District 9: Rave Reviews So Far...

Cafe Society
141

Who says we haven’t asked all that? It’s clear that humans and MNU’s are physically incapable of actually speaking each others language. Translating the proper noun for their homeworld would be like translating the word “Earth” into “dirt”. Just learning to understand it must’ve been extremely difficult, yet nobody seems to have any problem. :dubious:

Well we saw footage of that command pod being jettisoned soon after the mothership arrived and Christopher just happened to build his shack over it.

Do we really need to keep using spoilers at this point?

142

No.

Someone from Weta (who did the CGI and effects) said that some of the weapons in the movie were intended to be repurposed tools. In the same way you could wield an axe, chainsaw, or steel riveter as a weapon, some of the prawn “guns” may have been mining equipment or such. Note that some of the guns had a very earth-gun aesthetic to them (hard, black metal) and others were bright orange and white, like the… lets call it gravity gun that Wikus uses when he first escapes the Nigerians (it seemed to just push things away with a gust of force), that could easily be originally intended as a tool of sorts.

143

I liked the average-ness of Wikus. He was your average fuckup, given a huge assignment out of nepotism by a father-in-law who didn’t really like him. He could barely keep a lid on his followers’ desire to kick some crustacean ass. The military officer pushed him around on camera for weakly asserting his authority. When he came home sick his father in law laid into him. I really liked Widkus as a character because he was so realistic.

The only thing that drove him to action hero mode was the desperation of seeing himself turning into a prawn and knowing the government was more interested in dissecting him than using him alive.

I really liked this movie. It was very un-Hollywood.

144

Just seen it and just have to give my thoughts on the movie.

This is probably the first movie that I have ever seen that portrays humans as aliens, not the genetic transformation, but the occult stuff with the Nigerians.

Now some guesses

the alien ship was either a colony ship or an industrial miner, the majority of the prawns would have been simply workers with no education, twenty years later presumably after the originals had landed, the second and third gen aliens would have reverted to iliterate savages. While we see prawn senior and junior being able to manipulate technology, they don’t really operate it like ship techs would. They make no effort to relocate the remaining prawns onto the ship, simply get the thing into orbit, using the genetic key and hit auto pilot, and promise to return in 3 years, which makes me add convict ship to the list of what it was.

The only real problem with the movie that I had was that I could not fixate on what jackson wanted us to fixate on, I seen a big honking ship hovering over joburg, no full time human presence on board working on reverse engineering, basic stuff like that.

The corney plot device to have some human multinational Corp taking control and turning the alien camp into some concentration camp with no oversight from anyone and doing medical experiments on the ETs. Can I have interstellar war or starstrike for a thousand Alex. Like I get that South Africa is a pretty powerful country regionally, but Washington not getting involved strikes me as naive.

Overall I liked the movie, but don’t expect it to make sense.

Declan

Big honkin ship hovering over joburg, can I hqv

145

What I’ve been thinking about is how realistic the portrayal of the alien assimilation would be if something like that were to actually happen. It seems to me that such a worldview-shattering event like aliens actually showing up would inspire a vastly more impressive reaction from the world’s governments and populations than a minimal amount of help and moving them into a slum. I got the impression that basically nobody on the planet cared about the prawns except the handful of officials assigned to deal with them and the executives trying to get their weapons. Weren’t there scientists, sociologists, engineers, linguists, etc. interacting with them constantly for the two decades they were on the planet? Was there absolutely no social pressure to make them comfortable?

Personally, I found the social setup extremely unrealistic, but then again, maybe that’s exactly what would happen if the arriving aliens were primarily rather dull-witted and preferred to avoid human contact. Any thoughts on what would happen in reality?

For the record, I thought the movie was quite good. I have to admit I was a little disappointed from what I expected from the trailers which was a movie that would explore how human society would react to an ambivalent alien arrival (e.g., the interview scene in the trailer; why was that dropped?). I would love to see a sequel where Christopher Johnson returns with a large group of very intelligent prawns and we actually try to explore what would happen in such a scenario without everyone shooting at each other.

146

You’re right, that is odd. Then again we don’t know for certain that there wasn’t anybody onboard when Christopher took off. I can why they’d be very reluctant start taking stuff apart though. Cut the wrong wire and suddenly the gravity control drive fails and the ship crashs and wipes out most of Johannesburg. It’s technology must be almost completely beyond our comprehension. The unmanned ship hovered perfectly still for over 20 yrs, they can reverese gravity (the command pod was falling up to the ship along with debris), and it has some form of FTL that can get it to their homeworld (or at least a nearby colony) in 18 months. Humanity is doomed if they come back in force.

