It's hard to tell what Neill Blomkamp's intention was with Chappie. Both District 9 and Elysium are heavy handed allegories for social issues, more specifically the role that inequality places in our society, but Chappie is devoid of any deeper meaning that I could find, it's lack of strong themes making it stand apart from Blomkamp's previous two films. The problem with this is that it would seem that without a social message from which to hang his film around, Blomkamp has no idea how to tell a story. This is not a good trait for a director to have.
Set in a slightly futuristic version of Johannesburg, South Africa, Chappie tells the story of Chappie, an artificial intelligence in the chassis of a half destroyed police robot. We follow Chappie as he grows and learns under the guidance of Ninja and Yolandi, two gangsters who kidnapped him and are trying to use him as muscle in an armed robbery they have planned. Chappie, however, is torn between fulfilling a promise to never commit crimes he made to his creator, Deon, and the lifestyle that Ninja and Yolandi are pushing him into.
