Neill Blomkamp
153 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
Among her employees is a sweet, nerdy Indian guy (Dev Patel, marginally more believable, on account of being an actual Indian, than Fisher Stevens in Short Circuit) who dreams of instilling consciousness in these buckets of bolts.
However you dress up the movie, it really is a clunky mashup of Short Circuit (1986) and RoboCop (1987) — with large dollops of Mr. Dickens’ Oliver Twist thrown in.
Short Circuit's Johnny Five was one of those gentle, self-aware robots, inclined to tolerate humankind's failings rather than hunt us to extinction.
It’s idiotic, incoherent and downright punishing to sit through – unless you’ve been hankering for an ultra-violent remake of Short Circuit in which Steve Guttenberg and Ally Sheedy are played by Die Antwoord.
“RoboCop,” “Short Circuit” and even “A.I.” have been cited as inspirations for “Chappie,” but they’re so prevalent in parallels, it feels like elements are directly lifted.
Unfortunately, for me it is a movie that does not pay homage to previous films (“Robocop,” “Short Circuit” come to mind) but borrows liberally and directly from these and other movies.
The creatures combine insect and crustacean anatomy and at times recall David Cronenberg’s DNA splicing of fly and human from “The Fly” to deliver some genuinely uncomfortable scenes.
Physical transformation scenes reminiscent of Cronenberg’s The Fly will freak out some viewers — and thrill others.
It’s not that there isn’t a clear weight of genre history behind Neill Blomkamp’s astonishing feature debut: District 9 nods to everything from Cronenberg’s The Fly to Verhoeven’s Robocop, from Raimi’s Evil Dead II to Scott’s Black Hawk Down.
While built on elements from Alien Nation , Enemy Mine , and even David Cronenberg’s The Fly , District 9 transcends its inspirations by focusing on story, character, and the very human disregard for others until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.
The film recalls the likes of The Day the Earth Stood Still, David Cronenberg's The Fly , and Independence Day .
Soon his body is undergoing a transformation similar to the one in David Cronenberg’s The Fly, and he becomes a fugitive, hunted down by both thuggish government mercenaries and a group of Nigerian gangsters who want to eat him for animistic religious purposes.
Seamlessly blending the natural and the unnatural, Blomkamp layers visual gags (signs warning "No Non-Human Loitering") with aural (alien conversations that sound like extreme intestinal distress) while advancing a plot rife with references to E.T., The Fly and Alien Nation.
(The core concept — extraterrestrial asylum seekers land on Earth and become second-class citizens — was explored in the 1990s Alien Nation movie and TV series.)
While built on elements from Alien Nation , Enemy Mine , and even David Cronenberg’s The Fly , District 9 transcends its inspirations by focusing on story, character, and the very human disregard for others until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.
Sci-fi fans will spot similarities between District 9’s premise and the 1988 film Alien Nation that starred James Caan and Mandy Patinkin, which was later made into a television series.
Like “Alien Nation” (1988), it begins with the premise of a large alien population being stranded on Earth.
(And it’s as little like the 1988 flick Alien Nation as it could possibly be, even if at the shallowest surface, D9 appears to be aping it.)
Despite a substantively delayed release and let’s go with “unenthusiastic” marketing, Captive State still made goo-goo eyes at those of us who have been hankering for a spiritual successor to District 9 for a decade.
Much like Neill Blomkamp's District 9, Captive State is based on a premise that's a clear-cut parable for real world issues (in this case, American imperialism) and taps into present-day concerns about government surveillance and the growing economic divide between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else.
Despite nods in the direction of such worthy endeavors as Attack the Block and District 9 , Captive State is basically a World War II picture reconfigured for a sci-fi crowd, with outer space invaders cast as the Nazis and humans repping the two sides of the French flip: resistance fighters and collaborators.
Attempts to assemble it into a workable package in the editing room didn’t work, so we’re left with a weird cross between District 9 and The Battle of Algiers that doesn’t do either of those apparent inspirations justice.
Por la construcción obsesiva de un mundo realista, esta cinta le debe más a District 9 (que tiene varias referencias directas en la cinta) o a Monsters que a Independence Day .
At times,“Captive State” plays like a “Cloverfield”/”District 9” type film.
