District 9

Written at the time of the film's release (which, of course, explains the opening Ridley Scott quote—he hadn't yet made The Martian, or his "Alien" sequels, or produced his Blade Runner sequel.

"Dances With Prawns"

Ridley Scott recently said in an interview, "Science Fiction in movies is dead," proving once again that as a visionary, Ridley Scott is a superb art director.*

But, like Westerns, they can continue to cast a reflection on our life and times, just as surely as the Sun sets in the West—on Earth or Mars—wherever there are flawed humans who'll make the same mistakes in the future as they did in the past.

Take the new film by South African film-maker Neill Blomkamp—District 9—a re-telling of the issues of apartheid both in macro- and micro-cosm. It won't score many points for originality, but as a potent rejuvenation of how sci-fi can focus attention on an issue, it may be the best film of its type since The Road Warrior.

Twenty years ago, a large spaceship is left, stranded, hovering over Johannesburg. When official go to take a look, they find a race of aliens— emaciated, starving—and they begin transporting the survivors off the ship and into makeshift refugee camp, dubbed "District 9." And in a repeat of history, the camps "became fenced, then militarized, and then it became a slum." The Joburg citizens of all races are barely tolerant of "the prawns," as they are called, as long as they stay on their side of the fence. They become scavengers, demoralized, living on garbage taken advantage of by human predators. They're also extremely well-armed (with weapons that only respond to their DNA, so humans can't use them), and attempting to create the fuel they'll need to get back home.

This back-story is told from rough-edited documentary footage outlining "the situation." As the human/prawn tensions become high, the M.N.U. (Multi-National United) is recruited to move the million prawns to a new relocation camp far from Johannesburg. In charge of the operation is the son-in-law of an MNU muckety-muck, Wikus van der Merwe** (Sharlto Copley) and you just know from the documentary footage of him that 1) he's an idiot, senseless and blithely ignorant and 2) "something" happened to him, as he's always mentioned in the past tense.What's happened is that van der Merwe's evacuation plan, a disorganized xenophobic spree, has uncovered weapons cache's, nurseries (which are put to the torch—"Listen to them pop!" exults van der Merwe to the camera), and due to his pig-ignorance, he's exposed to an agent that begins to change him into one of the insectoid aliens, giving him a look at their world, walking a mile in their claws, as it were...and, oh, by the way, he can start using their weapons now.

Now, lest anyone get the impression this is a life-affirming lesson in just getting along, be advised that it's a parable soaked in blood and bile. It's one of the dankest, squishiest movies I've ever laid eyes on with much viscous vomiting, projectile blood-shed—the aliens' weapons are particularly nasty, exploding human bodies like blood-blisters with gout's of blood hitting the camera lens—and sequences of transformation somewhat akin to Cronenberg's "The Fly" (particularly when the hero tears out his fingernails). I saw more than enough folks who had to leave the theater when I saw it, so be warned (especially you parents being pressured to see the "space-ship" movie).

It is also one of those surface-message movies that belies its point with its story presentation, the message being mixed in a left brain/right brain conflict. Xenophobia is certainly shown as wrong, but in as visceral a way possible, the only difference depending on what side of the electro-blaster-micro-waver you're on. And there isn't any direct retribution for actions taken—the film has a mindless video game feel to it, rather emptily getting the blood up, and providing no catharsis to diffuse it.***

However, there is a lot that makes District-9 satisfying (if uncomfortable) from its performances, art direction, seamless motion capture effects, and design.

 

Oh. And in a final irony: Blomkamp's artist's representation in California is RSA...which is owned by Sir Ridley Scott.

* One wonders why he would even say such a thing as his company, Scott Free Productions, produced the egregious (but ratings-busting) A&E regurgitation of "The Andromeda Strain." One might agree if he was talking about the line of toy-ad's masquerading as entertainment (Can't wait for "Lincoln Logs: The Movie!"), but those can hardly be counted as "science fiction."

** Here's another layer to District-9—it's a cultural joke. In South Africa, there is a sub-species of joke called the "van der Merwe joke," like "blond" jokes in the U.S., or "Sven and Ole" jokes in Scandinavian communities, they're self-deprecating humor about just how dumb someone could possibly be. That D-9 starts as a van der Merwe joke and turns into a story of redemption is just one of the insidious joys of District-9.

*** District 9 came about as a substitute project for director Blomkamp and producer Peter Jackson after their planned collaboration of the film version of the popular "Halo" video game came to naught.

Elysium (2013)

Written at the time of the film's release.

Zero Tolerance for Citizens
or
Spinning That Ol' Wheel of Fortune

I expect nearly everybody was looking forward to Neill Blomkomp's next film, after the gooey splash District 9 made.  His new one, Elysium, has the same kind of life-lesson—"what have you done for someone else lately?" and how one's perspective changes when you walk around in someone else's downtrodden shoes.  

