[spoiler]1. It was explained that the Prawns had been intellectually damaged on a collective level by illness after they landed. Although their social hierarchy was never really explained or understood by the humans, it was implied that they operated on some kind of social insect type of system, like ants or bees, that the system had become disordered by the trauma of the crash, illness, etc, and that most of them were some kind of “drones,” not intellectual free agents. Christopher appeared to be an example of an exception, clearly more intellectually ordered and independent, possibly some kind of “hive” leader, though his exact role is never explained.
They didn’t travel for catfood. It was implied that their landing on earth was accidental and unplanned – essentially some kind of breakdown or crash while they were en route to some other mission. The fact that catfood was like a drug to them was entirely incidental.[/spoiler]
Now you’re stretching the truth. What you stated was “If that sort of coincidence is considered a DEM, then every movie has one” and left it undefined; I assumed you were speaking of the situation in general, which I clarified and responded to in my post. There’s nothing to even “avoid.”
Okay, I suppose there is some room for subjectivity here. I believe that the aforementioned situation is an DEM because of its contrived timing involving functions of the suit that were only introduced for that scene, and were not alluded to before. The fact that the suit itself was introduced before doesn’t mitigate the other shit they invented for that scene to take place.
ETA:
Fair enough, I think we misunderstood one another in a few respects.
I really enjoyed the movie. Although it had bits and pieces here and there that were reminisicent of past SF and action movies, nothing felt too cliche to me. It seemed really fresh and interesting. The pacing was great - I never looked at my watch once and although it wasn’t non-stop action, it never felt too slow to me. Even during the actions scenes they still showed a lot of character development and interaction (e.g. Christopher’s reaction to the biological experiments in the lab).
[spoiler]I got the impression that the suit and the command ship created some kind of connection or neural interface with Wikus. There was a shot when he was getting strapped into a seat (IIRC, it was the suit) and some kind of headgear clamped onto him and he grimaced. I got the impression that it was making some kind of connection with his brain. So he didn’t have to learn how to work the suit by figuring out controls, he could just wear it and it would respond to his actions and thoughts. At first he was more clumsy with it (stumbling), and with more practice he gained more control (grabbed the RPG).
Same with the ship - he wouldn’t have to learn all the individual controls just to do basic piloting. And he clearly wasn’t a fantastic pilot. He was weaving all over the place and couldn’t avoid getting hit by the missile. Even though he could fly the command ship instinctively, he’d probably still need to be taught the more advanced controls. When we saw Christopher at the helm at the end, he could do much more advance controls through the holographic systems.[/spoiler]
I loved this movie. I am trying to pin down exactly what made it so compelling. At no point could I really predict what would happen.
I thought the toxic spray was some sort of infectious disease to kill off humans, as another poster suggested. By the time Christopher’s ship was heading towards the mother ship, I genuinely didn’t know if it would make it, because all of the other plot twists kept me off balance.
When the young’in re-awoke the mother ship and it let out that earth-shattering shockwave, it was one of the most supremely satisfying movie moments I’ve ever had.
I think you can lay the bulk of the blame for that at the feet of the editors of dictionary.com, for being unhelpfully descriptivist. It doesn’t matter how small of a minority might use a word or phrase in whatever contrary and ridiculous way, if they can point to it in the wild, then, by god, it’s worthy of inclusion in the definitions.
It literally makes my blood boil. Yes, I meant to do that. Descriptivist bastards.
This moment is why I still go to the movies – there’s no way that can be reproduced at home.
We can list nitpicks about this movie all day long, but for my money, it’s one of the most entertaining and original sci-fi movies I’ve seen in a long time.
I read somewhere that it cost $10 million less to produce than Julie & Julia (which I also enjoyed quite a lot, although it didn’t have nearly as many explosions).
There’s a great interview with him on the AV Club in which he mentions that, as a first-time actor, it was actually easier for him to improvise than to follow a set script, since he could focus on reacting to what was happening to Wikus as realistically as possible.
I’d have to see it again but did the “Christopher” alien have a different color body or did he wear modified human clothing?
I also think he was a different class than the typical worker drones.
Did anybody else notice the similarity in the “turn you into red goo” weapons here and the “turn you into white goo” weapons from Men In Black? Or even the “poof you’re gone” weapons from War of the Worlds?
The Voodoo aspect was a strange but interesting twist, even though it was there really just to add another faction to the mix to provide convienant fights. But I like how in an South African movie, it the Nigerians who are portrayed as the backwards, voodoo cultists.
Christopher seemed to be the same color as most, but seemed to be the only one who made a real attempt at fashioning an outfit.
Also, in retrospect, the way he so very quickly made an explosive in the underground lab (“I’m making a bomb”) should be a pretty big clue that he’s not your average spacebug.
They hint at Christopher’s higher intelligence from his very first appearance, when Wikus presenting him with the eviction notice, and he’s the first prawn to not only know what an eviction is, but to offer a protest based its illegality. Wikus himself comments on this - he says something like “Oh, this prawn seems pretty clever.”
I wanted to add, as fiendish looking as the aliens were, I rather liked them. Maybe because i’m not used to aliens being rather benign like these ones did- much of the things they did was reactionary.
Then again if some of the behaviors are just their nature I don’t know how thrilled I’d be to have them as neighbors, ie rummaging through your garbage and unloading firehose-quantity sprays of mountain dew colored alien pee all over the place :smack:
Yeah, I didn’t see a DEM either. I’ll let it stand at that.
Anyone else think that the prawn gun designs were right out of anime? There were four prawn weapons that I remember: Lightning gun (Super bug zapper), machinegun, force-gun and missile pods. Any others?
