Has anyone seen the film District 9? Basically it's about a colony of aliens that have been living on the outskirts of Johannesburg for 20 years. Absolutely brilliant, I have watched it twice now as it has been screened as a premier on sky.

If you haven't seen it, you must watch it.

And, Vickers Van Der Merve, what a character. I adore the South African accident

hi ive got the dvd, i thought it was fantastic, once it got going, xxx

Alright i just saw this last night so I'll give my take on it:

To be honest, I thought it was awful. No, awful doesn't do it proper justice.

Atrocious.

I was really, really looking forward to it--I love sci-fi and horror flicks and had heard some good things...I mean, peter jackson production and sci-fi? Right ON. I naturally assumed it would be far and away better than typical Hollywood crap like transformers or something. I avoid those movies when I can. Unfortunately, this might have been worse, and I am amazed.

PROS:

The first 5 minutes were intriguing.
The 'armor' suit looked kinda cool.


CONS:

The plot holes, character motivations, and bombastic, outdated 'sledgehammer you in the head' allegories about 'apartheid' were ludicrous. This is no deep, brilliant allegory here to race relations. This draws about as meaningful a connection to apartheid as 'From Justin to Kelly' does to the great Stalinist purges of the 1930's. This movie is lazy, lowest common denominator habby babby bing bong all dressed up to be some sort of 'statement...' and it's almost insulting they think that people need their 'statements' spoon fed to them so blatantly, and badly...I might add again. And exactly... what was the message? Apartheid BAAAD. We need to learn to relate to each other and respect our differences. Government agencies BAAAD. Government conspiracies BAAAD. Stunning. Thx. Oh, and yet Nigerians are portrayed throughout the whole movie almost to a MAN as primitive, violent, criminal, drug dealing cannibals--I dunno, maybe they are. I don't know any nigerians in south africa--but if THAT'S your message you might want to tone down that aspect just a tad.

The 'prawns' were intelligent enough to fabricate these awesome 'weapons' that only they could use... Yet they allow themselves to be continually mistreated and herded into slums by the humans who once again have NO access to the use of these advanced weapons? Why didn't the aliens retaliate with their superior technology? Or at least break outta there and go grab a ton of cat food? The weapons were such that probably only a few hundred would be essentially enough to bust outta there and resist human attacks for the foreseeable future. They're also much bigger, stronger and nimble than humans...kinda like Jeff Goldblum ended up in the fly. So they could definitely kick our asses physically too.

They apparently had stocks of weapons all over the camp, and could make them themselves. They arrive here in this fantastic ship and can create wondrous weapons out of essentially garbage, yet spend the majority of the movie scurrying around the garbage like cockroaches, being pushed around and being pimped out for cat food.

Aliens wearing cut off t shirts?! Hoooo! Yeah, we get a few examples of some wacky alien comedy relief! For about as subtle and humerous as they were--they might as well have had some aliens doing the three stooges routine (slap! nyuck nyuck nyuck Pow!) or breakdancing like the pub scene in 'Gremlins.' SO ZANY!

Why are humans allowed to stay in District 9? Why are the aliens so loosely controlled? There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY, such aliens would be sent off to internment camps where local thugs and gangs would be able to operate with impunity:

"OK fellow 'nefarious government agency guys up to no good', listen up--we don't like these prawns and are concerned about them and find them dangerous to be around, and we don't know too much about them...so we'll just stick them in a shanty town and let nigerian gangs come on in and set up camp. We are concerned enough about the aliens 'rights' and 'well-being' enough to give them individual eviction notices personally, but we'll let gangs who are going to buy weapons from them, prostitute them, and essentially enslave them come and go in there as they please. Hell, Let 'em LIVE there. Then we'll just leave all of them to their own devices and come back in 20 years and go and clear them out."

Ok maybe you say the 'evictions' were just a 'publicity stunt' to make the public think they actually cared for the prawns, but if that was the case, and they just wanted their weapon technology, why are they letting nigerian gangs access to said weapons? And I didn't even touch the suggestion of alien prostitutes....but a shot of aliens that resemble friggin' PRAWNS all 'hookered' up in sexy clothes? Really? You're gonna go there?!? Are we supposed to feel bad for them in this case? Or is that supposed to be humorous? I'm not sure...what i am sure of though was it was stupid.

Why did the agency need to give 'eviction' notices to each and every alien. First off, the way they just scurry around, act unpredictably, and with their level of understanding so seemingly low...there's no way this could reasonably be achieved in a slum like that, short of simply having a good old fashioned cattle roundup. Achieves it's intended puropse for both parites involved, and waaay less dangerous and waay more effective. And secondly, public opinion was CLEARLY such that they just wanted them OUT. Somewhere ELSE. No one was concerned about their 'property rights,' and the way humans and prawns interacted would make that unnecessary and counterproductive.

Why would Wikus's wife actually believe that he performed some sort of sexual activity with an alien so quickly and absolutely?