147

Jackson who? Michael Jackson? He died.

If you mean Peter Jackson, he merely produced this movie (i.e. supported it financially).

148

Well the more I digest the movie , I would have to say no.

Some assumptions

[SPOILER]The Prawn ship was either a slaver or a forced labor ship and the prawns affected a rebellion, the ship was forced to head the nearest star that could support life and it turned out to be Earth.

Mainly because the Prawns were starving and in need of medical attention, and I would imagine that a ship that large, if they could not figure out how to add a hydroponics section, its because they did not care about the Pax, cause it was supposed to be a short trip.

We could sanitize the records that say medical research, and remind the New Prawns, that the resident Prawns fell in with a bad crowd and organized crime, and yes the remains of gang warfare were autopsied as per our rules, and yes the cattle that you denied Sentient rights to, by failing to comply with these rules that our admiralty have, which as a fully sentient race such as yourselves must have some version, we were forced to basically pen them up( Get the SecState to gussie that statement up for public consumption) and oh by the way, here is our bill for your nationals and their welfare, as we dont have a common currency , we will take it in trade.[/SPOILER]

Declan

149

My Name is CLickckuclwhbeeepkadf, aka Christopher.

Recently repatriated from the Planet Earth, I have access to many millions of dollars. My exit from Earth was less than legal and and I have need of someone to help me repatriate my monies from the National Bank of Nigeria, through the use of Google, your name came to me as being someone of good character.

Declan

150

I loved it and it bugged me.

As a metaphor for apartheid? It seemed to work quite well. I just can’t quite imagine something like that happening if aliens really showed up, though. If nothing else, I know personally at least one person who would sell everything he could get his hands on to buy a ticket to South Africa and live among the prawns and learn their ways. He’s not just a xenophile, he’d find these specific aliens specifically intriguing. He’d be the Jane Goodall of the prawns. I kept thinking “Eddy would give his right arm to be here.” :stuck_out_tongue:

I think the main human character was incredible. And I think the idea of “Christopher” being the only ‘intelligent’ one among them makes a little sense: if they really were like worker ants or bees, they could breed for genetic predisposition to castes: scientist, worker, soldier, queen, whatever. But only queens should be able to lay eggs, so children being born down here doesn’t work well for that. Still, they aren’t actually ants, so who’s to say? Anyway, I have the feeling that burning creches was probably pretty common as population control. That horrified me more than anything else, even Wikus losing his teeth and fingernails, and may I just say I think I’ve developed a new phobia?

Perhaps it went all Lord of the Flies – er, prawns – up in the ship and they’d lost a lot of their culture. Perhaps it was a generation ship… no, that doesn’t make sense, since Christopher was only three years from home.

I kept thinking: “They had no Mandela.” It seemed unreasonable to me that there was never any leader born to them. Again, I suppose it makes sense if they’re mostly uneducated semi-sentient aliens, but if that’s the case, why was Christopher so keen on rescuing them? They are his people, yes, but if they’re just a lot of workers, his species can breed more. If he’s interested in rescuing them, that might indicate the possibility of individuality among them. There are individuals worth saving.

But as a metaphor for apartheid, it seems to work fabulously.

151

They also seemed to be very violent and causing a lot of trouble, so you don’t have to stretch your imagination too far to believe the people would not want them around after the initial amazement of first contact wore off.

Anyway the movie was awesome and definitely my favorite of the year. The plot was gripping and compelling with actual character development on top of the spectacularly rendered CGI (the way the aliens were lit made them seem so real, so seamlessly integrated into the environment). Ever since the dawn of badass CGI, it seems like those things have fallen by the wayside but not for this film. I was glued to my seat from beginning to end. (I actually had to pee really badly by the end but I stuck it out because I couldn’t bear to miss anything)

152

Spoilers.

Was it ever part of either Wickus or Christopher’s plan to for Wickus to travel to Planet Prawn? They’re about to get into the shuttle when Wickus freaks out about it taking three years. So then he steals the shuttle with plans to __________?

Was is a question of fuel? There was enough fuel to either cure him or travel to prawn world?

