Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* Lions Led By Robots Presents: Chappie

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

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Hey everyone, what you're about to listen to is a preview of a bonus episode that is available on our Patreon. If you like this clip, you can grab the whole episode, as well as years of other bonus content, at www.patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys. Like, it makes sense to be like a director, and like, Neil Bloom can't being a director, and he's like, oh, I like this band. I'll have them have like a cute guest spot in my film like Ed Sheeran was in Game of Thrones, that's a weird thing that occurred and as soon as it happened it happened It was strange, but it was for five seconds and we move on it didn't make he didn't make Ed Sheeran the king of Westeros at the end like

Diane for it is is is the star of the show as well of as Charlotte Copley's voice as Chappie trying to be a brain-dead infant. It is the street. How in the fuck did they get Hugh Jackman to sign on for this film? Oh, okay, okay. Look it, we're going to park complaining for a second because we're 13 minutes in, we should probably explain the plot of this movie. So we have to, yeah, it's a Joe, it's a movie review episode. We have

to explain the fucking plot of the movie commentary. Thank you. Um, yeah. So in Johannesburg and South Africa, this, uh, military tech company has come up with these, uh, police robots. Like the first 15 minutes of this movie is like, okay, like this is, this is the best part of it because it's like so close to what like their people are trying to do now. Like this is just Boston dynamics. Good movie. It's the bones of a good movie. So, um, Dev Patel who plays Dion is the head engineer who's designed these police robots and he is trying to create a true artificial AI, like a true AI. And like all the bits of the first like 10 minutes of him talking about this AI is like, this is just like Sam Altman shit. Like this is like, um, and on the other hand you have Hugh Jackman as

like in like a weird mullet. Everyone has a horrible haircut in this movie. They look like borderlands characters. But see, this is like an incredible cultural inversion because instead of being a white fascist, South African with a mullet in Australia wearing, you know, shorts, he's the Australia doing it in South Africa. He's a white Australian fascist in shorts in Australia. He doesn't trust them fucking robots. He invented the dumbest robot in a movie of dumb robots. Like he invented the moose. Yeah. I don't trust these robots. Like he is so like the idea that the robots that are the cops, the robot, I don't want to say robot of Robocop because that is discrimination against Robocop,

which is actually a good movie in a camp way. But he invents moose, which is not a police robot at all. OK, it is an American police robot in South Africa because it is like the, was it, what's the giant murder robot in Robocop? Okay. Like it's the giant murder robot from Robocop where it can't possibly do anything other than mass murder. And it's connected to him through like a Neuralink device helmet thing rather than the the directive controlled cop robots. And the thing is like it's a mobile suit in a way.

It's huge. It's like a story tall. It can fly. It has like hellfire missiles and Gatling guns and shit. It's like this is the future of policing. And unfortunately he's probably right. Yeah. Like it's, you know, this movie, it just has like certain like whispers of better movies and you brought up Robocop because it like, it is so inspired by Robocop. It has to be. Like just various different things. And like, yeah. So that's the central tension between

Hugh Jackman and Dev Patel. Um, you're, you have robot, you have murder robots because mind you, if you look at every single one of Dev Patel's robots, they just roll out armed only with an assault rifle and his main problem with it is, but I want to control the robots as they murder people. That is their conflict. Yeah. And then on the other hand, the central conflict between Deantford and like, I think the best character acting in the entire movie is the guy who plays Hippo, who was like essentially Deantford and their crew fuck up like a drug heist or something. And they owe this guy called Hippo who has like knots and like locks at the back of his head.

It's impressive. He looks like a Borderlands character. Yeah, so pretty much they have a week to get him 60 million Rand, which is... It is three million dollars USD. Which like in terms of a heist's not that much money, but whatever. So especially because if we were to believe Ninja, a man who looks like he's in his mid fifties and calls himself Ninja, Ninja playing the character named Ninja, uh, you know, he's the number one gangster. He should be able to get that money.

No problem. But instead he lives, he lives in a squat with his weird space cadet partner and their robot infant. They eventually get, Oh, and they're American friend who is called America. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's 20 million rounds. So it's a million dollars. But anyway, so then like Dion is also like working on the artificial talents at Anyway, so then like Dion is also like working on the artificial intelligence at home and actually like cracks it. He's like, OK, it's this is going to work. But he there is a scout robot called that's number 22 that keeps getting fucked up

on a schedule to be destroyed. And Dion decides that, no, I'm going to save, I'm going to test out the battery. Yeah. Yeah. The, it gets shot in the chest, but with an RPG by hippo and like the battery is few. So it's chest or can't be replaced. Can't be recharged. Dion decides to save this robot from being crushed to like test out the AI on a book

to do that he needs the guard key, which is like a fucking like, it looks like a USB Bluetooth receiver. This is not the only time USBs come into play where they absolutely shouldn't. At the very end, when they're uploading, the whole reason I came up with the stupid cold open is because that's what this ends up being at the end where Yolande gets murked and so does Dev and they get their consciousness uploaded into scout robots. And Yolande's consciousness can apparently be stalled on a USB, which me, which admittedly after learning about them as people makes sense. Like you, you're such a, you're so little of a human being your consciousness could be stored

on this thing that I normally use for porn so in order to uh raise this money the the antwerp gang find out about dion and he's developing the robots and they decide to fucking carjack it which is the most south african thing in this movie car jackings happen like multiple times. Also, so they like kidnap them. Everybody's pretty calm to them. Like, oh, it's happening again. I mean, look, it's Johannesburg. Yeah, I get it. It's like getting robbed for your shoes in Michigan.

Like, it's fine. I don't wear good shoes for a reason. The map, but no, but the line where he like a ninja, like fucking knocks him out and goes, welcome to Joe bookurg. I'm like I hate this fucking movie so much Oh my god, so fun fact. I looked into the back production of this film because there had to be some Gems right one of them was Dev Patel was effectively kidnapped by Ninja and brought to Soweto Yeah he like locked him in the car and they said that he's like gonna go out for food

or something and effectively brought him to one of the worst neighborhoods of the area that they were filming in because Ninja wanted to show him his quote, hood. One sec. It should also be pointed out that he is not from Soweto at all. He was mostly raised in Cape Town, not Johannesburg, but he wanted to do that whole thing. He's like, I want to show you how hard I am.

So I'm going to take you to this part of, this is like, renowned, rough part of town, and kidnapped a man. And also, Ninja, a man who was not an actor and is in fact, horrible, a horrible human being, accused of horrific things, would send emails to other members of the crew correcting their acting. And he would also do it on set to include Hugh Jackman. I have no fucking idea how this film did get canceled because Hugh Jackman ripped this man apart with his bare hands. It's also worth it's also worth pointing out that Ninja was 40 when this is filmed. And he's a rough 40.

I'm saying that as someone who's a rough 36 And he's a rough 40. I'm seeing that as someone who's a rough 36. He's a rough 40. I assume all the things that he does on his free time make him age horribly because he's a cool person. And I guess they were also just drunk and high all the time, which that kind of, you know, it's the implication. You hire two people like this, they're probably drunk and high all the time.