CHAPPIE EVOLUTION THEORY : BRINGING THE BOT TO LIFE

1.  THE NAME GAME

Unless you grew up in or around South Africa, there’s a pretty good chance you won’t know the story behind the film’s unusual title. “Chappie is a type of childhood South African bubblegum that Neill grew up with,” says Terri Tatchell.

“Yo-Landi, when we first told her about the film, got the image of Chappie – the little chipmunk that they have on the chewing gum – tattooed onto herself. So there was a little bit of pressure to actually get the film greenlit! I don’t know whether that gum still exists or not.”

2. THE WRITE STUFF

In comparison to District 9’s year-long scriptwriting stage, penning Chappie was a doddle. “The first draft only took three weeks,”

Tatchell says. “That was Chappie written for South Africa. Then there was a period where we thought it was going to have to shoot in LA. So we rewrote it for LA, and that took about two months, I think.

And then we combined the two scripts to go back to Johannesburg again. If we were organised enough and still had that first script to look at, it would probably be very, very close to what was ultimately shot.”

3. BAD HAIR DAY

Fans might be surprised to see that Hugh Jackman’s character Vincent sports a dubious mullet in Chappie, a do Tatchell says was in the script from the start. “It was definitely in the script, but I can’t take credit for it, Neill designed that character. I don’t know if I would dare do that to anybody! It makes me smile just thinking about it. It’s pretty funny. He was such a good sport about it. He Instagrammed a picture of himself the day he got it. He’s such an amazingly good sport, he’s ready to throw himself into anything.”

4. HOME COMFORTS

Being a filmmaking family means Blomkamp and Tatchell’s home is filled with memorabilia. “These things just come home. Our house is filled.

We have a droid from Elysium that greets people at our front door. He actually had a cowboy hat on last time I looked. We have a life-sized model of Little CJ, the little alien from District 9, he’s on our mantel.

At the head of our dining room table we also have the probation officer that interviewed Matt Damon in Elysium. So I’d be a fool to think a few Chappies weren’t going to show up.”

5. MURPHY’S LAW

Although the look of Chappie was inspired by the rabbit-eared cyborgs from classic manga Appleseed, the story bears some resemblance to sci-fi classic RoboCop. “You walk around our house and there are ED-209 figurines everywhere, so I would say RoboCop influences our daily lives! But I would say the two are very different. I think Neill just writes exactly what’s in his brain and in his heart and doesn’t worry much about anything else. The emotional parts of RoboCop, to me, are special to RoboCop. Chappie has different things going on.”

‘I know what we need to do!’ So when we worked on Chappie together, we had rules. One of the rules was we never discussed it at home. And we never really discussed it face to face, even when we were writing. We would email everything to each other.”

Set just one year in the future, Chappie is the story of the eponymous law enforcement bot (voiced and performed on set by Blomkamp regular Sharlto Copley) – a defective unit tossed out and “acquired” by local gangsters Ninja and Yolandi (of South African rap group Die Antwoord). On the outside he’s programmed with true artificial intelligence by the robo cops’ brilliant creator Deon (Dev Patel), who strongly disapproves of the company Chappie is keeping.

“Ninja and Yolandi sort of become his surrogate parents, much to Deon’s horror,” Tatchell says. “They’re all incredibly flawed and you fall in love with them despite that. They try to do the best they can with what their belief system is, and the cards they’ve been handed.”

Blomkamp has made a name crafting muscular, tech-driven action movies with a social conscience, but Tatchell approached Chappie from a different angle. “Neill and I often disagree over what the film’s about – which I think is a good place to come from because hopefully different things show up in there,” Tatchell explains. “AI is definitely a theme he is fascinated with. I’m a little more character driven. So rather than the big scope science theme, I’m more fascinated with the relationships between the different characters in the story and the effect that their influence might have on the violence of Chappie.”

Unusually for Blomkamp it’s also consciously a comedy. Think Short Circuit meets RoboCop. “The first trailer was all very happy and sweet, and the second was very action film, but the reality is that the film is everything,” Tatchell says. “My favourite parts of Chappie are the funny parts. The middle of the film to me is absolutely hilarious.”

Humour may be integral to Chappie, but there’s also a deadly physical threat in the form of Hugh Jackman’s Vincent – a formersoldier who doesn’t trust Deon’s synthetic police force, and sees the birth of AI as a threat to the future of humanity. Under the instruction of Sigourney Weaver’s company big wig, and with an ED-209 like droid on his side, Vincent sets out to hunt Chappie down.

“Vincent’s a purist. He doesn’t believe artificial intelligence is a good thing for the world. He would like to stamp it out – for personal reasons, as well as moral reasons,”

Tatchell says. “In writing, there were a lot of different variations. Even in shooting and in editing the character was shaped a lot of different ways.”

After a brief foray with LA (and space) in Elysium, Blomkamp is returning to familiar haunts with Chappie, shooting and setting the film in Johannesburg. “The Chappie Johannesburg is completely different than the District 9 Johannesburg,” says Tatchell. “When we were writing it, I wasn’t sold on it being set in Johannesburg. But once we went there I thought: ‘Oh, it’s got a completely different industrial vibe.’ It’s a different world than you’ve ever seen before.”