"Wait, was that Die Antwoord?!"
These were our exact words when the first trailer for Chappie dropped. (Well, kinda.) And while it wasn't totally beyond the realm of possibility that the South African rave-rap group would appear in a film by their countryman Neill Blomkamp, it is a big sci-fi action film, and it is Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er, so, like, WTF? Turns out, Die Antwoord were a huge influence on Blomkamp's script.
"There was this really weird crossover that happened while I was writing Elysium—and Elysium has a lot of robotics in it—at the same time I was listening to a lot of Die Antwoord's tracks," Blomkamp says in the intro to the book Chappie: The Art of the Movie. "All of a sudden I got this idea for this robot—like the Elysium robots, it was a kind of police/security machine—being hijacked by this band that I was listening to. I don't know where the hell that idea came from, but that was the genesis for Chappie."
Their influence, of course, transcended music. The members of Die Antwoord play more over-the-top (if that's possible) versions of themselves and befriend the childlike robot Chappie (Sharlto Copley, hidden beneath CGI). They were so much a part of Blomkamp's vision that they appear in early concept art for the film, illustrated versions of themselves in various scenes. (Not appearing as a version of himself: Dev Patel, who plays Deon Wilson in the movie, but whose character looks much different in these early images.)
Check out those early drawings of Ninja and Vi$$er, as well as other behind-the-scenes images from Blomkamp's movie.