That rocket 'fuel' (macguffin anyone?) is pretty awesome, if inhaled by another species it will turn him into an alien, but if put in a ship its star travel material baby... ridiculous. The 'smart' prawn informs Wilkus he can 'fix' him if he gets back home. ORLY? He knows he can reverse the effects of his species rocket fuel ON HUMANS. How much prior experience has he had with the effects of said fuel on human beings back at his home planet? This is a clear example of "well, we'll say that to move the plot along and everyone will just accept it without explanation." Oh-kaay then.

the scientists figure out that you can place a living alien hand on the weapons and fire them...but they can't convince some of them to be on 'their side?' The aliens were nuts for cat food and would trade their weapons for it to the gangs, so why wouldn't some agency be able to convince a few of them to do their bidding with the weapons with unlimited supplies of cat food? Also, the Nigerians should know a hell of a lot more about the prawns and their weapons due to their interacting with them, bartering with them, living with them right? So...they can't figure the SAME THING out over the course of 20 odd years? Apparently not. All they think to do after all that time is try and 'eat' some of the aliens limbs, well, because they are primitive, superstitious, and BAAAAD. Pretty damning condemnation of the tenets of apartheid...eh?

There's so much more, those were right off the top of my head...believe me, it was hard not to just turn it off or lean on the fast forward button. I don't walk out of movies in the theater, but it was torture not to hit the off button on my DVD. I kept unconsciously hitting fast forward, and catching myself and rewinding it to where it was. NOT a sign of a good movie. The accents didn't help...I found them just about as intelligible without subtitles as the 'prawnspeak' without subtitles...and about as appealing. I kept hearing "DIIIIPLOMAAAATIC IMUUUUNITY!!!" over and over in my head like the South African ambassador in Lethal Weapon 2 kept proclaiming. Of course this is not a flaw of the movie (just my own issue), it's just irritating to have to read subtitles with the 'this could be REAL!' shaky documentary cam' effect they abused early on and then forgot about later.

Sure, you need to suspend disbelief in movies to a degree...but NOT when the entire plot is fundamentally based on the audience accepting the premise that everyone involved will behave in ways in no way even remotely related to real life behavior, and the plot holes are SO gaping and unavoidable that within the first 10 minutes you are laughing and shaking your head in disbelief at the current ineptitude of some very capable filmmakers...like "Okay, who the hell signed off on this one?!?"

Anyways, what were we talking about again?

Well way to eviscerate the movie there Johnny! lol Personally, I liked it. But I took it for what it was. A movie. Nothing but mindless entertainment.

Yeah I know, I like talking about movies. lol

But I also expected more from the production team, and I went into it expecting a good movie, at least decent, and intelligent. This was not just bad and stupid, but stunningly bad and insipid. That's pretty impressive. Well, let me add the "in MY opinion" disclaimer for those who liked it. I guess I'm in the minority.

Blimey Johnny, how long did it take you to write that lot? I hope you did it off-line and then pasted it onto the forum? It would have been a real bitch if you had got to the end and then realise you had been logged off-line and lost the lot.

I think that Jenny hit the nail on the head, it is just mindless entertainment that passes a couple of hours and that is all. All of these sci-fi films are ridiculous, a huge gorilla that lives on a remote island is called Skull, falls in love with a beautiful girl and gets captured and then it is taken to New York,a 30 foot gorilla could probably lift a Sherman tank above its head, how the hell humans ever manage to restrain it I don't know. The Lord of the Rings, what the hell is all that about? The Terminator, think about it, if he had succeeded in killing Sarah Connor in the first film,then he wouldn't have existed in the first place, absolutely ridiculous when you actually think about it logically, but bloody good entertainment anyway.

I really enjoyed District 9. If I wanted to be really critical, there were a couple of continuity errors. Like the little alien child, he talked about going home, he wouldn't have known anything but Johannesburg as being his home. Anyway, I'm looking forward to paranormal activity, that's probably plain stupid, but I've been told it's very good.

All sci-fi films are silly, that's why they are fiction

OFL wrote:


just left it up on the screen and came back to it. I'm home all day watching football and monitoring my fantasy football team so I'm essentially just 'mucking about' today (and I did my big tank maintenance yesterday)



True, but you have to have a minute degree of plausibility and realism in there for a 'seriously' intended movie to work in any capacity. This movie clearly was srtiving to be more than just mindless sci-fi entertainment and good for them in that--and I'm willing to go with the suspension of disbelief a good ways in any movie...but not when almost every single action or happening is completely so far fetched. The situation/circumstances can be as improbable as it needs to be, that's fine, but the people involved at least have to in some way behave and react like we would think normal people (i.e. 'us') might possibly behave in exceptional, improbable situations.






Not all sci-fi films are silly though...Blade Runner wasn't silly, far from it. And it addressed some similar themes...neither was 2001. I think I was more critical of this one because it was 'aiming higher,' so to speak.


OFL wrote:



Oh boy ...I thought that one started off pretty good, and I liked 'blair witch'-- but it gets really boring and the ending will make you laugh (it wasn't supposed to be funny, though).