Err, that should be “However, your “heart transplant” analogy is not really an apt one–in that case, there is nothing of the heart that can be used, I strongly doubt that would be the case for Wikus.”
Like I’d concede that easily 
The difference would be that the mech suit was already established, so… yeah. Would it have been better if subtitles appeared when we first see the mech saying, “THIS THING CAN BE USED TO SHOOT PEOPLE”?
I think the disconnect people have is that the mech being there is simply very lucky, and smartly set up. If a big deal was made about the mech earlier, seemingly for no apparent reason, it would obviously have been foreshadowing of Red October proportions (“Hey, audience! Look at this Russian cook! His face is important. Remember it!!! But forget you saw anything.”)
When I first saw the mech saving the day, there was a little spike in my mind that I had to deal with. “That’s strange, why is there a big mech there? Oh right, because the Nigerians bought it a few days ago and they wouldn’t be able to move it. Clever.” Had I not allowed myself to follow that mental dialogue, I might have written it off as DEM as well.
That’s not the same thing though; that much was always evident by virtue of it having guns. Had someone hopped into the suit and used it during that scene (such as perhaps one of the humans feeling sympathy for Wikus), in lieu of what actually happened, that would have been fine (or at the least, better, and not a DEM or even much of a contrivance).
Instead, the suit gains features that were not alluded to before and no one (that I’ve discussed with at least) would have or could have seen coming. That was indeed out of “nowhere” and is much more than reducing it to the mere ability of “shooting people.”
Most of us can easily imagine that creatures than can manage interstellar travel have also probably mastered the remote control.
By that logic, almost anything sufficiently techologically capable would have worked in that scene then. Listen, I don’t take issue with the fact that it has the capabilities to be enabled remotely by a child (or the mother ship, or whatever the exact sequence was) and then have the autopilot non-prawn execution mode enabled. I can buy all that. What I do take issue with is these capabilities appearing out of nowhere, coincidentally during the very scene where they’re needed most (as in, practically the very second before Wikus’s seeming death).
But listen, if you can imagine yourself past any issue with the movie, great! Seriously, I don’t mean that in a demeaning way at all; that just doesn’t work with me and is partially why I didn’t enjoy the movie as much as you.
Far from it, see below
Blonkamp the director, answered some of the back story in an interview, in which he postulates that the prawns are a hive society and would have a queen. The fuel is actually a genetic key thats been harvested from somewhere in the encampment to get root access to the ship, postulating that only the queen can authorize the ships computer to access navigation and other stuff.
Its possible that he is either the last of the ships company, or the son of someone from ships company
[SPOILER]Im postulating that the prawns are essentially blanks, before I was of the opinion that they are litterally iliterate savages due to lack of education, but I am changing my mind on this.
Your basic prawn is born with a base OS if you will, they eat, sleep, breed like bunny rabbits, but have no higher intelligence (possibly an aparteid alegory) and require imprinting to become what ever is desired at the time. So many prawn soldiers , maitenance workers , garbage collectors, what ever. Only the queen can imprint the prawns and so are left in a limbo.
The weapons and modified tools that have been left on earth , require a genetic code thats probaby unique to the prawn caste, think user permissions on a computer network. Since the drones were not imprinted, they dont have the key.
Along comes Wikus and he gets splashed with the stuff that the queen uses to imprint the drones and modified his RNA, so now he is able to at least operate the mech, fly the command module and quite possibly is the new queen. [/SPOILER]
Declan
Declan, nice theory.
Well, for one thing, he’s not human. Your objection that piloting a mecha would not make one stronger and faster is absurd. What would be the point of the thing, if it didn’t augment the wearer’s physical abilities?
As was pointed out, he was strapped down. Apparently, the doctors hadn’t anticipated that his transformation had increased his physical strength to that degree. As for why he wasn’t drugged, the reasoning for that was explicitly stated in the movie: because his physiology is a unique combination of human and alien, they can’t predict how a sedative or pain killer would effect him, and they don’t want to take the risk of a drug interaction damaging him before they can study how the transformation works.
And the reason they’re harvesting his organs is because one dude who can use alien weapons doesn’t help them. They need a way to replicate the effect that’s changing him into an alien in other humans, but in a way that doesn’t result in completely overwriting their human DNA. To study that, they need to get into his internal workings and examine him down to the minutest level. Hence, the vivisection. Unlike the previous two points, this isn’t explicitly stated in the film, but rather, was so obvious I suspect the filmmakers didn’t expect that it was necessary to point it out for the audience.
And this is simply a ridiculous objection. It’s not even like the suit is doing anything that isn’t perfectly possible with real-world technology. If it had suddenly opened a rift in time and space, or reversed time by flying counter-clockwise around the planet, yeah, that would have been a contrivance. Demonstrating that the aliens had mastered basic RC car technology is hardly an out-of-left-field revelation.
Well, you’re absolutely right, there was no hint at all that the aliens had any sort of anti-gravity technology. At least, there isn’t if you ignore the giant alien spaceship hovering over the city for the entire movie.
Because who gives a shit? It’s something that happened almost thirty years before the start of the movie, and has no direct bearing on the plot. Somehow, the prawns got some weapons off the ship over the course of the three decades they’ve been on Earth. It doesn’t remotely matter how they did it.
Since I am on a roll, I thought I would throw this out
The scene where wikus catches an RPG7 round in flight, obviously bothered some people. What bothered me about was that they had really good fighting sequences that showed that they consulted with folks that would know such things and then they blow it with that one sequence.
Now , the military folks on the board would probably notice it , but not the lay person. If you noticed that when the merc fired the RPG, the round itself had a rod on the back end. Thats the propellant charge and is used simply to expel the grenade round at a certain speed and send it on its way down range.
