humans controlling it remotely. That’s Vincent’s caveat to investors: that Deon’s Scouts are A.I., making life and death decisions on their own, while his Moose has the safeguard of a “thinking, adaptable, moral” human at the controls (which would become ironic later when he unleashes his Moose – with him at the controls – and does things decidedly unthinking, inhuman and immoral).

Psychosexual Afrikaner rap group Die Antwoord (transl. The Answer) are two desperate criminals who plan to kidnap Deon and force him to turn all the Scouts off, so they can heist 500 million dollars.

Poffie

Die Antwoord’s inclusion in the film is its simultaneous salvation and probable downfall. Now don’t get me wrong: the band itself – made up of the volatile Ninja and sassy-perky Yo-Landi Visser – is innovative, anarchic and fun, but their inclusion here seems meta, because they play “themselves as gangsters”, which is what they play onstage in the real world. In the film, they freak out their warehouse domicile in “zef” warpaint – the designs and style you see in all their real life videos – and they even use their real names. And though most of the time their naturalism brings an edgy groove to CHAPPIE, an unpolished street vibe that a Hollywood actor could never hope to recapture, in some instances their inconsistent behavior reminds us of that thing Mark Wahlberg did in M. Night Shyamalan’s THE HAPPENING. We don’t know what it was, but some called it acting, as in “You call that acting?”

Deon creates an A.I. program which would enable his Scouts to “think and feel” but is prohibited from uploading it by the company boss (Sigourney Weaver). So he steals a scrap Scout from the company for his experiment. And is kidnapped with the Scout by Die Antwoord! Forced to upload the A.I. program under the gun of Ninja, Yolandi and accomplice Yankie (Jose Pablo Cantillo), Chappie is born/activated. Sharlto Copley (Neill Blomkamp’s golden-haired boy) voices the CGI Chappie and plays Chappie in motion sensors (the same way Andy Serkis brought Gollum and Caesar to life).

When he becomes conscious, Chappie must learn language, and that’s where this film – like every film where language is learned too quickly – falls down. When Deon instructs Chappie, “That’s a watch,” why doesn’t Chappie repeat, “Thatsawatch”? How does he home in on the subject of the sentence and just ask, “Watch”? How can his unformed mind/processor differentiate the importance of each word? When Yolandi throws a whole slew of words at him, “My name is Yolandi. Your name is Chappie,” how does he pinpoint and repeat just “Yolandi” and “Chappie”? Annoying… onward…

Speaking of speaking, Dev’s accent is Pommie, Hugh’s accent is DownUnda and Ninja’s accent is Unthinkable. (What kind of deformed conjugation of dialects had to bathe naked with one another to create that Afrikaans accent? Is that Dutch combined with Martian?)

CHAPPIE is Pygmalion, Pinocchio, Frankenstein all rolled into one. It is a modern retelling of those fables where a creator plays god with life itself, and explores that fine line between true life and the simulation of life. Deon sees his creation as an “evolutionary step forward” and that question of consciousness is asked, “What makes a human being a human being?” The same questions are raised in SHORT CIRCUIT (1986), both ROBOCOP (1987) and its remake (2014), Spielberg’s and Kubrick’s ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (2001); and soon to be asked again in Alex Garland’s EX MACHINA (2015).

Intelligence is the keyword here. Where does the seat of consciousness reside? Blomkamp (and co-writer Terri Tatchell) explores the audacious concept that consciousness is just a bunch of electrical signals, linked together a certain way. It can be seen on a computer monitor and downloaded. And if it can be isolated, can it be transferred?

CHAPPIE also explores Nature vs. Nurture, as the child-like Chappie (who has the potential to be an officer of the law) is commandeered by the thugs to turn him into “indestructible robot gangster number one.” Yolandi proclaims herself “mummy” and Ninja by default becomes “daddy,” while Deon’s honorific is “maker.” (It’s a strange relationship between the thugs and Deon, as Ninja cannot stand the scientist, but lets him wander in and out of the gang’s hideaway at will; a hate/tolerance relationship because Deon is Chappie’s only maintenance.) Chappie quickly starts picking up thug habits: gang-signing, learning to “walk cool like daddy” and wearing bling. And stealing cars – because he is told by Ninja that those cars have been “stolen from daddy.” Chappie is led by the nose towards a major heist, which he balks at because it is “wrong.” However, a very human reason arises that compels Chappie to felony. Ninja tells him truthfully, “When your battery dies, you’re gonna die. Lots of monies can fix you, so to get monies you need to do the heist.” And truly, isn’t that the reason why WE do anything in this world, honest or “dishonest”? Self-preservation!

I hate the fact that “crime” is once again represented as lower class crime, where we can see people with lots of tattoos and no shirts take things and drive away in hopped-up cars, so that the police droids can give chase. But that’s not true crime. That’s the result of true crime, which is actually located at the top levels of the governing bodies that create the sociological disparity that necessitates small-time crime, which is simply trying to equal the stakes. Self-preservation on an animal level.

