As it turns out, I'm pretty sure 2015 may end up being the year of "Robots doing what they shouldn't" on film - with movies like Ex Machina and Avengers: Age of Ultron around the corner, I started my year of robot films (not actually a planned thing, just sort of turned out that way) with Neill Blomkamp's CHAPPiE.To be fair, let's begin by saying that a story about a robot gaining sentience is something I'm pretty familiar with: with all of your Short Circuits, Not Quite Humans, WALL-E's and let's not forget Star Trek: The Next Generation touching on fairly similar ground.
So going into the film, I'm looking for something new, perhaps a little different, and something that gets me caring about the characters.
CHAPPiE actually does a pretty good job at this: the robot is one of the neatest visuals I've seen in a long time and actually had me questioning "how did they do that?" more than once. As CHAPPiE begins his story at a small child's level of intelligence and awareness, the film allows the viewer to quickly connect with the character, and finally the movie did something I wasn't quite expecting.
It focused an awful lot on how people (regular joes likes you and me) may react if suddenly something genuinely new showed up, like say, artificial intelligence.
The picture may not necessarily be the most flattering to us, but it did make for an intriguing film.
Although some of the plot points seemed a little strange to me, I did find the film was well worth seeing and for the effects alone a big screen viewing may be the best way.