RoboCop (1987)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
influenced Chappie (2015), District 9 (2009), Elysium (2013)
Themes Plot
It’s not that there isn’t a clear weight of genre history behind Neill Blomkamp’s astonishing feature debut: District 9 nods to everything from Cronenberg’s The Fly to Verhoeven’s Robocop, from Raimi’s Evil Dead II to Scott’s Black Hawk Down.
Eventually, like Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom , the documentary conceit fades away and genre conventions assert themselves — in this case in a blend of violent action, humor and horror tropes, with riffs on everything from Cameron’s Aliens to Verhoeven’s Robocop to Cronenberg’s The Fly — but the film remains a startlingly fresh and provocative take on well-traveled terrain.
It has a healthy amount of social commentary – it does not take long before drug dealers exploit the prawns, and let’s just say that one scene will make Michael Vick very uncomfortable – and an equal amount of gratuitous violence, much like his “RoboCop” from two decades earlier.
Their model here is clearly Paul Verhoeven's 1987 classic, "RoboCop," but where that movie gave us bloody good fun, "Chappie" offers mostly mean-spirited violence and a generally dismal worldview.
The film goes beyond the ideas put forth in Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop to a reality in which robots make up most of Johnnesburg’s police department.
With “Chappie,” the director and co-writer (with Terri Tatchell) opts for cute (like Number 5 in “Short Circuit”) combined with a “Robocop” bad corporate guy trying to take control of the killer robot biz (very much like Ronny Cox in the latter film).
From Fritz Lang's classic "Metropolis" to last year's "Total Recall," the premise of a society drastically divided by class has been a model for many dystopian science-fiction stories.
Simmering or open class warfare has been a rich trope for sci-fi futurecasting as far back as Fritz Lang ’s 1927 “Metropolis” and as recently as “In Time,” “ Total Recall ” and Michael Winterbottom’s fine, underseen “Code 46.” Lang’s influence is particularly evident in “Elysium’s” army of industrious worker bees slaving away on the factory floor of the Armadyne corporation, whose slithery CEO, Carlyle ( William Fichtner ), developed Elysium and all the technology that makes it run.
Mix in an exoskeleton turning Max into super-strong robo-drone makes “Elysium’s” connection to Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” even clearer.
Max and his fellow wage slaves are thematic kin to the subterranean workers in Fritz Lang's " Metropolis " (1927), another science-fiction tale that literalized the notion of an upper and lower class.
By design, her performance is only slightly less robotic than the Maschinenmensch robot woman, Maria, in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," a major influence on Blomkamp's movie.
Whereas most science fiction today is all sleekness and impressive spaceships, metaphor comes first for Blomkamp, who sees "Elysium" in the tradition of Fritz Lang's similarly allegorical "Metropolis."
Blade Runner (1982)
Directed by Ridley Scott
influenced Elysium (2013), Chappie (2015), District 9 (2009)
Themes Visuals
In Moon we had Lunar Industries Ltd. ; in Wall-E it was Buy N Large ; Blade Runner featured the Tyrell Corp .
With an original vision, a cogent screenplay, Oscar-worthy editing by Julian Clarke, and a star-making performance by Sharlto Copley, director/co-writer Neill Blomkamp has fashioned a sci-fi nightmare that belongs side by side with Blade Runner, Gattaca, and Dark City .
Somewhere in the clutter is a great sci-fi yarn in the vein of “Blade Runner,” but Blomkamp still seems to be finding his focus as a storyteller.
Later, as a downtrodden adult and recovering thief, bald-shaven Max toils on an assembly line in what’s left of Los Angeles, hauntingly rendered by Blomkamp in helicopter shots that recall the opening of “Blade Runner,” and on the ground in ways that suggest the most impoverished sections of contemporary Cape Town and Mexico City.
In addition to the aforementioned classics, you’re going to catch bits of another Dick-based work, “Blade Runner,” as well as “The Matrix,” “Mad Max” and “Escape from New York.”
The early scenes of Max negotiating his frustrating, ugly world, with its crowded buses, interminable lines and cheap pleasures, reveal Blomkamp's debt to such dystopian predecessors -- mostly from the 1970s -- as "THX-1138," "Soylent Green," "Mad Max," "Blade Runner," Richard Stanley's "Hardware," "Children of Men," even Spielberg's "A.I.
