Book Review: Chappie: The Art of the Movie

This is my third artbook from a Neill Blomkamp movie. I love Neill Blomkamp's movies for the blend of sci-fi and grittiness.

Chappie: The Art of the Movie is a large oversized hardcover artbook written by Peter E. Aperlo, and published by Titan Books. Some places list the book as only 144 pages but there are actually 160 pages.

The content is the filled with behind-the-scenes photographs, film stills, concept art and comes with a generous amount of production stories. The writeup is insightful and covers how the film is made and analysis for the characters and their motivation.

The concept artworks included are great. You'll get to see the many designs of Chappie and Moose. Some of the orange colour that they use in the art reminds me of District 9's mecha designs. I love the detail work, things like bullet holes, graffiti and battle damage surfaces. There are also 3D renders of the robots. The best artworks are the robot art, the rest such as for weapons, vehicles are just alright.

Many of the so called scene paintings look like photographs with some sort of digital painterly filter effect applied over them. I don't like that look and that's the only thing I don't like about this book.

I felt that Chappie: The Art of the Movie is not as good as the earlier two for District 9 and Elysium. That's because the earlier two books are packed with mostly art while this Chappie book is a mixed of photographs and art.

But overall, it's still a pretty good artbook companion for the film.

Chappie: The Art of the Movie is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

Visit Amazon to check out more reviews.

If you buy from the links, I get a little commission that helps me get more books to feature.

Here are direct links to the book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp | Amazon.cn