And then at the end, I understand they were separated by the fire fights, but would Wickus have traveled with them if he had the chance. He’d go full on prawn in a few days either way, and it seems like JHB is the worst place for him to be - whether human or “disguised” as a prawn. Christopher promises to come back, so you’d think Wickus would want to tag along, get the cure off planet in 18 months, and hitch a ride back to Earth with the Prawn Armada. Plus, he’d get to see another world.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked the film, and I enjoy pondering over these bits.

153

The plan before they broke into MNU and Christopher saw the medical experiments, was to steal back the fluid/fuel and get Wikus to the mothership, where Christopher could use the technology on board to fix him.

Ostensibly. But, now I can’t think why Christopher would have been so willing to give up his 20 year collection of fluid just to reverse Wikus’s metamorphosis.

That would have been an interesting development. But, like you said, they got separated; Wikus had to fight off MNU from destroying the drop ship while it made its slow decent in the tractor beam. That was Wikus’s only noble deed, really.

Me too, the sign of a really well done film/story.

154

Spoilers…

The good:
The premise was pretty original- there were similarities to Alien Nation in the broad strokes but the execution was fairly new. The effects were generally great - some of the far shots of alien action were diminished by the shaky cam, but the close ups were all integrated well. I very quickly started thinking of Christopher as one of the actors. I also really liked his kid. Some of the twists surprised me- I liked that when the command module took off it crashed, and figured this would not be a happy ending type movie, so was surprised when the action continued on. Wikus was great. He seemed like a real person, basically a selfish bureaucrat, enhanced by the mockumentary aspects. Even when he starts helping Christopher it’s for selfish reasons at first. I loved the whole Wikus alien VD cover story. Also loved that it was set in another country with actors I haven’t seen before, that added to the realism and ordinariness. And the way they say ‘fooking’ there. :smiley:

The bad: The parts of the plot dealing with getting the ship running and with Wikus’ tranformation didn’t really make sense. That the ship’s fuel was also some kind of virus that can transform a human into an alien was just ridiculous and nonsensical. Why did the command module leave the ship in the first place if that’s all they needed to leave? And why did they need fuel if it could just be remotely tractor beamed back up? How could the humans not have found the command module easily when they were searching for it? I’m guessing WIkus stole the module out of desparation and wasn’t thinking because there didn’t seem to be any way in which that could have potentially helped him. I also thought it was weird that he stayed behind. While I liked the various twists with the module crashing, it also confused me a bit emotionally, such that I was expecting a tragic ending and so wasn’t able to enjoy the happy ending as much since I didn’t know to root for it.

How does the district thing work there? Was district 9 just a district of the city or was it the 9th camp for the aliens? I ask because the new camp was district 10, the next sequential number after 9, but it was located very far away.

I was thinking the same thing. They also gave us that WB show about an eco bed and breakfast in SA. Seems like we might start expecting some good stuff from there.

They weren’t trying to kill him outright, just capture him so they could extract his organs for study before his transformation completed. It was only the soldier guy that decided to disobey orders and just kill him off.

I think the suit was very well established and foreshadowed. The remote control aspect was fairly obvious after the kid started up the command module controls. But I guess YMMV.

He said he had to go and get help. I don’t think he was in any condition to try and rescue all the prawns by himself. And I doubt they were living happily lol.

  1. Obviously they call themselves clickityclackclickclickclack. They didn’t have the sort of vocal sounds amenable to translating proper nouns, hence “Christopher”.

  2. I’m sure those questions were asked. We did learn from the kid what the planet looked like and that it was larger. We don’t know the speed of the ship, but it’s 1.5 years away as it travels. It did seem strange though that humans were still unsure about why they were there and how the ship got stranded. I guess the aliens were either not so forthcoming, or the worker class didn’t really have all that info, or both.

It’s a sequel. I think the lack of a number is due to the fact that it’s in 3D. Speaking of the trailers, I found it interesting that the majority were horror movies. I wonder if they were matched to District 9 by theme, or if it’s just cause October/Halloween is near.

155

oops double post

156

Fromhere, based on comments from the director:

157

No, the plan was to return to the mothership to use its advanced medical equipment to return him to human form. Which leaves open the possibility that if the medical machinery can return him to human, it can also revert a prawn to human, sorta like Caprica six, aliens among us.

This is where I differ from everyone else , including Blonkamp, who should have let the experts decide what the back story was. What that cylinder contained in my opinion was a genetic key. The weapons could not be used by humans , and probably most of the worker prawns, or convicts really because they did not have the genetic sequence that the overlords had.