The movie has a whole “PG-rated Chappie ” vibe that almost makes it heartwarming.
With their first credited feature screenplay, Craig Luck and Ivor Powell seem to have taken inspiration from everything from “A Boy and His Dog” and “Chappie” to their star’s own “Cast Away.”
Finch is another Last Man on Earth post-apocalyptic film, something akin to Chappie meets The Walking Dead and Cast Away.
The CGI robot isn’t as adorable as “WALL-E” (2008) nor as annoying as “Chappie” (2015), but still an impressive feat of visual effects.
On the downside, though, the film also features a supporting robot character who often veers dangerously close to Chappie territory in being the most toe-curlingly irritating artificial intelligence in the history of movies before finding a redemption of his own.
His previous two movies are similarly minor — Greyhound and News of the World were only memorable because he’s in them — and now one glimpse of the poster for Finch makes a body wonder if the perennially lovable Tom Hanks, one of history’s greatest film actors, is going to push a shopping cart across yet another post-apocalyptic wasteland with Chappie’s little brother.
Independence Day (1996)
Directed by Roland Emmerich
influenced District 9 (2009), Elysium (2013)
Visuals Themes Characters
For all this time the aliens, designed by Image Engine of Canada from the Goliath beetle and which look like a cyborg experiment in an underwater metal shop, fought for survival, dreamed of their home planet, and procreated, with their mother ship in the sky over them like an inert protective shell, visually akin to the space ship in "Independence Day."
The film recalls the likes of The Day the Earth Stood Still, David Cronenberg's The Fly , and Independence Day .
Blomkamp could have made his human protagonist a dashing hero, someone like Will Smith in Independence Day .
It is a fascinating contrast to the politics of alien invasion films such as Independence Day and War of the Worlds (original and remake).
This is what Independence Day should have been.
“District 9” flips so many sci-fi conventions on their heads that making a movie like “Independence Day” today would be laughable.
Battle: Los Angeles (2011)
Directed by Jonathan Liebesman
influenced by District 9 (2009)
Visuals Characters Plot
Tall and gangly (think a combination of an old fashioned clothes pin and the “prawns” from ”District 9”) the aliens have no problem killing anything in their paths.
The invaders (mostly glimpsed at a distance) appear to be more aggressive relatives of the prawn-like interned extraterrestrials in "District 9." But there's no political satire in Christopher Bertolini's deadly serious, tin-eared recruiting poster of a script, which at one point has a fist-pumping Eckhart proclaim "Marines don't quit!" Eckhart's character has just been approved for a discharge when not-from-Mexico aliens begin landing off the beaches of Santa Monica.
No sooner do these words leave his piehole when aliens not related to Charlie Sheen, but flying saucers borrowed from the District 9 gang, begin attacking.
And that’s the problem the “Battle,” it’s a movie that wants to take from “Independence Day” and “District 9” and draw in both audiences.
Gangly ETs reminiscent of the "prawns" in District 9 have sacked LA and most of the world, so now Eckhart's Sergeant Nantz must lead a ragtag crew through the demolished streets of Santa Monica to extract surviving civilians.
It's " Independence Day ," and there's a " Black Hawk Down " in " District 9 "!
Lacking the rich visual surreal madness of the similarly themed The Cell , or the visual pop of A Scanner Darkly , this simulated reality comes off like an underdeveloped videogame bereft of soul and character.
So, pretty much the same deal as Tarsem Singh’s The Cell , subbing out the serial killer on the loose for an avian demon tagging along as Carly returns to our dimension.
As the doctors at Therapol explain, impulses from the brain are redirected into a virtual space, and other people can then have their own consciousness uploaded into that space – like stepping into someone's mind (or, like stepping into the plot of the much better Jennifer Lopez horror thriller The Cell ).
What's more, they're trialling new technology that allows Carly to step inside her mother's mind - an idea previously explored in 2000's The Cell , not to mention various A Nightmare on Elm Street movies.
In other words, here Blomkamp is doing to exorcism what Tarsem Singh‘s The Cell (2000) did to the psychothriller: using the left-field addition of virtual reality to revitalise these subgenres’ stale old tropes and to expose their inner workings, so that any psychological subtext comes writ large on the surface.
