Image via Collider

Whenever a new movie comes out that isn’t a sequel, remake, or based on a comic book comes out, I have a bad habit of immediately assuming that it will be good. We can define it as confusing originality with brains. A good name for that would be Elysium Syndrome.

With Chappie, Neill Blomkamp manages to pull himself out of a sophomore slump with something that is sometimes frustrating but often fun and filled with interesting, half-realized ideas.

Chappie takes place during an undetermined point in the South African future, when the city of Johannesburg is riddled with crime. In response, a weapons manufacturer (boy, does Neill Blomkamp love weapons manufacturers) creates an army of robot cops to fight crime. Okay, so this is basically the exact same premise as RoboCop. However, the robots here are a lot clunkier and look like they are assembled from old auto parts. It is part of Blomkamp’s goal to create outdated futures that have something of a charm to them.

A scientist named Deon (Dev Patel), who has more AI than people in his life, takes on a bold experiment to reprogram one of the robots to give it the capacity to learn. Thus, he gives birth to Chappie, who is played under a suit of scrap metal by the immensely talented Sharlto Copley. Chappie is taken in by a group of criminals who want to use him to pull off one last, daring heist. A movie about criminals trying to pull off one last, daring heist? I don’t think I’ve seen that before.

The criminals in question are Ninja (Ninja) and Yolandi (Yo-Landi Visser), who are played by Ninja and Yolandi, who make up the South African rap group Die Antwoord. Now, I am not sure if they were playing Die Antwoord here or not, but given the fact that they have the same names and wear Die Antwoord t-shirts and listen to Die Antwoord songs, I have a feeling that there wasn’t a whole lot of acting there. I have never been able to tell whether Ninja and Yolandi are sincere or elaborate performance artists. That is probably what makes them so fun to argue about. What I will say, though, is that Yolandi is surprisingly sweet as Chappie’s motherly figure.

Casting isn’t one of Chappie’s weaknesses; it is more what it does with its cast members. Hugh Jackman is surprisingly bland as a fellow inventor who has his own ideas about fighting crime. I guess the cargo shorts and mullet are good defining characteristics, but the film also has him throwing a rugby ball around for many of his scenes. This is either because he is Australian, or because he is playing a South African, or both. Chappie is the kind of film that has the chutzpah to cast one of sci-fi’s greatest heroines (Sigourney Weaver), and then sideline her in favor of more explosions.

The real issue behind Chappie is not in the concept itself or in how it explores a larger moral issue (more on that soon), but how it sets up the world. District 9 showed that Blomkamp is actually quite deft at setting up fascinating exposition. Chappie introduces us to this world in fast forward, giving us only a vague sense of what it is like, and why things are going as badly as they are. This undercuts a lot of the social commentary that the film desperately wants to supply.

This is coming from somebody who normally hates exposition. Yet, the lack of explaining also benefits the film in a lot of ways. Chappie introduces us to the idea that you can upload your consciousness on a flash drive. That is an insane idea. Somebody like Christopher Nolan might have spent a huge chunk of time trying to justify the neurological patterns that make this possible. Here, you are either on board, or you’re a square. There is something kind of liberating about that. Sometimes, sci-fi makes more sense when it isn’t constantly trying to justify its plausibility.

I have said some bad things about Chappie, and it seems like most of the world hates it, but I couldn’t help but leave this film with a smile on my face. Sure, it isn’t until the third act that I actually felt any real sense of danger, but there is a fun, goofy feeling running through the film that just works. Plus, this film has a lot of ideas, and maybe a lot of them don’t make sense, but at least it actually presents them in a way where you can have a discussion about them. Chappie is a mess, but it is an entertaining one at least that gets halfway to saying something great.

Maybe Chappie needed a better editor or a better writer. Either way, it proves this: Neill Blomkamp may not live up to the immense promise of District 9, but he’s no M. Night Shyamalan. If anything, at least this film gives us the image of an adorable robot wearing bling and throwing ninja stars.

Here’s the Die Antwoord song from the end credits. I first heard this song two years. It still kind of freaks me out, but it is catchy:

Episode 12: In this week’s episode, Cassie and Ian discuss the Tony Awards, share highlights from the brilliant third season of Veep, and review The Fault in Our Stars.

Professor X, or rejected member of Creedence Clearwater Revival? Image via Total Film

“Must be some kind of…hot tub time machine.”

Most prequels are not necessary, because a lot of stories are a lot better if you know a lot less about the characters and the world. As Patton Oswalt said, “I don’t want to know where the stuff I love comes from. I want to love the stuff that I love.”

