14. Chappie - The Moment Where Die Antwoord Wont Die
Writer/director Neill Blomkamp is a man gratingly hellbent on eradicating any and all goodwill still left over from his brilliant debut District 9 six years ago. Elysium was bad enough, if only by being charmlessly mediocre. Chappie was set to be worse and then he cast his favourite band in central roles in the film. Not just central roles, but essentially playing themselves: thats Ninja and Yolandi Visser from rave-rap group Die Antwoord, by the way, playing characters named Ninja and Yolandi who dress, act and speak exactly as Ninja and Yolandi Visser from Die Antwoord do onstage and in interviews. If you were feeling incredibly charitable, you could consider it to be metatextual in some way, but really its just lazy and sad and lazy all over again. Lets get this out of the way: no, Die Antwoord are not good actors. They cant even play their own stage personas convincingly on screen, which you would imagine would be a slam dunk. Somehow, Blomkamp developed the impression that these two individuals would be fantastic in the lead roles as the mother and father of the fledgling artificial intelligence of the title. They were not. More precisely, the pair were so obnoxious in the film that many reviewers actively wanted them to die. Its not entirely clear whether they meant the characters in the movie or Die Antwoord themselves, although both would have been fine with me. The net result is that Chappie feels like a feature length advertisement for the band themselves in the form of a remake of Short Circuit. If thats what Blomkamp was aiming for, then mission accomplished
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.