Relying on a setup similar to The Cell , watching a character enter the mind of another (and seeing the visual effect choice that comes with it), only to deal with some kind of demonic force, has an inherently fun ring to it from a horror standpoint.
Mad Max (1979)
Directed by George Miller
influenced Elysium (2013), District 9 (2009)
Themes Visuals
Mel Gibson is conspicuously absent from the barrage of talking heads clips; his one-time boss George Miller (Mad Max, The Road Warrior, etc.) is happily not.
District 9 is part Starship Troopers, part Mad Max, part Aliens and part The Fly.
Soon enough, the interviews drop off and the real drama unfolds, despite the huge “space craft” ever present, 98% of the action happens on the ground, with a stark, “Mad Max” gritty look.
With obvious references to the old "Mad Max" films and today's politics, " Elysium " becomes a compelling if less-lasting summer follow-up for writer/director Neill Blomkamp after his Oscar-nominated "District 9."
There’s also George Miller’s Mad Max trilogy, John Carpenter’s Escape From … films, and the museum-ready miserablism of Alejandro González Iñárritu.
The early scenes of Max negotiating his frustrating, ugly world, with its crowded buses, interminable lines and cheap pleasures, reveal Blomkamp's debt to such dystopian predecessors -- mostly from the 1970s -- as "THX-1138," "Soylent Green," "Mad Max," "Blade Runner," Richard Stanley's "Hardware," "Children of Men," even Spielberg's "A.I.
Its central themes are nothing new - the haves-vs-have-nots concept has long gone hand-in-hand with sci-fi and in recent times has been wheeled out with varying success by In Time (good) and Upside Down (not-so-good).
And while Blomkamp's message is morally stalwart, his delivery system sure is a bummer: Andrew Niccol's similarly themed 2011 In Time was both more stylish and more effective, a serious movie that hit its mark without taking itself too seriously.
Simmering or open class warfare has been a rich trope for sci-fi futurecasting as far back as Fritz Lang ’s 1927 “Metropolis” and as recently as “In Time,” “ Total Recall ” and Michael Winterbottom’s fine, underseen “Code 46.” Lang’s influence is particularly evident in “Elysium’s” army of industrious worker bees slaving away on the factory floor of the Armadyne corporation, whose slithery CEO, Carlyle ( William Fichtner ), developed Elysium and all the technology that makes it run.
(Check out on Andrew Niccol's underrated " In Time ," in which the haves and have-nots use the minutes they have to live as currency.)
Blomkamp stitches patches from a bunch of other sci-fi films — the rich-poor futureworld of Gattaca , In Time and Upside Down , plus the mind-melding caper from Inception — that devolve into a numbingly familiar series of chases and fights.
Blomkamp filters a lot of other people’s sci-fi ideas into this, from “Johnny Mnemomic” and “Mad Max” to “Blade Runner”, “In Time” and “Iron Man.”
It’s sort of a blend between early PlayStation games and rotoscope animation à la A Scanner Darkly .
Lacking the rich visual surreal madness of the similarly themed The Cell , or the visual pop of A Scanner Darkly , this simulated reality comes off like an underdeveloped videogame bereft of soul and character.
Carly’s various trips to the mindscape are heavily stylised affairs that vaguely resemble the distinctive rotoscoped aesthetic of Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly, albeit clearly executed on an accelerated timeline and thinner budget.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Chappie (2015)
Themes Plot
Fittingly for a film about creating a new form of life, Chappie is a Frankenstein production: it chops together familiar ideas and design from many far better features, including Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Andrew Stanton's Wall-E.
He’s clearly trying to move back toward the center with Chappie, but it still feels unsteady and thematically muddled; for a film that was sold on the philosophical question of artificial intelligence, little attention is truly paid to the concept, as Steven Spielberg did in his magnificently troubling A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001).
Just what we needed, a reminder of another movie, a bit of A.I.-like poignancy?
Much of this we've seen before in better films, like the original Robocop, Steven Speilberg's A.I., '80s kids flick Short Circuit, and the cartoon caper Wall-E.
So far, so very “District 9.’’ “Monsters,’’ though, focuses on two young Americans thrown together as they head for the US border: Sam (Whitney Able), the level-headed daughter of a powerful media tycoon, and Andrew (Scoot McNairy), a photographer for one of her dad’s magazines who reluctantly agrees to get baby girl out of the country.