The approach is slightly different, though, even if the futuristic milieu is still glum.  In this future, the current economic climate hasn't changed, only the locations have.  Earth, after years of neglect, is one big slum, there is no distinction between urban and rural anymore, the green spaces are dead, and there is a space-age version of urban flight—the "one percenters" have moved on up to an orbiting oasis called Elysium, and it is, as in Greek Myth, the isle of the Fortunate, a paradise, with estates and luxury homes perched inside it's rotating ring. It's the ultimate gated community. A large star in the sky, it is out of reach but never out of the sight or the minds of the stragglers of Earth who hope to get there by fortune or by smuggling themselves by shuttles, which Elysium's defensive perimeter either discourages or destroys.

The parallels to today's refugee and immigrant desperation is baldly presented, and obvious to anyone whose world-view isn't in spec-fic but down here on Earth, much as apartheid was morphed into xenophobia in D-9. Add to that that the penthouse in space also seems to have access to the ultimate in universal health-care, a medi-bed that scans you and...simply cures you (it seems). Other than those fanciful details, everything's played a little straighter, no doubt because you have big stars like Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, rather than just Sharlto Copley (although he's here too, bless him), so the financial risks are slightly more, so they make the stakes in the film a little higher, too. Higher in that the government (naturally) is up there in Elysium, in the form of President Patel, who has a rather prickly defense secretary (Foster, channelling Angela Lansbury from The Manchurian Candidate), who has a unique sense of how to protect The Ring, supplementing the force of robot-police with soldiers of fortune, like a particularly nasty one named Kruger (Copley), who would probably kill for a hobby if he wasn't being paid for it.

Down on Earth, it's dog-eat-dog, and former car-thief Max Da Costa (Damon) is trying to go straight, working towards the dream of going to Elysium by working in one of the factories mass-producing the robo-cops that keep the populace under their teflon thumbs. But an industrial accident leaves Da Costa dying, with only five days to live. His only chance is to somehow get up to Elysium and one of those miracle-med-things, so, with a few super-drugs pumping through his system, he signs up to do some dirty work for a former employer, which involves stealing industrial secrets—which just happen to be Elysium's security codes—that will unlock the station's defenses and allow a mass exodus from Earth to Elysium.

Da Costa allows himself to be merged with a powerful exo-skeleton and neural-net to download the codes, then, once there—well, let's just say things get personal, as these things are wont to do, but not selfish, as that flies against the "hero" sense that movies must have, so there has to be some deflection of need for Da Costa to some other....blah-blah-blah. Face it, the exo-skeleton could be a crucifix motif, so Da Costa has to do some sacrificing because...well, that's the way they do it in movies these days. There can't be any motivation of "self" because apparently that would make you as "bad" as the Elysium-buyers. So, ultimately, Da Costa has to do all the fighting and scraping for somebody else, and, as per usual, it's an acquaintance's sick child. Again.

And that's the main thing that makes Elysium less than thrilling: for all the "neat" visuals, for the interesting "take" on today's events, for all the good intentions and the perversions of such, it feels like every other sci-fi Christ allegory and leaves you feeling a little hollow while its trying to make you feel noble and unselfish while watching it. Well, I've seen that before, and I thought the intention of sci-fi was to show you something different. It is a noble effort, but ultimately, it suffers from story-sameness, and recycled ideas from the cookie-cutter school of script-writing. It's too bad because Elysium has a lot going for it.

Gotta say that Elysium has some pretty cool concepts for its pleasure-wheel

Chappie

Switching Psyches (The Ol' Good Bot/Bad Bot Routine)
or
Because I'm CHAPPiE...(Like a ROM Without a Roof)

The director of the brilliant District 9 (and the more ordinary Elysium) now has a third visionary sci-film under his belt. Neill Blomkamp is a great visual stylist—none of his movies look like anything else out there, and just when somebody takes up his concepts, he pushes things further into his bleak concept of the future as an extension of the strife of Johannesburg (or Jo-burg, as it's called in his movies, eschewing the Dutch influence) despite technology continuing to move forward. His movies always have a sense of wonder about the future, but it's always along the lines of "Wonder why everything is so shitty, still," (which is a variation of "If we can get to the Moon,* why can't we fill in the blank??")

CHAPPiE is no different, even though the ads make it seem like a winsome version of a distopian "Mad Max" movie. It is anything but. Yes, the performance of Sharlto Copley as the title character is a marvel, innovative and often very charming (Copley, who is Blomkamp's "go-to" actor for...everything...does a marvelous performance of the "motion capture" variety (the thing that Andy Serkis, of Peter Jackson's movies and in the new "Planet of the Apes" series, does so extraordinarily). The movie itself is a depressing look at technology and Society, while containing a couched message about the malleability of the human spirit and a cautionary one of being too fixed to expectations.

