Neill Blomkamp Quotes
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I still really love the world and the universe and the mythology of 'Halo.' If I was given control, I would really like to do that film. But that's the problem. When something pre-exists, there's this idea of my own interpretation versus 150 other people involved with the film's interpretation of the same intellectual property.
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I'm a massive hater of 3D. I don't like it at all. For me, you go to a movie theatre and you want to be taken to a place and transported to a place and be in that environment, and I know 3D is meant to do that, but the effect for me is the reverse. I feel like I'm looking though muddy water, and I can't really see the image.
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I think naturally I'm a very visual kind of person. If I wasn't in filmmaking, I'd be in something related to visuals. And I used to actually work as a visual-effects artist.
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I never really think of something in terms of what not to do. It's always what's appealing or what's cool.
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'District 9' was a singular anti-Apartheid metaphor, and 'Elysium' is a more general metaphor about immigration and how the First World and Third World meet. But the thing that I like the most about the metaphor is that it can be scaled to suit almost any scenario.
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I think that in the realm of commercial, popcorn cinema, the amount of message or smuggling of ideas you can get in there is quite limited. Like, if you think you're going to make a difference or change anything, you're on pretty dangerous thin ice.
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I don't want egos and personalities on the set that make it more difficult to make the film. I don't want people who take the focus away from the movie and the ideas behind the movie.
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There's no question that how Johannesburg operates is what made me interested in the idea of wealth discrepancy. 'Elysium' could be a metaphor for just Jo'burg, but it's also a metaphor for the Third World and the First World. And in science fiction, separation of wealth is a really interesting idea to mess with.
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I think the world of 'District 9' has a lot of race and oppression-based ideas that I would still like to explore in that world.
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There is something fundamentally fascinating about the mechanics, I guess, of the human body and where consciousness and mind exist, and what you can do with the mechanics of the body while keeping those intact, and where those two cross over.
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I just want to make films that have enough of a budget to pull off high-level imagery but also have a budget that is low enough that I can do what I want.
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I like where we're going with technology and global integration, but the fact that corporations and dollars rule everything in our lives, I don't like it. This isn't the Hollywood I wanted to be part of.
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I think that, if there are topics that are just on people's minds, things manifest into reality out of the sort of global consciousness of being aware of those topics.
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Obviously I don't want to make a film that offends people, but the whole world is so politically correct - I'm not going to not do something because it may be politically incorrect. At some point, the metaphors and allegories break down. They disappear, and you just have science fiction.
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If you look at the most meaningful science fiction, it didn't come from watching other films. We seem to be in a place now where filmmakers make films based on other films because that's where the stimuli and influence comes from.
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When any young director gets hired by a studio to do a $125 million film based on a preexisting piece of intellectual property, they're climbing into the meat grinder. And what you're coming out with on the other side is a generic, heavily studio-controlled pile of garbage that ends up on the side of Burger King wrappers.
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I grew up as an artist. Science fiction allows for design and creatures and guns and all the stuff that I like as well. So I think most of the films I make, I'm sure, will be in that category. But I can also see myself making a film like 'Black Hawk Down,' and I could also totally do horror.
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I think filmmakers in general are, as the tools become more and more advanced, you're able to tell stories in a way that I think is more realistic. The technology just wasn't there up until pretty recently, and it takes a bit of time for the normal artistic way of approaching something to become a mainstream thing.
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The first film that I can remember seeing where, like, I just couldn't stop watching it - and it didn't necessarily make me want to be a director because I was so young, but it made me know that that's what I wanted to be doing - was 'Alien.' And I saw that when I was probably just over 10 years old.
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I think that 'Elysium' the movie is unrealistic, with the space station and everything. I think 'Elysium' the metaphor is completely realistic: it's exactly where we're going.
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'Chappie' would be like 'RoboCop,' but hilarious. If you mixed 'Robocop' with 'E.T.' and it was... funny, that's what it is.
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A lot of parts of L.A. are interchangeable with suburbs in Joburg. Very big, ostentatious houses with palm trees and lawns. Lawns are very important. Never underestimate lawns.
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I think that people who make films and think they're changing the world are sorely mistaken. If that really is your goal, there are far better ways to do it. I'm making politically observant films for audiences.
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The main stuff I like is from the late '60s to the early '90s. That's the stuff I love. It's the James Cameron's and the Paul Verhoven stuff. I guess when I was younger, 'Star Wars' had an influence.