Super Chapai: A Creature Nobler Than Us - Super Chapai Film Review

A few years ago, "District 9" made me cry to death, and then "Elysium Space" was slightly disappointed, and I thought that Neil Blomkamp was probably a director who had fallen again, and all the good ideas for a lifetime were made for virgins. But "The Incredibles" reversed that impression, and as the finale of the Johannesburg trilogy, the period was weighty enough. Chapai has all the familiar visual impressions of the first two films: dirty water, full of graffiti, rusty steel, industrial robots, bright sun and heat, flaunting criminals, bare shoulders, dense tattoos, and sweat that seems to float in every inch of air. In terms of plot, those obvious motifs are also roughly used: slums, large enterprises, isolation systems, cowardly men are forced to rise up, humanoid power mechs, emotional and complex anti-heroes, flesh changes, creatures reject aliens, the whole story is consistently shrouded in a "big limit is coming" framework: "District 9" is a small clerk who gradually becomes a lobster, "Bliss" is a terminally ill maintenance worker, and "Chapai" has to face the depletion of batteries.

How do you make the audience feel for a robot character? Quite simply, just shape him as a person — from the moment he was "born." We observe Chapai's first contact with strangers, the innocence he exudes when he learns his teeth and plays with toys, his eagerness to try when he comes into contact with various cultures and exerts his artistic talents, he will be overwhelmed, he will be timid and confused, he will pray for sympathy and forgiveness, he will burst out of wisdom and courage, he has the fragility and tenacity that each of us has.

Decades ago, when it was filmed like this, the audience would laugh it off. In the early stages of computer technology, no one would believe that a bunch of chips and wires could give birth to self-conscious beings. But now we understand that human beings themselves are nothing more than carbon-based biocomputers, and that current technology is not far from creating new life on an equal footing with us. Such common sense has stimulated the audience's empathy for Chapai. When he was beaten and bullied by hooligans, we couldn't bear it, and when he stumbled out with his broken body, like a child who was full of pain from wandering, he longed for his mother's arms, and when he saw his loved ones fall in front of him, the heartbreak, we can fully feel it.

I have not yet become a father, but I have helped with newborn babies, and I have deeply experienced how joyful it is to lead a small life with a new mind to gradually become familiar, engaged, and finally embrace the world. I believe that all parents must have a deeper feeling when they see these passages in the film. The film condenses the growth of Cha Pai, and in just a few days, completes a child's life experience of more than ten or twenty years: from a blank baby, to a child full of curiosity and fear, to a rebellious teenager, and finally grows into an adult hero with a sense of responsibility and action, heroically facing strong enemies, and fighting for his loved ones. The maturity of the mind, the growth of experience, the establishment of the concept of right and wrong, and the growth of feelings are all so natural. Cha Pai can't shed tears when he is sad, he doesn't tremble when he is angry, and he dances awkwardly a few times when he is happy, but I clearly see through that titanium alloy body a living soul full of enthusiasm for life, full of love for relatives and the world.

In terms of audiovisual special effects, it continues the tradition of Neil's works doing their best in a limited space. The firepower of tearing down walls and cracking the ground, the bullets that penetrate the body like a hot knife cutting butter, show the destruction and decay of the near-future armaments, there is no laser gun that "District 9" turns into plasma, and there is no "Elysium Space" to hit space, and the power of conventional large-caliber machine guns and cluster bombs is enough to be staggering. Neil still uses his good manner of suppressing the audience to keep the audience excited, such as the bulkiness of the big robot at the beginning, which seems to be the useless waste in "Iron Armor Veyron", but the first launch immediately floats into the sky. Several high points in the whole film are similar to "District 9" and "Bliss Space", and even the time points are pinched. Although intellectually, I can count the techniques of creating excitement and sensationalism in the film, emotionally, I can't help but be excited and cry for this fictional story. Perhaps this is the charm of film art, the more you know about it, the more you revel in it.

The plot is not without loopholes, but I have always believed that a good science fiction movie is not whether its description is in line with reality, but in whether it can be justified. From this point of view, the non-hard science fiction "Cha Pai" does not have an awkward hard wound. The ending, which seems to sublimate everything, is actually implied from the first act: since consciousness can be created, of course, it can also be copied and transferred, and when Chapai began to read the Internet, the story's intention to move closer to Ghost in the Shell was already very obvious. Thus, Chapai's practice of challenging the three laws of the robot (in case Uncle Wolf is killed) also becomes understandable, and his insistence on a code of conduct that does not take human life is like a personified moral description: a robot will insist on no matter what the situation after making a promise never to kill, which is no longer a software law, but equivalent to the expression of noble character. Considering that few humans can do this, perhaps, the poster's "turning point in human evolution" is correct, and artificial intelligence is really more advanced and more adapted to the future than we are. (Text/Fang Yunan)