District 9

District 9... hmmm. Not too shabby.

Gotta give a film credit first and foremost for innovation. An alien refugee crisis in Africa filmed in pseudo-documentary style complete with occasional cuts to random experts/acquaintances of the main character. I've never seen anything like that before and it's a neat idea. The documentary aspect sort of breaks down after a while and it becomes what I think is fairly straight-forward science fiction. But still, I tip my hat towards risk-taking.

The movie was fairly politically charged, perhaps even a bit too politically charged. The politics of District 9 are pretty heavy handed, but also kind of vague. Refugee camps have extremely poor living conditions. Racism is bad. Okay sure. But these are bloody aliens.

Personally if alien refugees came to earth I would be in favour of a massive quarantine. You can't just let a bunch of people from another damn planet set up camp without knowing anything about them. Who knows what damn biological weirdness can come out of that? I don't care how damn malnourished the damn aliens are, you don't just let in a bunch of unknown organisms onto our planet. That's just stupid.

But in any case, details aside it was good. So let's talk about some specifics here...

Documentary-style:

I liked this. Documentaries have sort of become an art form these days, what with the spooky music and the interviews with loved ones/generic experts with European accents. It's all pretty standard and so seeing science fiction using the documentary style like this was rather nice. I would go so far as to say that I think that the first chunk of the movie before the infection part took off was actually the best part.

I especially liked the use of past tense. "Wikus was this" "Wikus was that"... made the movie more tense as you watched to see what was going to happen to the guy.

Main Character:


I liked the actor, I have to say. He really played the part of the semi-charismatic pseudo-liberal nerd pretty well. You could tell right from the get-go that this is the kind of guy that was picked on in high school and probably got his degree without doing anything that remotely resembled field work. He talks a lot about things being illegal, doesn't seem to like violence but is still kind of prejudiced. I don't think the audience is supposed to really like him, but he really works as a believable character.

That is until he gets some alien guns and becomes frackin' Rambo. Up until that point I was really liking the whole documentary aspect of it, but when Wikus blew up that whole military base and then escaped... well, he also blew up the documentary part too. Which is a shame really, as they could have still kept it going and put up some interviews with some people that survived his onslaught. That would have been awesome.

"He came through the door and shot the guard, yelling 'FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!'. We hid under a table and then he..." *breaks down weeping* "He told us to run... to run or else he would... he would..." etc. etc.

I don't know why they just abandoned that in favour of just a standard action scene.

That said, that mech he had was pretty cool.

Politics:



My main objection:

Why is it a stupid private contractor managing the aliens rather than some sort of government or UN agency? I mean, sure, I understand. Blackwater (or whatever the fuck those fuckers renamed themselves... Xe or something, isn't it?) is one of the most evil organizations on the globe. But for crying out loud, Blackwater are a group of mercenaries who are given contracts. You can't just put them in charge of the aliens. The whole shadowy 'MNU' thing running the show just felt silly.

Good Detail:



I think the movie does a fair enough job with explaining why the aliens don't just attack. They might have cool guns but when they get shot they die just the same and there aren't so many of them that they can just take over the Earth. If you chuck missiles at their spaceships, they will explode and if you shoot their crazy mech enough it will be destroyed. Nice way of justifying the refugee thing.

Bad Detail:

I don't understand how a trigger pulling mechanism is supposed to be linked to DNA. That's nitpicking though. But while we're on the subject, why exactly did alien fuel stuff make him turn into an alien?

Worst part of the movie:

Cannibalism. Or well, maybe not 'cannibalism', but the whole alien eating thing. I know that there are some weird cults with inhuman practices in Africa. But that was still really stupid. "I'm going to eat this thing to see if I can use this gun" is an idea with practical intentions. When that shit doesn't work then you can maybe see it not gaining too much traction.

The whole 'scary African gun guy' thing just felt out of place and unconvincing.