Chappie asks Deon the question you should ask of your own god: “Why did you make me just so I could die?” Isn’t this a commentary on the finite nature of your own deity?

Though there is hullaballoo in the junkets over Chappie’s artificial intelligence being feared as a successor to humankind’s reign on Earth, the overall battle is not “for humanity’s soul,” as only two people – Deon and Vincent – are involved. And even then, Vincent’s deadly actions against Chappie are more a “business” decision to demonstrate his Moose than a retaliation against A.I. per se. No one else seems to know or care about the A.I. robot running around (besides Sigourney Weaver, but she disappears quicksmart, to go fight some Aliens we presume.) So the battle is insular and doesn’t seem “epic” enough. That’s a built-in problem with the film that I think audiences pick up on subliminally.

And are we ready to see Hugh Jackman in such a villainous role? At one point, he turns off all the Scouts – exactly what the thugs were planning – but for his own provincial nefarious ends: so that his Moose could be deployed, seen by the authorities as a powerful deterrent against crime, and subsequently marketed. It’s calculating and cruel, with cops and civilians being killed for his actions. His pure evil is tempered in one scene where we see him as we’d like to see him, when he passes off a threat against Deon as a joke, “Just pullin’ ya leg, mate!” With that smile, the sun shines in and we kinda like him again; then his brow immediately goes dark when he returns to his cubicle.

True Crime may be misrepresented, but True Justice is courted: Much like Brando in THE GODFATHER advised Bonasera that killing the men who molested his daughter would not be true justice because his daughter was still alive, so putting them in hospital would be retribution more justified, Chappie does not kill Vincent in the final hand-to-hand combat (in which we are constantly waiting for Wolverine to pop his claws and go to town – due to being artificially conditioned to seeing Hugh that way), but rather breaks Vincent’s arm and leg – injuries Chappie sustained earlier – “Now I forgive you!” We viscerally feel true justice is served only after we’ve done unto others as they’ve done unto us. It’s what The Law tries to emulate but never gets right. And it shows us how close to human Chappie has become…

CHAPPIE is fast-paced, to the point where plot holes glare at us like Error 404 messages, but for the sake of Blomkamp trying to work an old concept into our new techno vernacular, I give him a pass. Action-packed, CGI-seamless, funny, at times chilling (as when Chappie is told that stabbing a person is simply putting them to sleep – and he asks a wounded man, “Do you want to go to sleep?” while wielding a knife); a commentary on humanity, deity, dystopia, Big Brotherliness, and even sacrifice and love. It is science fiction about to turn the corner into science fact.

The last scene will make you ponder: It’s one thing to upload someone’s consciousness into a steel robot with no fun bits – but why not put it into a Real Doll? Now there’s a compelling reason for artificial intelligence I can really get behind…

END

A Closer Encounter.

Cry about the simple hell people give other people–without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people too.
— Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird.

It lacks the epic majesty of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the wonderment of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, the cloying fear of ALIEN, the scientific ineptitude of STAR WARS, it even lacks the funny masks of STAR TREK. But – like 2001, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, ALIEN, STAR WARS and STAR TREK – DISTRICT 9 is revolutionary!

Be careful with that alien weapon, Eugene!

All extraterrestrial alien movies must now bow down before DISTRICT 9.

Like the deformed child of a documentary and a reality show; a psychodrama with a tongue-in-ass-cheek sense of black humor. No world domination or alien armies, no mighty deathships or hyperspace star streams, no cantina scenes or darth Cheneys – just a real world grit and bureaucratic spit, coupled with themes of loyalty, familial bonds (and lack thereof) and racial allegory that holds up a ruthless mirror to mankind’s black soul. Much like BRÜNO, only totally Not Gay.

They arrived 20 years ago in their broken spaceship. And just hung in the sky, unthreatening, unknown, un-Spielberg. Luckily, they didn’t break down over the country with the biggest percentage of closed minds per boob job – America. But even over Johannesburg, South Africa, livid with the unlearned lessons of apartheid, they became pariahs. The government rescued these one million malnourished, harmless, “worker class” aliens from their own ship and overcrowded them into a Johannesburg shanty town called District 9.

Squalor, crime, interspecies prostitution and black market arms deals between the aliens and Nigerian gangs prompt Johannesburgers to demand “apart-hood” from the aliens.

Multi-National United (MNU), a military/government body, appoints nerdy cubicle boy, Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley, in his first major role), to oversee the massive relocation of the aliens 200 miles from Johannesburg.

Wikus storms District 9 with bogus “eviction forms,” like Orwell’s Thoughtpolice by way of Ricky Gervais, as we try to figure whether this is high comedy or uncomfortable racism. It is both.

