BY Raeez Jacobs For Live Mag SA 25 March 2015

To promote the highly anticipated film Chappie (16), which is currently screening in cinemas across South Africa, Sony Pictures and OMD hand- selected 12 YouTube influencers from across Europe to take part in a live streaming event by popular online video gaming platform, Twitch. Each influencer helped create Europe’s largest shareable piece of artwork alongside London’s most influential graffiti artists from Graffiti Life. A 60 x 10 foot graffiti wall with iconic imagery from the movie was produced. Before reading our film review, check out this video about the graffiti project.

From the moment it begins, Chappie is a jam-packed thrill that will please adventure seekers and sci-fi fanatics alike. With epic-cum-explosive scenes (literally), it’s also very much a hard-hitting, and at times nail-biting, action flick, that is considerably more profound than most of its kind.

True to his element, director Neil Blomkamp (District 9 and Elysium) does a great job of depicting South African reality, with the quasi-cosmopolitan and not-so-pretty industrial terrain of Johannesburg in the background, alongside a fully-fledged science fiction narrative. Much like District 9’s undertones of xenophobic violence, the robots in Chappie symbolise the stereotypical ideal of the South African public, whose sentiments over service delivery, poverty, violence and corruption are echoed through the re-imagining of society by Blomkamp. His apocalyptic-charm helps him visualize a country that is already factual, and one that could very well emerge with digital and technological innovations advancing way beyond human progress.

The reshaping of the police service, from the SAPS to the RSAP (Robot South African Police) is a direct portrayal of the trending dream shared by many dissatisfied by those who are meant to protect them. In Blomkamp’s marvellous imagination, control and humanity are controlled by a society where power is shifted from man to

machine. Although, the way people treat robots in the futuristic thrill is much like the way human relations are conducted.
The most intelligible feature must be the humanness the robots present, especially Chappie, the makings of a geek engineer, Deon Wilson, whose job at Tetravaal is under constant threat by rival “makers”, like Vincent Moore (played by X-Men’s Hugh Jackman) who are poised on benefiting from the use of robots for their own sinister purpose.