I agree, I’m not taking issue with the suit’s location–that’s all fine and dandy. What I take issue with is the abilities it gained that had not been previous specificed (that is, being controlled remotely, whether by kid or the mother ship [I honestly don’t remember, and was just going off of what cmyk said]), at a very unusual time. Specifically, the moment of what should have been the protagonist’s death.
It seems we’re talking all spoilery now:
I agree with everything, especially the impression that the mothership activated all the other latent technology. I’m not sure about that though, but that’s what it looked like.
However, I did get the impression, the kid was operating the mech’s weapons remotely, but couldn’t move it or drive it because there was no one inside. It didn’t seem to me that the mech had a mind of its own. I thought that was the quick action of the kid.
In hindsight, I do recall the mech’s HUD looking like it was on auto-target or something, with it highlighting non-prawns seemingly automatically.
Yeah, it was the HUD that got me. When it was showing it targeting the Nigerians, it showed it as if from the mech’s perspective, and the display that the kid was looking at didn’t show anything like that.
I suppose the kid could have put it on “defend” mode or something, but it’s a bit of a stretch to say that the kid would even know it was there, and that Wikus was there. I think the kid’s only goal was to get the space ship moving again.
I guess I should add, since I never did, that I really really liked the movie.
As a writer, I tend to be able to see where the plots of movies are going, since there are only 5 or 10 basic movie plots. This one, however, always beat me. For a long time I thought Wikus was going to be killed by the aliens, and the government would use that as motivation to start an extermination, and it would turn into a full on aliens-vs-humans battle movie.
Then when Wikus was sprayed, I thought it was going to turn out to be some engineered contagion that would spread amongst humans and kill them off. Some kind of plot by the prawns to take over the planet.
So rare to find such a unique plot in a summer movie.
And unlike your average movie that seems intent on setting up a sequel, this movie actually creates this whole rich world that could support any number of sequels. Instead of some cheesy cliffhanger ending, it just makes you want to know what will happen next, and to know more about what’s going on.
If I have a complaint, it might be that towards the middle it got sort of difficult to tell when it was transitioning from documentary to “you’re watching a movie.” Had to do some kind of internal “would there be a cameraman there?” logic.
The reason the suit and the piloting the ship worked for me -
Wikus never appeared “in control” - more like he was strapped in and going for the ride - suggesting more of a “neural” interface (supported by the fact that all of the technology was useless outside of the prawns). Like others, I couldn’t quite tell what caused the suit to activate initially, but I like that a few see that the youngun did it. Same as when he activated the ‘drop ship’ - he seemed to be going on instinct, not knowledge.
2.) I didn’t see the entire mothership as having come alive, more so just the parts needed for Christopher to “go get help”.
In fact, I think one of the more telling parts of that whole sequence was that ALL of the other prawns were hiding - none of them took up weapons against the MNU, and only at the very end did a few come in after the mercenary - if there was a DEM in the movie, it was that bit right there, those 4 ‘saving’ Wikus - that, and of course, the bad guy had to go and start monologuing…
And if it hasn’t been pointed out yet (sometimes I get too lazy to backread multipage threads), the prawns that had survived were said to be essentially simple-minded working drones used to taking directions. Mounting an insurrection with their superior weapons didn’t occur to them. All they know is that they like catfood, and the humans will trade it for their weapons.
The only alien that seemed to think independently was Christopher. I wonder if he was actually a higher-up in the alien civilization, the pilot of the ship perhaps.
That’s actually sort of one of the more interesting ideas in the movie - how do we know that they’re the worker drones? That’s just a guess that humans have made about them. Throughout the movie, the prawns have whatever negative characteristics the other characters need them to have to fit their agenda. I don’t know if there’s a history of different attitudes about blacks and coloreds in South Africa over the years, but we’ve certainly seen that in North America. The fact that we just accept that these are the worker drones while watching the movie because of an offhand comment is just another layer to the allegory.
Why do you think humans were guessing? Or did you forget that they can and do talk to each other? I’m sure in some discussion over 20 years that would have been vetted by the prawns.
