Chappie and RoboCop Neill Blomkamp's Dystopia [Mizumaru Kawahara's CINEMONOLOGUE Vol.8]

Index

• Director Neill Blomkamp will be directing the new RoboCop movie!
• How robots move from Murphy to Chappie
• Alien, robots, and humans all search for “self”

Director Neill Blomkamp will be directing the new RoboCop movie!

Neill Blomkamp, ​​director of `` District 9 '' (2009) and `` Chappie '' (2015), is apparently planning to make a new `` RoboCop '' movie. The two masterpieces mentioned above are both science fiction works set in Johannesburg, the director's hometown. This was my first time seeing the film, and it had many similarities to that work, which depicts a battle between cyborg police officers in a devastated near-future Detroit.

`` District 9 '' is set 28 years after a large number of Alien appeared from a spaceship that flew over Johannesburg and were isolated as refugees on the ground. The main character is an ordinary bureaucrat-like man who works for an agency that manages Alien, and he goes to a hut to evict refugees from another planet from the ``District 9,'' which has now become a slum, to the new ``10th District.'' Just when he is assigned the task of going door to door and getting Signs on documents (which is nice in that it's simple), he gets caught up in a conspiracy. The film uses a documentary touch to depict a unique worldview in which Alien, who would normally appear as terrifying invaders, are oppressed by Earth's humans as refugees. The strange appearance of the Alien and the graphic depiction of them living in the slums gives it a strangely persuasive power.

Chappie , on the other hand, is set in Johannesburg, where robot police have been brought in to maintain order. A robot police officer who was damaged in a fight with an armed group and was on the verge of being discarded is reborn with the latest artificial intelligence, but a group of gangs planning a robbery (the same names as Ninja and Yolandi from the rap unit Die Antwoord) (played by his appearance), he is taken away as a weapon and raised like a gangster. Again, the story begins with a documentary touch, and the circumstances surrounding the introduction of robot police officers are briefly explained. Inserting documentaries and news programs can quickly explain the worldview and draw the audience into a fictional world. The technique was also used extensively in 1987's RoboCop and subsequent series. I really like the inclusion of TV commercials full of dark humor.

The calm yet painful depiction of violence and the high-tech yet eerie atmosphere of the mechs give it a sense of RoboCop, but what really impresses me is the rawness, dirt, and sense of life in a crime city. Such details give the Alien, robot cops, and other strange creatures a sense of presence, making the fictional Johannesburg seem connected to reality. That's why it's so intense and scary.

That might be something that wasn't present in the reboot version of RoboCop , which was released in 2014, the year before Chappie . The smart and stylish black RoboCop was one thing in its own right, but I think the uniqueness of the first RoboCop was its untidy yet rugged, metal-like eeriness. Blomkamp's world is a cold, smelly dystopia.

How robots move from Murphy to Chappie