There are millions of things that were missed. But that could have been done by me in the same way – it was directed in such a way that some ideas didn’t come across. For whatever reason, there were many elements that critics in general didn’t pick up on them. One of them is that it’s an artificial intelligence film, and it isn’t. It’s not about AI. Ex Machina’s about AI. Chappie’s not about artificial intelligence – it’s meant to be asking questions about what it means to be sentient.

That doesn’t mean AI, that means sentient at all. If you are sentient, if you are conscious, first of all, what does that mean? Because you’re watching the birth of consciousness with Chappie. And the idea of experience is a huge, huge part of it. I chose AI because it was an easier way to say, “If say is something else is sentient or conscious, is it any more or less important than a human consciousness or sentience?”

To me, the answer is an obvious no. Like, everything that is aware is as valuable as any other thing.

So on one hand, missing that it’s not about AI is a big deal. And the nature versus nurture discussion, the birth of a family, the birth of a soul, those are the things the film is about. The second thing – and this is the much more subtextual, bigger concept, is that when you talk about ideas that have to do with some of the biggest discussions about what it means to be alive at all, the idea of how the hell experience and sentience come about at all, when you talk about something that deep, if you talk about it head on, there can be a ridiculous level of pretentiousness and importance around the way you do it, and I just didn’t want to get into that.

The main reason for Chappie existing in my mind is because it has the most farcical, weird, comic, non-serious pop-culture tone, that is almost mocking or making fun of the fact that it’s talking about the deepest things you can talk about. The fact that those two things exist in the same film is what the film is about. Because that’s what the experience of life is about. It’s an unknowable question, and no one’s going to answer it for you.