So wikus catches the round in flight, wtf over. Fan wankery would say that the round was expelled out of the projector via gas, flys several feet before the motor kicks in and passes the minimum safe distance before the grenade arms, so that wikus would have caught something that was flying no faster than a hardball, thus plot sustained.
But no, its not supposed to work that way.
Declan
You might have something there. A stinger missile or Javelin would have a more “roddy” shape, but those are too bulky to just happen to be in a vehicle.
If they showed the RPG fired accurately, they could have had him “catch” it using that gravity hook/gun feature that was used to catch the fired bullets. That would be less visually impressive, plus to a layman, a “bazooka” (as they’d call it) firing a small conical shape would seem incorrect. People expect “bazookas” to shoot tubeish rockets.
Uh, actually, that IS how an RPG-7 works, dude. The rocket tube remains attached to the warhead. In fact, it has stabilizer fins on it. The RPG wouldn’t work if the tube didn’t remain attached.
Ah crap, I was under the impression that the vanes were on the grenade itself, rather than the tubey thing. From watching that movie the beast, about a russian T-62 or 64.
Declan
Ya came up deuces, but I saw you roll that 7 and then an 11 right in a row before. You did it before you can do it again!
It would be absurd if that’s what I stated. Being made “faster” and “stronger” doesn’t automatically equate to “catching rockets”–there’s still, I would presume, reflexes involve. Not to mention the fact that even being faster and strong wouldn’t automatically enable one to perform miraculous feats without practice. But whatever, it did in the movie, right? So I should I be questioning it?
Apparently. Which is unbelievable in my opinion, as in, I accept that’s what occurred in the movie, but recognize it not as being plausible, which makes it difficult for lost myself in a movie.
Was it? Or are you just inferring that based on other scenes in movie? As far as I recall, they did not “explicitly” state such at the time of the scene (though I’m willing to accept I’m wrong). Even then, one would think they could strike a compromise between human sedatives and Prawn sedatives (surely they figured what would sedate a Prawn within that 20+ year period).
Fine, still seems a silly and *very *contrived plot point.
Ugh. Listen, let’s get this out of the way: you don’t think it’s a contrivance, I do. I don’t give a shit what abilities the suit demonstrated, all that matters is they were undefined up to that point and used in a very contrived manner just in the brick of time. It doesn’t bother you, it does bother me. There really is nothing more that can be said about this, as I assure you, neither of us are going to change our mind.
It’s a good thing I didn’t say that. Miller: 1, Strawman: 0. Again, since you seem unable to grasp this, the technology itself is irrelevant. What is relevant (to me, seems not to be for you) is the fact that this previously undefined ability of the ship (specifically, the fact that is had a tractor beam–not that it uses “anti-gravity technology” appeared miraculously in the nick of time to fulfill a plot point.
This is rhetorical I trust? Otherwise we just wasted a lot of time in not just this thread, but many other movie threads.
When the weapons are such a fundamental element of the story, it matters…TO ME. It’s cool that you don’t care, but I do. Okay?
Damm it , shakes fist at rickjay
Declan
Also, I’m now done posting to this thread. I’m simply drained talking about this movie for a week+ and myriad posts and I’ve had enough. I’m glad you all enjoyed it, just please accept that I didn’t as much.
Cheers 
Do you know how neurons work? Once the signal is sent there is a speed at which the electrochemical conduction moves. It cannot move any faster than that specific neuron. However some neurons are faster than others, and still the body moves in a coordinated fashion even though it’s sending out different signals at different intervals. The same would be true for the interaction with a suit. He is not hindered by the limitations of his muscles, only by the limitations of his nervous system to deliver commands at which point the suit which could have a superior conduction system and could handle the movements faster might actually move faster.
If a gun is introduced in the first act it must go off in the third act.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. That was kind of annoying. They spent all this effort trying to get the command module to fly only to turn around and find out it didn’t need to.
It’s a McGuffin. A movie can’t give you every detail regarding what’s gone on.
Just got back from seeing this, and I was really impressed. I had no idea what it was all about except aliens are quarantined in District 9 and a mecha catches a rocket. Going in cold like that really added to the experience. The effects were so good I didn’t notice them, if you know what I mean. The transformation of Wikus from someone who quite cheerfully kills alien babies was believable and captivating. For me, actually, the least believable thing was the 'abortion" scene - it seemed too over the top. But then again, when he was unplugging the young and handed the device to his friend as a souvenir, there were people in the audience laughing along with them, I shit you not. So maybe over the top was required to resonate with the more troglodytic viewers.
While there was a lot of emotional impact, I was glad that they mined more complex issues and didn’t resort to “Christopher’s son is in terrible danger!” for all the drama. In fact it was much more poignant when Christopher’s plan looked dead and he tried to get his son excited about their new tent.
My understanding is they needed the module operating in any case - otherwise how would they activate the ship’s movement and the tractor beam?
Personally, I think the filmmakers didn’t care if the rocket catch was scientifically defensible - they put it in because it looks like twelve kinds of awesome, and I can support that.
I knew the gun was going to go off, I just never expected it would go off by itself and kill all the baddies in the room to save our hero’s life. That it was going to go off was a given, the manner in which it did was DEM. That to me is not in doubt, nor does it really detract from the film. As I said before DEM is pretty standard in lots of Hollywood films.
I didn’t say the movie not speculating why the aliens were there made it hollow. I said that in using the contrivance of a documentary about the aliens, and in having talking heads giving the backstory about them, not having any speculation by the talking heads on why the alien ship arrived on earth at all made the mocumentary aspect ring hollow. There is no way in such a documentary there would be no such speculation from the purported experts. Obviously YMVs.