The film also has the misfortune of coming in the wake of Cloverfield and District 9, which were much bigger and more accomplished renderings of similar ideas.
Much like 2009?s District 9, aliens end up stranded on our planet.
In case anyone misses that this very poor relation of "District 9" -- lamely acted and slackly directed by special-effects specialist Gareth Edwards -- is an allegory about immigration, a character looking at the border fence tells us that "it's different looking at America from the outside."
With its indie vibe and ingenious effects, Monsters is more than a little remindful of District 9, though the 2009 South African sleeper had a sense of humor about it; Monsters, in the end, is bleak business.
Unfortunately for Edwards, Neill Blomkamp also spun a low budget into monster/sci-fi magic with District 9, but in addition to a similar theme, his South African counterpart also had a terrifically strong script and compelling performances.
Edwards has said that the reluctant-father-figure narrative was inspired by the 1970s Lone Wolf And Cub manga novels and films, but The Creator wears many influences on its sleeves, drawing from Vietnam classics as well as obvious touchpoints: Apocalypse Now and Platoon are as much a part of the fabric as District 9, Blade Runner and Akira, while its lived-in environments teeming with battered, beaten-up vehicles are indebted to 1977’s Star Wars.
Edwards repurposes ideas from that movie with an assortment of elements and iconography pieced together from several others, among them Blade Runner, Aliens, District 9, Akira, War of the Worlds and Apocalypse Now.
So yes, grab-bag sci-fi movie sensibilities— including “The Terminator” and little “District 9,” in its cultural commentary, social construct, and sympathetic affinities for the enemy— pervades Edwards' movie.
The special effects and general cinematography exhibit that “worn & weary” look captured so well by District 9, albeit with MUCH better fidelity.
Although Blomkamp and company have obviously drawn from previous films including "Close Encounters," "Enemy Mine," "Aliens," "Starship Troopers and even a dash of "I Am Legend," their film is the first in a long while that shouts out for series treatment à la "The Terminator" and "Alien."
And let's not forget the executives from the bio-weapons division of Weyland-Yutani , who cause all the carnage in Aliens .
Bodies are torn apart, Blomkamp’s “Aliens” fixation is satisfied, and bullets of every design zip around the frame.
District 9 is part Starship Troopers, part Mad Max, part Aliens and part The Fly.
"District 9" is a compelling apartheid allegory -- think "Aliens" meets "Schindler's List" -- but there's not a moment of preaching in it.
Wikus is played by Sharlto Copley as a mix of Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy and Lionel Cosgrove, the dweeby but ultimately heroic protagonist of Peter Jackson�s Dead Alive.
I’ve always been a fan of Peter Jackson (going back to “Bad Taste,” “Meet the Feebles,” and “Dead Alive”).
The casting of Copley is problematic: He's not really an actor; his resume is heavy on producing, directing and effects work, and his overeager hamming would be better suited to a movie such as "Dead Alive," the Peter Jackson zombie romp.
But Jackson knew how to have fun with such grody romps as Dead Alive and Bad Taste.
Wikus is ultimately not very different from the hero of Jackson’s 1992 splatter comedy Dead Alive (aka Braindead), while the officials here are similar to a number of Jackson characters.
While built on elements from Alien Nation , Enemy Mine , and even David Cronenberg’s The Fly , District 9 transcends its inspirations by focusing on story, character, and the very human disregard for others until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.
Although Blomkamp and company have obviously drawn from previous films including "Close Encounters," "Enemy Mine," "Aliens," "Starship Troopers and even a dash of "I Am Legend," their film is the first in a long while that shouts out for series treatment à la "The Terminator" and "Alien."
Rather, this ham-fisted Apartheid allegory involving beleaguered insectoid space aliens herded into the eponymous South African ghetto wins several points because it craftily hybridizes much that was cool about '80s sci-fi (V, Alien Nation, Enemy Mine, plus a huge debt to The Fly -- these creatures seem to have flown in directly from Planet Brundle), whilst rocking both the action and the truly unusual setting.
District 9 takes an attractive premise and approaches it from an unconventional angle resulting in a wildly entertaining sci-fi satire that melds bits and pieces of The Fly Midnight Run Starship Troopers Enemy Mine Alien Nation and TV’s Cops .