And then at the end, I understand they were separated by the fire fights, but would Wickus have traveled with them if he had the chance. He’d go full on prawn in a few days either way, and it seems like JHB is the worst place for him to be - whether human or “disguised” as a prawn. Christopher promises to come back, so you’d think Wickus would want to tag along, get the cure off planet in 18 months, and hitch a ride back to Earth with the Prawn Armada. Plus, he’d get to see another world.

He would have tagged along , imho, in the year or so that it would have taken to get to prawn prime, he would have been up and running as a human again. Explaining what he did for a living might get interesting.

This was supposed to be a commentary on Aparteid , but park a big honking ship over joburg and us scifi geeks are gonna get involved, so those little bits will be pored over for quite a while.

On a related note, the movie did well as a stand alone. However if they do end up deciding to make a sequel its going to resemble independence day and go with an american director with a ship or twenty hovering over mid western USA , and we all know where thats going.

Declan

158

I think I’d rather that they didn’t do a sequel. I like the note of open optimism at the end the way it is. You know Christopher Johnson is coming back, probably with a full prawn armada, to rescue the rest of his people, but you don’t know exactly what kind of form the rescue will take. The most natural assumption is that it will be violent, that prawns will want to kick some human ass – maybe even wipe them out completely – but I don’t think that would necessarily be the case. They might be able to effect a rescue with very minimal violence, and I think that might even be more interesting.

Either way, this is a case where people are going to imagine their own versions of hat will happen in three years, and a sequel can’t possibly please any other, plus it runs the risk of not being able to match everything that was special about the original. I think it’s one of those lightning in a bottle types of movies that might be better left alone.

If they do make a sequel (and I’m sure Blonkamp and Copley are going to get offered shovelfuls of money to do one), that they try to go away from an Independence Day style alien invasion action movie and find a more unexpected and original angle.

159

Makes you wonder if Wikus becoming a Prawn has changed his personality and intellect to that of the more hive minded? I’d like to see that explored if they do make a “District 10”. Then have Christopher arrive in the first third of the movie (with support of a queen or two), change Wikus back, and Wikus becoming some sort of Ambassador for the Prawns (not the other way around), to negotiate rescue and evacuation of the 2.5 mil population. There’s a good story in there somewhere.

But, still, I would rather them leave District 9 alone, if any sequel would ruin it with mediocrity.

160

If they did make a sequel. I’d like the plot to flow similarly to the way the plot flowed in this film. I, like many others, didn’t think there was going to be a happy ending.

[spoiler]
I imagine the sequel being like this: 3 years later, Christopher Johnson comes back with a prawn armada. He negotiates the return of the 2+ million prawns, which the governments are more than willing to cooperate with. MNU mucks things up and tries to manipulate people into thinking its a full-blown alien invasion, to cover their own ass for what they did.

The prawns, this time being intelligent, organized, and familiar with trecharous human nature over 20 years of previous captivity, don’t fall for it. But rather outright slaughter MNU personell they put them on trial, under their own laws and systems of justice. There is a big fuss with humans either feeling like its unfair, or wanting to martyr themselves to save others or other goofy human traits. Finally over the course of the film the Prawn Grand Council or whatever is getting impatient with Christopher since many of them only care about getting their people back/their mining mission/procuring more catfood. So in a twist, the prawns get impatient about the mass trials and leave.

Before they go, some Prawn researches discover human beings have some physical traits favorable to the Prawn empire. They decide to detain several thousand humans for ‘research’ and as a bargaining gesture of good faith (we’ll take some prisoners and leave the rest of you alone). Witkus, though cured, must tearfully say goodbye to his wife, as he is compelled to leave with the Prawns to act as a Human-Prawn liason. While christopher feels some alien equivalent of sympathy in his plight, he cannot show mercy as his progression in the hive structure doesn’t allow a member of the Leader Caste to show any favoritism toward any specific individual below them. As the film winds down, it goes back to a kind of mockumentary style, only this time from the Prawn prespective, as their information officers describe the plight of their brethren getting stranded on some backwater world and the nuisance caused by the tribes of frail squishy inhabitants on the surface :wink:

The sequel ends in a rather ironic twist, with crowds of naked, filthy, terrified humans being herded into the vast holds of the ship, their fate unknown.[/spoiler]