District 9 Review - I'm an Alien Shrimp, Get Me Out of Here!
Why would aliens travel light years just to destroy us or conquer our little blue planet? The idea that their homeworld is dying and they need ours is too simple. After all, maybe they just got lost and are starving and helpless, having plunged into the Dark Ages on their vast, immobilized mothership. That is the fascinating premise of Neill Blomkamp's District 9, a busy, exciting, occasionally breathtaking scifi adventure with allegorical overtones. Blomkamp's feature debut is, oddly, the second 2009 release (after the animated Battle for Terra) about a human-alien clash in which we are, for the most part, the bad guys. The movie, meandering in and out of faux documentary, may be a bit klutzy and overstuffed, but it gets enough right that genre fans won't want to miss it.
The aforementioned spaceship, looking a bit like the monstrosities of Independence Day, grinds to a halt over thematically convenient Johannesburg, South Africa. In one of several implausibilities cheerfully glossed over by District 9, the local humans somehow decide to blast their way in -- whereupon they discover not an advanced race of superbeings, but a group of malnourished shrimp-like creatures, huddled together in the darkness. They then proceed to indulge the human impulse to "help the poor things," by transporting the fledgling aliens to Johannesburg, where they are promptly segregated in a slum called District 9. Around the rest of the city, signs command "No Non-Human Loitering" and "Humans Only."
Even with the aliens imprisoned in a ghetto, the locals are unhappy. The creatures are a menace. Alien-on-alien crime increasingly gives way to human maimings and killings. Protests spring up. Pressure mounts on the government to get these things the hell out of town. The government hires a ginormous military contractor to evict the million-plus creatures and relocate them to District 10 some two hundred miles outside the city. A clueless bureaucrat toady named Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is put in charge of the operation. Things do not go well.
The biggest problem is that the movie decides to complicate this beautiful set-up as Wikus eventually becomes an unlikely ally of the aliens after being exposed to (I guess) a biological agent that begins to transform him into one of them. This itself is a rather clumsy notion but District 9 still isn't done, adding more contrived plot points like advanced alien weaponry that can only be used by those with a specific DNA. Most of this stuff is unnecessary, and the movie works itself into a frenzy trying to keep up with all of it.
When District 9 keeps it simple, though, by lovingly adding detail to the Apartheid allegory, it hums along just fine. I love the idea of largely helpless alien creatures who come to Earth and end up at the mercy of human bigotry and inhuman bureaucracy -- not to mention human bloodlust. Making the "Prawns" (a derogatory human-invented nickname) not so much menacing as ugly was a stroke of genius: God help any otherwordly race that arrives on our planet and finds itself perceived as unintimidating and disgusting.
Eventually, District 9 builds to a rousing climax, which involves a lot of shooting and a fair bit of old-fashioned movie heroism. The last fifteen minutes may be too conventional for some, but I thought the film mostly earned its slam-bang conclusion. This is not, as has been suggested in histrionic early reviews, once-in-a-lifetime scifi. But it is clever, cartoonish, unexpectedly multi-dimensional fun. Certainly no one will accuse it of being a War of the Worlds retread.
For another opinion of District 9, check out the review on Filmcritic.com
Ok, this will have spoilers. Don't read on if you haven't seen the movie. If you don't mind spoilers, read on.
This movie was well done, nice production quality, but what the hell's up with the storyline? So many things were left open.
- Was the thing that fell off of the mother ship the cockpit?
- Are you telling me that the same fuel that powered the cockpit mutated Wikus?
- Was the name of the pilot alien, Christopher? WTF?
- Were all of the aliens stupid, other than Chrstopher? Including Chris' assistant who was asked to be polite and wasn't...
- Why wasn't there more of an explanation of the origins of the aliens other than that they have 7 moons?
- Were the other aliens slaves?
- Why did they stop above our planet?
- What was their mission originally?
- If the aliens had weapons that only THEY could use, why did they trade them for cat food, instead of using the weapons to take out the humans?
- Why were the two scenes from the trailers removed? The INTERROGATION scene and the lady driving away complaining. Is this stuff coming out in the sequel?
- What's up with the alien special fuel? What's it made of? What were they mixing it with? Why did the red stuff that seemed like blood vibrate when that green stuff was introduced? What was that green stuff in that canister?
