First Trailer for Neill Blomkamp's CHAPPIE

While I was more of a fan of Elysium than it seemed like most people were, director Neill Blomkamp's claim to fame is still going to be his directorial debut, District 9. This is clear from the way in which his third film is being touted. It doesn't seem like nineteen months is long enough to turn around a film, especially one as technically involved as this seems to be, but Blomkamp has done it and to be honest this looks much better than I would have expected given the turn around time. It seems Blomkamp had done most of the time-consuming work beforehand on this one though as Chappie is seemingly a feature version of  his own 2004 short Tetra Vaal, with elements from his 2006 short Tempbot that features a similar-looking robot protagonist. Given all of that information I looked ahead to the trailer if not for it being another Blomkamp film, but for the fact it added an element of openly admitting it was a robot movie that inherently includes the fact artificial intelligence is built into the titular robot and not saving that as the big revelation. The look of the trailer is similar to both of Blomkamp's previous features in that it was shot in Johannesburg, South Africa but also in its grungy futuristic aesthetic. The visual f/x look flawless, the tone seems to be a mix of darkly cool and broadly funny while it will also be interesting to see Hugh Jackman play against type as the seeming villain of the piece. Chappie also stars Dev Patel, Ninja, Yo-Landi Visser, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Sharlto Copley, Sigourney Weaver and opens March 27, 2015.



Synopsis: Every child comes into the world full of promise, and none more so than Chappie: he is gifted, special, a prodigy. Like any child, Chappie will come under the influence of his surroundings – some good, some bad – and he will rely on his heart and soul to find his way in the world and become his own man. But there’s one thing that makes Chappie different from anyone else: he is a robot. The first robot with the ability to think and feel for himself. His life, his story, will change the way the world looks at robots and humans forever.