Enter X-Men: Days of Future Past, a cross between a sequel and a prequel that justifies its existence by being the most consistently entertaining blockbuster released so far this summer. It succeeds in bringing back the feel of the original X-Men movies while expanding the universe greatly. I have always been a big fan of X-Men, partly because its built-in allegory works so well. It is one of the darkest of all superhero stories yet as a movie franchise, it does not try too hard to be gritty.

Days of Future Past is a prequel and a sequel that’s also a sequel to the prequel called First Class. That sums up just how wildly confusing franchise storytelling has become. Days of Future Past does right where First Class went wrong. By not truly introducing the most interesting conflict and character developments until the very end, First Class suffered from the same problems that plague most prequels. However, the whole of Days of Future Past, not just the last ten minutes, are interesting.

As the title might suggest, Days of Future Past is set in both the past and the future. In the future, mutants have been nearly completely wiped out thanks to Sentinels, which are robots that can compete with mutant powers. In the future, mutants don’t fight each other anymore, because everyone is just fighting to stay alive. Like humans, mutants will also put aside their differences in the face of a bigger problem. In the future, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent back into the past to stop the war from happening. Wolverine is sent back to the 1970s, where he has his past body, but his future consciousness. Basically, Wolverine has to follow the same rules that John Cusack has to follow in Hot Tub Time Machine.

Nobody gives the X-Men movies enough credit for gathering some incredibly solid ensembles. A movie that gives us both Michael Fassbender and Ian McKellen playing the same character should be celebrated. Days of Future Past sees the return of some great X-Men from past movies, but also introduces some great new characters. Peter Dinklage steps out of Tyrion Lannister’s armor for long enough to portray Dr. Bolivar Trask, the scientist who designed the Sentinels.

Days of Future Past seems to have a really strong understanding of each mutant’s place in this universe. For instance, Days of Future Past pulls an Iron Man 3 by taking away one of its heroes’ powers. Here, it is Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) who is suddenly left without his ability to control people’s minds. Without this power, we see the terrible weight one must carry when they can read and control everybody’s thoughts. Meanwhile, we get more of a glimpse of Mystique’s (Jennifer Lawrence) backstory as well as her importance in the world of the X-Men. Days of Future Past proves its worth as a sort-of-prequel by giving backstory to characters we probably didn’t know could be so interesting.

The latest X-Men installment sees Bryan Singer reclaim the director’s chair from the likes of Matthew Vaughn and Brett Ratner. Some parts of Days of Future Past are so good that they made me feel like a kid again, wide-eyed and ready to become obsessed with X-Men and X2. The best scene in the movie shows the world through the eyes of Quicksilver (Evan Peters), who is known for his super speed. It is funny and even a little bit awe-inspiring. I will not spoil it much more, but I will say that it literally looks like a comic book come to life. More comic book movies should aspire to look exactly like this one scene.

Sure, Days of Future Past is not without its problems. While it does not take too much time explaining the rules of the world, the time travel becomes a little bit too convoluted in just a few instances. Sometimes, it relies a little too heavily on action movie cliches. If you don’t believe me, just look at the tracking shot of a bunch of guys sitting at a table and looking at a map in order to plan a heist. Sometimes, some cliches are needed though, and they just look kind of quaint just as long as the whole plot isn’t centered around them. Days of Future Past is the film I didn’t realize would cure my cynicism, because it gave me back at least some faith in big budget filmmaking. It might not be as smart as it thinks it is, but there’s no harm in encouraging more movies that at least have a single thought about topics as big as Civil Rights and the implications of time travel.

Brain Farts From The Edge (SPOILERS)

• If we are on the topic of Hot Tub Time Machine, I could just hear “Once in a Lifetime” by The Talking Heads playing as Wolverine walked back into Xavier Academy in the present day.
• Speaking of which, Hot Tub Time Machine is a great movie that deserves more respect than it gets.
• This movie made the 70s look cool.
• Some people don’t like it, but I enjoy alternate looks at well known historical events. I like how they fit Magneto into the JFK assassination.
• I loved the Zapruder-type footage they showed as onlookers filmed the events happening in Paris.
• Days of Future Past explores a lot of the same themes as First Class, yet somehow manages to explore them in a much more complicated and interesting way. It also carries a much bigger emotional impact. I will attribute that once again to character development that doesn’t just occur in the last ten minutes.
• Now, I think it’s time to go dust off those old X-Men comics hiding in my attic.