I understand that you need to leave some things open, but not unexplained. The beauty of sci fi is that there is science and technology that's new to us that we'd like explained.
It's no wonder why Microsoft didn't want Blomkamp to direct Halo, instead gave the movie to an amazing story teller, Spielberg. At least Spielberg can give amazing production quality at the same time tell a story, which in my opinion, D-9 failed to do.
The post above is mis-informed please read below for answers to the questions above, alot were stated in the movie, the others were infered.
- The thing that fell out of the mothership was a transport ship that could also control the ship remotely, just like a human shuttle, multiple places to pilot from.
- The fuel that powers their ship is their DNA, just like their weapons the ship is a biological extension of the pron, because its their DNA it took over Wikus.
- The Alien was called christopher because humans can't make the noises the aliens do so they couldn't call him by his actual name, therefore he was given one.
- Just like humans their were stupid aliens, smart aliens, weak, strong, charismatic, aggressive, etc. there were smart ones shown, they just did not develop them as characters.
- To keep the mysterious feeling of their origin, it makes the moviegoer wonder.
- No, they were workers aboard the ship, just like if you were a janitor on a cruiseship that dosnt mean if the pilot died you could take over.
- Their ship was programed to go to the closest planet that could sustain life.
- Their mission was not mentioned.
- If it was you with an ak-47 vs a planet of people with knives, you wouldn't win, no matter how hard you tried, so they understood that so they traded for food.
- The scenes were cut and placed in the trailer so that they could show footage without risking ruining a part of a movie.
- If they took the time to explain the mixing process it would be a made up physics lesson, not a movie.
Its a sci-fi movie for christ sake, it would be a series if they wanted to explain it all, just like cloverfield the stuff we have to think about is just as great as the stuff we tell us, if all art had a sign explaining what the picture or sculpture meant, than its not art, art lets us interpret the unknown and have fun doing so.
And halo died because fox stopped paying for the copyright because they couldnt afford it. Speilberg will fuck up halo as he did indy jones.
Unless you are the type who needs to have plot points beaten over your head and believe GI Joe had excellent writing you should probably disregard MOVI_MKR's comment in it's entirety.
i have seen a lot of 'WTF!' comments about aliens with english names, i believe that english names for the aliens would have been most likely issued when the aliens were registered (cataloged mainly). this may be a reference to something that happened as part of the apartied system. certainly, when african slaves were brought to other countries, they were given english names for convenience etc. in either case, this is another level of social commentary.
to MOVI_MKR;
I am sorry you are so clueless.
Sometime you have to suspend belief and just let them tell you the story. You can fill in the blanks yourself.
And you apparently came away with wrong impression of the movie. Yes it was a sci-fi movie but that is not what this movie was about. It's a movie about humanity, self-preservation, cruelty, discrimination, exploitation. Yes, it uses sci-fi as a vehicle, but it's delivering social message about human beings.
All the special effects were gravy, the meat of the movie was the an introspective view on humanity.
If you wanted silly over the top sci-fi, go watch Starship Trooper.
to MOVI_MKR;
I am sorry you are so clueless.
Sometime you have to suspend belief and just let them tell you the story. You can fill in the blanks yourself.
And you apparently came away with wrong impression of the movie. Yes it was a sci-fi movie but that is not what this movie was about. It's a movie about humanity, self-preservation, cruelty, discrimination, exploitation. Yes, it uses sci-fi as a vehicle, but it's delivering social message about human beings.
All the special effects were gravy, the meat of the movie was the an introspective view on humanity.
If you wanted silly over the top sci-fi, go watch Starship Trooper.
to MOVI_MKR;
I am sorry you are so clueless.
Sometime you have to suspend belief and just let them tell you the story. You can fill in the blanks yourself.
And you apparently came away with wrong impression of the movie. Yes it was a sci-fi movie but that is not what this movie was about. It's a movie about humanity, self-preservation, cruelty, discrimination, exploitation. Yes, it uses sci-fi as a vehicle, but it's delivering social message about human beings.
All the special effects were gravy, the meat of the movie was the an introspective view on humanity.
If you wanted silly over the top sci-fi, go watch Starship Trooper.