I concur with what everyone has said. It is a breath of fresh air that a movie can be so well done. Great story, great acting, great direction. I read an article that was astonished that it was made for only $30 million. I find that hard to believe to given the amount of CGI.
My favorite part:
[spoiler]Wickus down on the ground in the robosuit, apparently defeated. Big baddie loads up the bazooka and targets the rising shuttle. He pulls the trigger…the rocket shoots towards the shuttle and ZING, Wickus catches the rocket in midair. That was SuhWEET[/spoiler]
The More i learn about District 9 the more i am impressed by it. Having learned that it only cost 30 million to make was the first big chucnk of mind blowing knowledge. Now having read an article on the A.V. Club site with an interview with the main actor Sharlto Copley I have learned that much of the movie was improved. Not just the lines but also the camera shots. Neill Blomkamp would some times just decide to shoot from a different angle. Amazing. There is another great interview with Neill Blomkamp also at A.V. Club
I loved this movie! The final act was the best part and for plot holes, non existent. I was also on the edge of my seat waiting to see how it would end up. It is definitely one of those movies that has carved itself a place in SciFi history. I don’t feel quite the same as I did after Matrix, that was much more of a paradigm shift. In many ways it was similar to Cloverfield but even better and much less camera movement. It was a pleasure to watch and left me very satisfied. It is perfectly setup for a sequel but at the same time the lack of one would in no way affect it.
The wife and I just saw it yesterday. I really liked it and we spent dinner afterward just discussing the various themes and points the movie explores. I purposely avoided as much press as I could so while I did find that I was often in the dark about what was going on or even what angle the movie was going to take, I was also able to enjoy it without having any expectations. Really liked it, and not in any way I expected.
I have no criticisms of this movie. This movie blew me away. I definitely didn’t find any “plot holes”. The plot was pretty tight and all made sense to me (if you found any plot holes I’d be interested to read them.) The great thing about this movie was that I wasn’t even sure who the main character was going to be going into the theater. The mockumentry was a great way to introduce exposition, and fade into wikus’s story. Wikus is a great character becuase he really is just a corporate stooge but he still has a heart. Also the third act was great. That last action scene built up intesity while making complete sense, and not having to introduce any new elements such as another big robot or something. I really think it is a masterpiece. I felt like I just walked out of the Dark Knight for the first time again.
Just saw District 9 and absolutely loved it. What a breath of fresh air in a market saturated with cross marketed action/ summer blockbuster fests (not that those aren’t great, there is just a LOT of them lately). This movie really seemed to get down to the roots of science fiction. Telling a great story with relevance to our own time and culture, yet with a science fiction backdrop.
The main character is really loathsome and stupid at the beginning. But his physical and ultimately emotional metamorphisis was really well done, right up until the end when I was almost out of my chair rooting for him.
Yes, there were some plot details that were not explained and that has been the major gripe so far. But the cool thing about this film is that those details serve to spark your imagination looking for answers and wanting to see more of this universe. For example, the alien weapons were pretty badass yet they chose not to use them on humans, why? I’m not saying I know the answer, but sparks a lot of interesting questions doesn’t it. I don’t think this was a script mistake, I think it was intentional to get the audience thinking.
Anyway, looking forward to whatever this universe has to offer even if it’s only in my imagination.
I’m glad everybody liked this movie so much. I was completely underwhelmed. I certainly have no problem with a film leaving things to the audience’s imagination, but there were far too many over-arching questions for me to let go, most notably; why did the fuel for the ship canister thingy contain goo that transformed a human into an alien? And why did the aliens allow themselves to be cowed, despite superior weapons and technology? I’ll gladly use my imagination as to why they came, why they seemed stuck, why they remained in the ship, but most of the plot made very little sense to me, just a heavy-handed allegory about appartheid and squatter camps in South Africa. I didn’t hate it, mind you, just felt let down after all the gushing throught the media. Awesome gun, though, reminded me of the WunderWaffe thing from the CoD5: Nazi Zombies series.
