Following on from @Hitcore's post here, I've now watched this sci-fi movie about a broken police robot (sorta Robocop style, but fully AI driven, no human component) that gets reprogrammed with a sentient AI and the adventures that follow and really liked it.
I'm not going to say too much outside the spoiler below, but I can tell you that the central CGI robot, Scout 22, was superb (as were the other supporting ones) one of the best I've ever seen in fact. It's similar to District 9 made in 2009 and probably better as the film is a lot newer, made in 2015, so technological advances will have been made in six years. It looked flawless, totally photoreal, and the attention to fine detail was amazing. The film was shot and shown in UHD on Sky Cinema, which would have revealed any flaws in the CGI character models, especially in how they interacted with the live action scenes that they were embedded in, but there were none. Even the way the robots moved was perfect, having been done with motion capture from real human beings. I was really impressed with the whole CGI depiction in this film and that means a lot to me. The robot had real character and likeability and that's also down to the decent acting.
I give it 8/10.
I recommend reading the spoiler after you've seen the film.
I'm not going to say too much outside the spoiler below, but I can tell you that the central CGI robot, Scout 22, was superb (as were the other supporting ones) one of the best I've ever seen in fact. It's similar to District 9 made in 2009 and probably better as the film is a lot newer, made in 2015, so technological advances will have been made in six years. It looked flawless, totally photoreal, and the attention to fine detail was amazing. The film was shot and shown in UHD on Sky Cinema, which would have revealed any flaws in the CGI character models, especially in how they interacted with the live action scenes that they were embedded in, but there were none. Even the way the robots moved was perfect, having been done with motion capture from real human beings. I was really impressed with the whole CGI depiction in this film and that means a lot to me. The robot had real character and likeability and that's also down to the decent acting.
I give it 8/10.
I recommend reading the spoiler after you've seen the film.
Here come your life-changing spoilers, you have been warned! 
First, this isn't a synopsis, so you won't understand much of the plot from this. You can find this at the IMDB link below, Wikipedia etc. A quick Google will turn up lots of them, if you want it.
This is a movie where you have to leave your brain firmly at the door, or you'll be groaning all the way through at the plot holes writ large, but it still makes for a watchable movie that I enjoyed very much and was happy to give it an 8 for its entertaining silliness. I think perhaps these plotholes are a bit of satire too from the director, Neill Blomkamp's, twisted sense of humour, not sure. Decide for yourself if you see the movie. Let's go through some of them now.
First, this isn't a synopsis, so you won't understand much of the plot from this. You can find this at the IMDB link below, Wikipedia etc. A quick Google will turn up lots of them, if you want it.
This is a movie where you have to leave your brain firmly at the door, or you'll be groaning all the way through at the plot holes writ large, but it still makes for a watchable movie that I enjoyed very much and was happy to give it an 8 for its entertaining silliness. I think perhaps these plotholes are a bit of satire too from the director, Neill Blomkamp's, twisted sense of humour, not sure. Decide for yourself if you see the movie. Let's go through some of them now.
- The original robot, Scout 22, which became Chappie after reprogramming with the AI software, was written off after taking a small rocket to the chest fired from a baddie which made a small crater in it and blasted the bot through a brick wall. It shut down after that. Seems reasonable, but then we learn that the computer in its head was still fully functional as was the battery. Turns out the only problem was that the battery was "fused" to the body shell, so couldn't be replaced, necessitating scrapping the robot. Umm, hangonaminute! These things are modular, so the body shell could simply be replaced and also, is there no charging port? Seems not, as this was the sole reason for scrapping an expensive robot. Afterwards, when it's stolen from the company's maintenance centre, it's woken up and is completely functional, other than the battery is gonna run out in five days. So, what about removing serviceable parts from it to repair other bots with? This was a real facepalmer. Ok, this whole scenario was pretty dumb, but it gets worse.
- The head programmer and robot designer, Deon (Dev Patel), creates a fully sentient AI program (far fetched, but ok, this is sci-fi), but needs to test it in a robot. He asks the CEO (Sigourney Weaver) nicely if he can have that scrapped robot to try it out on, but she, in her infinite wisdom says a very firm No! This is apparently due to insurance issues. This short sighted refusal is actually quite believable tbh. This is when Deon steals it from the company's robot maintenance centre. On the way home, he's carjacked by some violent criminals with guns who want to use him to switch off the robot police force so that they can commit violent crimes with impunity. He's then forced at gunpoint to program Scout 22 with his new AI creation and lo and behold, Scout 22 wakes up and behaves like a newborn baby, sort of. Certainly nothing like its old self which has now been replaced. Chappie then emerges, as he's named by the female gangster. Note that when Deon stole it, he also stole the hardware security key required to reprogram it. Apparently, there's only one and it's dead easy to nick with just a password to the vault it's stored in. Oh, ok. Really? Chappie then learns language impossibly quickly in a day without even having enough exposure to speech and context and gets to learn motor skills, how to fire a gun etc. Leave your brain at the door here. Oh heck, just chuck it away!
- Since the battery is running out on Chappie, he will soon die, in about 5 days, but understandably really doesn't want to. If we accept the ridiculous battery issue which could actually be quickly fixed in a real robot, then all one has to do is remove the head and put it on another fully functining robot body. But no, for some reason this isn't possible as it's sentient, leading to the following plot hole.
- A really massive plot hole is use of the mind reading helmet (note, made for a human head) required to remote control the baddie's bot (a huge, monstrous thing) which isn't autonomously AI driven. Such helmets sort of exist today allowing physically disabled people to control a cursor or make simple robot arm movements just by thinking about it and the tech is still at a very early stage. Amazing stuff, so this part is fine. Ok, so being a sci-fi movie, this is a very advanced one that allows for far more control of the robot, which I can accept. What then requires the leaving of one's brain at the door is that the helmet is used by Chappie to upload its mind to another body. Hang on, I thought this was for human heads only? But wait, it gets worse!
Deon has been fatally shot in his side and is about to die, so Chappie puts the helmet on his head and uploads his human mind from his organic brain to a test robot that's just sitting there. At this point, you may be tempted to bang your head against the wall, this is so stupid, so impossible. The final insult to injury is that this is all achieved by connecting the helmet to some beat up old laptop, sigh. It happens to be a Sony laptop, cuz this matters, lol. - There are something like 120 of these police robots in active service, but our baddie, just by using the single critical hardware key (of which there are no others, of course) is able to remotely program them with malware to force them all to shut down at once. Hangonaminit! Where's physical security, software security, checks and balances like senior management authorisation?! Nope he just sticks in this hardware key into a USB-A port and away he goes, the usual simplistic insult to the intelligence from many movies depicting baddies in unauthorised scenarios doing naughty things. At least the chaos unleashed by watching some of the police bots shut down in mid-action, like driving cars or involved in armed busts is entertaining and very well visualised with that superb CGI.