SCOUT (CHAPPiE, specifically)

Blomkamp plops us back into the world of Elysium where the city-slums are policed by robo-cops on a set pre-program. The main defense if the Scout-droids—tall, angular humanoid shapes that patrol the streets (as outlined in the de rigeur video-fed prologue). But, all ready to go online are the Moose-droids, which are big, elephantine machines, controlled by remote human handlers using a helmet—plugged-in gamers in their own version of an urban first-person shooter. The Scouts' development team is led by Deon Wilson (Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire and The Best and Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) while the competing Moose designs, spear-headed by Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman, in a way that we'll talk about later) are still in the development stage. Moore is impatient to get them on-line to the point where he'll sabotage the successful Scout program to do it. Boss Sigourney Weaver goes with whatever works and the Scouts, for now, are working. 

MOOSE 

But Deon is not satisfied with success, and with merely working to sets of parameters and protocols. He wants his Scouts to be more human—real-live-boy Scouts—with artificial intelligence that learns and grows as it does its job. The Boss is less than encouraging about advancing the product, as much as churning them out to meet demand. Deon conspires to develop them off-site, taking a disabled Scout, a new program he's developing, and the most guarded of the firm's gizmo's, the chip to program the 'bots.

Office politics in Jo'burg: Patel and Jackman

Wouldn't ya know it? When Deon has all that gear is precisely the time he gets kidnapped by car-jacking street punks Yo-landie (played by South African punk-rapper Yolandi Visser—real name Anri du Toit) and her partners, Ninja (played by South African punk-rapper Ninja—real name Watkin Tudor Jones) and Yankie, (played by honest-to-god actor Jose Pablo Cantillo). They're scheming, too. They're in the debt of Hippo (Brandon Auret, who adapts a patois so thick, he's actually sub-titled in the movie, even though he's speaking English). Their operations are going so poorly, thanks to the Scouts, that they decide to fight fire with fire, by getting their own Scout as a defense against the robo-force. Basic math belies this (1≠zillions), but then, if these guys were any good at numbers, they wouldn't be in debt (especially considering they're living expenses amount to bling, and stolen bling at that).

Perp walk, Jo-burg style:
Yolandi, Ninja, Yankie, and CHAPPiE

Deon is forced to fix his little experiment at gun-point and under less than ideal conditions, but the re-constituted droid comes to life with basic programming, like that of a child, and quickly learns to imprint himself on the humans, interacting with them.

What CHAPPiE sees

This is good in the case of Deon and Yo-lande, semi-okay with Yankie, and downright harmful in the case of Ninja, who tends to over-react when things don't go his way, usually with violence.** This is where the movie becomes really uncomfortable and begins to feel like watching child abuse. Look, it's a movie, okay? It's about robots. I get it. But, one is supposed to connect emotionally with a movie—that's the intent. And my reaction to watching Ninja abusing the still-in-development Scout (Yo-lande calls him "Happy Chappie," which Deon hates) creates a feeling of revulsion. Blomkamp plays rough—his settings have all the charm of a refugee camp and his environments combine grinding poverty with sci-fi tech, a not mutually exclusive reflection of reality, but amped up on both sides of the spectrum.

There's a warning label that says:
"Never fist-bump with a Scout-droid"

Yo-lande and Ninja live in a gutted out industrial site, and even as Deon tries to nurture Chappie in his intellectual growth, Ninja teaches him how to live on the streets, but when Chappie's employed to do some car-jackings, the media picks up on it, sending the city of Jo-burg into a panic. Moore is pressed (actually he does the pressing) to bring the Moose on-line, and his interests are more than stemming the tide of unrest, he wants to wipe out the gangs, Deon, and Chappie for his own career advancement. It's clear that Moore is an HR nightmare. And it's interesting to note that while Copley is busy being the title character, Jackman is copying Copley's jibbering, flinty acting style for the role that (if he wasn't busy wearing a CGI suit) would have been played, equally as manically, by Copley. It's a different (and alarming) side of Jackman that's fun to watch him pull off, even while his character is being seriously psycho.

"Walk like a man/Fast as you can"
Ninja teaches Chappie to "walk street"

That backstage swapping of personalities is a bit like a sub-plot of the movie, a variation of the Sci-Fi/Horror trope of mind-swapping (only in the new vernacular, it's "up-loading" and "down-loading"); whatever the term, it's a borrowed device, but CHAPPiE (the movie) only really does anything different, and has any spark of wonder and the fantastic (or even ingenuity) in those sections. That, and in the stunt-casting of the South African rap duo Die Antwoord as themselves (think of it in the same light as casting Prince, The Beatles, or Eminem to play fantasy versions of their personas) are the only aspects where CHAPPiE isn't terribly derivative, and becomes something more than the ol' Sci-Fi zap-'em-up with Rock'em Sock'em Robots, and becomes a sort of sweetly reversed "Frankenstein," with a conclusion that says "what matters lasts."

But, it's a lot of torture getting there.

* Or it's "conspiracy theory" variant: "If we can fool the world into thinking we went to the Moon, why can't we mass-produce tin-foil hats for the Masses?"  

And yes, I am watching you while you're reading this.

And so are they.

**  This puts him at odds...and odd kinship...with Deon, who also wants things "just so" as he defines it, and explodes when they're altered, to the point where he has enough and buys a gun. The one character who "goes with the flow" is Yo-landie.