Chappie is a futuristic law-and-order nightmare set (like Blomkamp's apartheid parable District 9) in a chaotic Johannesburg perennially on the verge of social breakdown.
He had just recovered from a bout of prolonged news media exposure brought on by the recent release of "In Time," a futuristic thriller in which he plays a futuristic law-enforcement officer who is charged with preventing the theft of time but who mostly steals scenes from Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried.
"Century City" is clever and fun, a not so very futuristic version of "L.A Law" or "The Practice".
Other genres involve paradigmatic plot and character elements -- a death, a seduction, futuristic technology; a detective, a law enforcer, etc.
BUT some of the plays he has recently written -- "Coffee," based on the massacres at Babi Yar, and "The Crime of the 21st Century," involving scavengers who live beyond the law in an authoritarian, futuristic Britain -- seem far more alive.
Their goal was to eliminate birth defects, but increasing the number of biological parents beyond two could add a futuristic twist to an area where the law already is a mess: the question of who, in this age of artificial insemination and surrogacy, should be considered the legal parents of a baby.
Certain props, such as the slide rule, and design elements, such as punched cards, are also objects of criticism for Law, who questions whether a futuristic spaceship that can travel at the speed of light would be equipped with such relatively primitive technology.
Since appearing as a member of the genetic elite in the futuristic thriller "Gattaca" (1997), exquisite monsters have been Mr. Law's forte.
Representative Lance Gooden, Republican of Terrell, said he was sponsoring legislation to prevent this futuristic technology — increasingly used by everyone from aviation hobbyists to law enforcement authorities — from capturing "indiscriminate surveillance".
The few who did turn up to see the movie about a law enforcer tasked with bringing order to a futuristic post-apocalyptic world were mostly older males.
This autumn, H&M will open a futuristic hyperstore designed by French architect Jean Nouvel on the Champs Elysées in Paris, having negotiatied arcane French building law for more than five years.