Bigots call the aliens “prawns” for their crustacean-like faces, and the unflappably jaunty Wikus seems to be the biggest bigot of all, as he orders the burning of a shack brimming with alien eggs, telling jokes about the baby prawns inside bursting like popcorn as they’re trying to escape.

Director and co-writer Neill Blomkamp has assembled a cast of brilliant unknowns, and forged a movie of veteran quality, creatively lensing the story’s development through security cam and surveillance formats and news footage; aided by producer and fantasy god-king, Peter Jackson (LORD OF THE RINGS, KING KONG 2005).

It can now be said that Jackson’s special effects company, Weta Digital, blows every other effects house back to the age of Pong – this goes for prominent A-Listers like ILM (STAR WARS), Sony Imageworks (SPIDER-MAN), Giant (INCREDIBLE HULK). In DISTRICT 9, we never doubt the veracity of the city-sized spaceship hanging in the sky, the thousands of aliens in full daylight, the 3D holograms, the weaponry…

Alien weapons (which the aliens trade for catfood and hookers) is attuned to alien DNA, so humans cannot use them, which of course, the humans try to do, by mutilating aliens in MNU underground labs in attempts to combine their DNA with humans. (The analogies with Nazis’ human experiments are not lost.) While in DISTRICT 9, the Nigerian gang leader (on advice of his witch doctor) eats fresh aliens for the same purpose.

Wikus unwillingly becomes the most wanted man amongst the aliens, the Nigerian gangs and the MNU, when a vial of alien fluid accidentally spurts in his face… Flashbacks to THE FLY, as his fingernails and teeth gradually fall out, nubs of exoskeleton poking through his flesh… alien DNA combining with his…

And an alien that Wikus was terrorizing, named “Christopher Johnson” (wearing a red vest, so I shall call him Red Vest, rather than use his slave name), and his smart little alien son, become unbidden allies to Wikus.

In any alien film, language is the credibility downfall. Here, both parties have learned the basics of each other’s speech, but since their throats are constructed differently, do not try to imitate each other, speaking fluently and authentically, picking up snatches of concepts.

Even when DISTRICT 9 tips into “blockbuster” and suffers a TRANSFORMERS moment (when Wikus is inside a giant CGI exoskeleton), the reason for him being inside the robot suit is to save Red Vest to reunite him with his son. Amidst the hail of gunfire from muttonhead military drogues led by a vindictive officer (David James), poignancy blossoms as Wikus almost tenderly (yet with firepower to stop tanks) tells Red Vest, “Let’s get you to your son.”

And the efx never take over as Blomkamp maintains Wikus’s presence inside the suit with razor sharp direction. And by the way, don’t humans know by now that regular bullets can’t harm alien robot suits?

Yes, aliens do exist. And they are just as filthy as humans.

DISTRICT 9 is ultimately a Grande Tragedie, as Wikus transforms into that which he despised, taking “seeing things through another’s skin” to a whole ‘nother level. But a tragedy from whose point of view? Well, he can’t tap his smokin’ wife again (delectable Vanessa Haywood), so we relate to that kind of tragic; and Red Vest promised a cure in three years, so there’s another blow. Yet if humans were able to transform into another’s skin completely like this, maybe they would be less inhumane. Yeh, maybe.

Laden with these metaphors and allegories, DISTRICT 9’s stylish brutality may in fact distract from its message: it doesn’t take extraterrestrial aliens to bring out the barbarism and racism in humans. Any nominally alien race will do. And has done for millennia.

Humans were no less brutal in 1948 when apartheid laws were institutionalized; were no less inhumane when burning Jews in 1944 (and probably laughing as internal organs burst with popcorn sounds); were no less single-minded in their brainwashed murder when eradicating Iraqis in George W. Bush’s “holy crusades” undertaken by Xe (nee Blackwater) in 2006…

DISTRICT 9’s overt violence is a sign of censorship laws becoming more lenient, not human nature becoming more vicious. Humans have always been this vicious.

Back in 1945, John Wayne was making war movies where bullets made no exit wounds, so people did not become inured to violence the way we are in 2009. Thus, at the Nuremberg trials of 1945, people were righteously outraged at war atrocities, punishing Nazi soldiers and officers with life imprisonment or death, whereas in 2009, the EXACT SAME CRIMES committed by the Ku Bush Klan go not only unpunished, but ignored and satirized, crowed over in legacy-rewriting interviews by the murderous criminals themselves.

Now DISTRICT 9 portrays powerful alien weapons pulping bodies so savagely that scraps of flesh usually smear the camera, putting us right amongst the action. Yet we take the openly-bestial nature of humanity in stride, just as we let war-criminals with the blood of millions on their hands stalk free without any liability.

So it was then, so it is now, so shall it always be: When worlds collide in DISTRICT 9, the beings displaying the most inhumanity – are the humans.

END