When they had Wikus in the lab and were experimenting on him, I wish they’d have shaved his mustache to better emphasize the transition from beurocrat to ass-kicking protagonist.
Towards the end when he was becoming heroic, part of my brain still rejected it because of the mustache.
He was so close, too. Short, scruffy brown hair; manly stubble; torn clothing… if it werent for the mustache he could have been a video game action star.
Didn’t like it.
[Spoiler]So these aliens are perfectly aware of their vastly superior technological capibilities yet they went and willingly got rounded up and gave up their superior weaponry?
Were the aliens supposed to be SMART? How did they function as a society? Some background from whence they came would have been extremely helpful. As it were they just looked like a bunch of feral cats rounded up.
And who the hell travels 20 billion lightyears for fucking CATFOOD anyway? Ridiculous…
The first 45 minutes should have taken about 20. All the background about hom being SELECTED for the job and the PREPARATION was useless and boring.[/Spoiler]
Well, I just got back from seeing it and I thought District 9 was really really good. That lead actor - incredible. The special effects were so amazing. A thoughtful action movie. Liked the locations; liked that it wasn’t set in America.
Cyberhwk, Several of your problems are addressed above, including why they didn’t use their weapons or do anything productive.
They didn’t fly here for anything. Something happened and the ship’s occupants were starving, alone, and scared. It’s possible that the aliens are largely helpless, and whoever was telling them what to do died off (imagine if a van full of elementary school kids was stranded and the adults all died). Perhaps the ship automatically went to the nearest inhabited planet hoping someone would help.
On the “mech suit”
I saw it as the kid was activating all of the mothership’s defenses (something unable to be done because they didn’t have the proper amounts of fuel to do it), and in doing so it activated the suit. The suit, coming to life, sees a bunch of non-prawns about to kill or seriously harm a prawn and acted on defense mode and killed the non-prawns. If that sort of coincidence is considered a DEM, then every movie has one
Not every movie has a scenario even remotely close to that, and as such, your statement can’t be true (specifically, a situation where the main protagonist is about to be killed and is magically saved a moment before). I wouldn’t disagree that many movies may make use of similar devices, which may very well be DEMs, but all? Nope.
Just got back from seeing it - I must say I am amazed that they pulled this off with a $30 million budget (I guess not having any big-name actors helps a lot!). I agree Sharlto was terrific as Wikus.
I have some questions about the logistics of how the aliens got stuck (and remain) in District 9, and also thought some of the actions taken by humans/aliens were a bit dubious, but all in all I think it was a very good movie. Unfortunately I was sitting too close to the screen for my comfort so I was quite motion-sick from the shaky-cam by the end 
This. This. So much this. I loved this movie, and this was one of the reasons why. I walked out -intrigued- by the idea of the ship coming back, but not really minding that we will likely never know. Or the eventual fate of Widkus- it’s intriguing, but it didn’t bother me a bit that it’s left open. That’s insanely rare for me.
The villain monolgue thing at the end is nice. My movie-companion and I agreed that it was sort-of symbolic of what -could- have happened with apartheid in general; to wit-
You’re going to run out of bullets before you run out of enemies.
You are being waaaay too nitpicky on this (so you can call this a DEM and avoid other movies being called the same?). If your definition of DEM is quite simply “2) any artificial or improbable device resolving the difficulties of a plot.” then I don’t believe there are all that many movies which exist, and especially not a single one that comes to mind, that didn’t rely on that, as any well timed coincidence is an improbable device resolving the difficulties of a plot.
Some of the aliens had color on their exoskeletons, and quite possibly color differentiated the various classes. I’m assuming a biological pre-disposition, a la “The Mote in God’s Eye” with Engineers, Warriors, etc. This may strike some as fanwank, but let’s assume that the officer/scientist/leader class had been wiped out, and in 20 years time enough of them had been born to replace them. “Christopher” was much more intelligent than his companion - as well far more consolatory. But by the time the leader-types had been hatched, the morons had traded off all their weapons for freaking cat food.
Oh, and I’ll admit that when I mentioned “all movies”, I was speaking a bit too broadly, as movies based on non-fiction obviously wouldn’t have DEMs. I was referencing fictional movies and stories.