I didn’t see ANY artillery, big guns, etc. Superior small arms? Okay but in general? No. Beyond that the vast majority of the aliens were basically slave/worker class. Outside of Christopher Jonhson and his son none of them shows very much intelligence.
Part of the film is how we do not understand the biological aspect of alien technology that locked off their weaponry. I don’t know that we can really expect a detailed explanation as to why the goo infects Wickus as such, at least not form the narrative itself, since it’s mostly Wickus’ story.
The aliens operate under an insect-like society where a kind of disease impacted the soldier/nobility classes and left only the workers, who generally lack the higher function thought that would facilitate organization and revolution.
I wouldn’t say the film is air-tight, and the ending wound up a lot more Hollywood than I expected, but at the end of the day, I loved it, and I think while South African apartheid is a big part of it, I see it as an allegory for the history of humanity. Time and time again we ostracize those different than us, subjugate them, create rules to keep them “safe” when they really kill them, their culture, their spirit, their future.
We give the aliens names like “Christopher Johnson.” We have signs about where “prawns” (an accepted slur to reference them) are allowed to go, where they are and aren’t served. They are moved without their approval to locations where they don’t have to be seen or accepted by locals (not unlike the way the US treated native Americans). They are given their vices (cat food) in exchange for valued goods that are part of their heritage. And while they are supposedly being taken care of, black markets and savage gangs are allowed to profit and take advantage of them. Their entire new world is a slum, and no one looks out for their well-being. The care that is provided for them by an abusive private security firm (Blackwater, anyone?) is illegal, abusive, and disrespectul. They find a nest of their young and set it on fire, and it’s a joke.
While the apartheid allegory is very distinct, there are further allegories about the way humanity has treated those it views as aliens or inferior.
That’s what I liked about it. It’s an exciting science fiction movie with lots of intrigue, suspense, action, and tragedy, but it also makes you think about how we treat other people, and how we get to deal with the way our ancestors have treated others today.
I think a lot of moviegoing has become passive. We want the stories to all be airtight and to have the details explained to us ad-nauseum or we cry foul. Are we so unimaginative that we have to have the micromanaged plot spoon fed to us so we can “understand”?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like unresolvable plot details any more than the next person. It often irritates the cr*p out of me when the writers think the audience isn’t too particular about the story as long as the special effects are good (recent example, Terminator Salvation).
In the case of District 9, however, I think the details are intentionally ambiguous to stimulate imagination and conversation about the film. Isn’t that why we go to the movies to begin with? Why does the “fuel” turn Wikus into an alien? Hell, I don’t know, maybe all the “prawns” were humanoid before coming in contact with the bio-organic, mutagenic starship fuel. Maybe it isn’t “fuel” at all in the classical sense but more like blood, or bone marrow on which the technology is based. I can think of other explanations as well, all plausible to me anyway.
The cool thing is, it makes we want to know more which is the key to any great story arc.
yea. I too am wondering what these huge plot holes are. i know there were some there always are but i never saw huge plot holes. The only one that comes to mind is that Wickus should have ditched the cell phone after ever use so he wouldn’t be as traceable.
Sorry if I spoiled anybody, but reading the thread I thought the point here was to discuss the film. It being a random side effect of the good in the fuel canister to perfectly mutate a human being into a prawn seems pretty far out. I figured it was part of their plan, but then it appeared not to be. And when we saw in a preview a prawn being interviewed and asked questions about where they come from and it responding that “we just want to go home,” I hoped there would be some of that. They used that quasi-documentary style, but don’t actually give us any real information about the aliens. I guess this just wasn’t for me, and my expectations kind of got in the way. It’s a clear morality play, and lots of neat effects on a budget, but I just guess I missed the point. So many of the characters’ actions and motivations, human and alien, just made no sense to me. The story itself left me wanting.
