Wednesday 3 June 2015

Ex Machina/Chappie















Robot Fever
Robots are the thing of the future, or are they? AI (artificial intelligence) is probably just around the corner and we don't even know it yet, but do we actually want robots to be as smart as they are in the movies.

I remember when i was just a kid and watching my first AI movie, 'AI'. I remember how cool it would be to have a robot as a friend or to just help around the house but it would probably be very expensive too. AI was one of the first films to portray a robot to produce real feelings. In the movie, a company made a child robot to show affection towards a family who thought they lost their son to a disease. After a while the son gets cured and the robots life changes for the worst.

That's how AI movies really pan out but some have changed over the years with more FX and more in depth story lines.



Ex Machina

Ex machine is about a guy called Caleb who wins a competition at the worlds largest internet company he works for. He then spends a few days at the CEO's private retreat house of the company to go through some weird experiments. The winner then learns that the CEO has built the worlds first AI robot called Ava, but Caleb starts to have feelings for the robot as she is very beautiful and smart. Being the first person to have iteration with the robot Caleb is confused and questions his own feelings towards her.


Thoughts & experiences.


Normally at the end of robot films the robots go crazy and try to take of the human race, not with Ex Machina. I was so confused thinking i knew what was going to happen at the end but it completely through me off guard as the unexpected happened. I was hoping for a romantic ending with Ava & Caleb running off into the sun set together, but NO! Ava was so smart she was planning to use Caleb to escape the private house with out him, what a plan it was as well.

I absolutely loved this movie as it was very simple and elegant in its own way. I say simple because there isn't much scene settings as it is only in the location of the private house. Don't get me wrong there is a lot of doors and rooms in this house but that only adds to the mystery of the film. While i was watching Ex Machina I thought that the Director/Producer wanted to capture the same emotion for the audience towards Ava and i think they did a great job by doing that. If you have ever watched a movie and started to get emotional in some way, this film will capture your emotion towards this beautiful AI robot.

If i was Caleb i don't know if i would be happy to see her out in the open near me or scared what she might do since she is made out of sharp metal. You knew she had a plan of some kind but seriously though, what was Caleb thinking? was he hoping to take her home and bake 1000's of cookies together or even rob banks together? who knows but he should of been more cautious. I cant even trust my own Iphone let alone a fully built robot that could kill me at any time. If it did end with them being together though i think it would of been to obvious of an ending and kind of disappointing. 


Chappie

In the near future a robot forced police department roam the streets of South Africa to protect and serve the community which humans were unable to do. Now the lawbreakers and criminals of South Africa are beginning to fight back and one of the police robots get stolen to be reprogrammed to help the outlaws. The criminals who now have the robot want the inventor to help them reprogram him to only find out he is the only AI robot to exist. The robot named 'Chappie' is confused as he doesn't know what identity to take or what side of the law to be on but that doesn't stop the police seeing him to be a threat to society.

Thoughts & experiences.

When i think of South African movies i initially think of 'Elysium' and 'District 9', probably because they're in the near future and filmed in South Africa or maybe because Sharlto Copley is a huge part in these three movies. They are all so alike but different in their own way. 

Chappie was similar to the other South African movies but also similar to 'iRobot' as they were both disaster AI movies. Chappie was the film that we all needed in 2015 as the last AI movie i remember was Wall-e but that was a kids film (loved it).I don't know about you but there hasn't been many AI films to remember recently, accept from Ex Machina & Chappie. Releasing these two amazing films near the same time to one another was risky but perfectly acceptable, as we all need reminding whats to come in the future.

Chappie is not just action filled, it is also a very funny. Seeing Chappie grow through his stages like a human would but at a faster rate. When he was going through his growing stages it was one of the funniest moments of the film because he started off with a toddlers persona, not knowing whats right or wrong and learning from his criminal/inventor parents. As the two very different sided parents fight over how Chappie should act that's where all the drama comes in.

Towards the end of the film you can see the criminals and inventor come together to protect this wonderful robot as if it was one of their own. little did they know Chappie knew how to gather a humans thoughts and transfer them to a machine. This is where it got AMAZING! In the mix of this war with the police and criminals the inventor gets injured in the mix but Chappie had an idea to save him as a machine.

So yeah, the inventor became a machine! imagine how cool that would be in real life. I honestly don't know what i would do first, either go scare my friends as a robot or go test out my robot abilities. As he became a robot how will he actually survive? will he gather more robots to his aid or just hide out? i think there could easily be a sequel to Chappie but i don't know if they would want to ruin the first movie.

If i was a kid watching this movie in the cinema i would love it. I would probably beg my parents for a robot from the store, because robots are real and robots are built in stores right? Anyway! As an adult i still loved this movie because it consist of action, comedy and it made me feel for the robot as it was like a human-being. But when the inventor got shot i knew he was a gonna and thought back to the movie 'Avatar', you know how he was human and became an alien. Well that's what this part was like.

As Movies and TV evolve faster than ever with better cameras, equipment and even FX, so why can't robots evolve as well.






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