As director Neill Blomkamp is wont to do, details about Chappie have been scarce up until now. However, with the film fast approaching we are starting to see a flurry of trailers and articles with fresh insights.
In addition to the new UK trailer below (via Yahoo), which stresses emotion over action and sheds further light on the film's protagonists (and Hugh Jackman's inner asshole), an article has appeared over at Hero Complex with some new interesting tidbits.
Blomkamp apparently wrote the script in just two weeks, after striking upon an idea for the film during the making of Elysium. Chappie, like District 9, is based on one of Blomkamp's short films, Tetra Vaal, which you can see here. Interestingly, similarities to Short Circuit not withstanding, he reveals that he made Tetra Vaal at a time when he was fascinated by manga and anima, and that the emotive ears we see on Chappie are inspired by Masamune Shirow's design for Briareos Hecatonchires in Appleseed.
From the trailers we now have a fairly good idea of the basic plot of the film, but it is worth remembering that this is a Blomkamp feature; he likes to come at you from unexpected directions. Die Antwoord remain the film's X-factor, an unknown entity to many but a powerful presence whenever they're on screen, and this will be their first venture onto the big one. Speaking of X-factors, Sharlto Copley is another volatile ingredient, and channeling a weaponized 9-year old consciousness is just his sort of crazy. Let's hope that Hugh Jackman can match their collective menace with a bit of his Wolverine mojo.
In an interview with the film's producer, Simon Kinberg, at last year's WonderCon he called Chappie the most "provocative studio movie you will likely ever see. It's like Neill let loose." Considering how many of us felt that Elysium seemed like a tamed-down version of Blomkamp, which is ironic given the greater resources he had, but also completely expected for a big studio production, we can but hope that he did indeed let loose after freeing himself from Elysium's constraints. Even taking producer-hype(rbole) into full account, this suggests we would do well to expect more from this than the trailers have thus far revealed.
And why wouldn't we? This man brought us District 9, after all.
Briareos Hecatonchires (ブリアレオス・ヘカトンケイレス Buriareosu Hekatonkeiresu) is a character from Masamune Shirow's Appleseed manga
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Robot cop produced by the Tetra Vaal corporation in Blomkamp's short film of the same name
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Chappie, produced by the same fictional company featured in Blomkamp's short film/corporate advertisement, Tetra Vaal
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