District 9

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#61

Semi Spoilery post up ahead

Could you elaborate on what motivations made no sense. To me everything made sense. I would love to discuss it with ya, maybe clear up some things that i saw that perhaps didn’t. I actually really enjoyed the fact the trailer was completely different than the movie. The trailer set up the world but then i had no idea where the movie was going. I loved that everything that was happening was completely fresh and i had no clue where it was going. I kept expecting for things to turn around or for there to be a huge twist like in most normal alien movies. This time the twist was that there was no real twist

#62

Just got back from seeing it. Loved it.

Not sure about the plot ‘holes,’ though. Probably the only one I thought of was why Christopher was so much smarter, but he might just have been a different caste than the others.

#63

Ok, lets discuss. What plot holes are you referring to. I thought the story held together quite well. Ambiguities, yes. Holes? I’m not seeing them.

david

#64

I think if you can elaborate on the motivations, we can discuss why they do or don’t make sense. For me, I thought the characters were really tight which was refreshing. By not giving you any info about the aliens, the director is putting you in the same boat as the humans in the film, curious, amazed and more than a little apprehensive. A rather awesome plot device which really involves the audience on a first person level rather than an all knowing observer. At times, it seemed like I was watching a Frontline documentary about aliens on earth, way cool.

I know what you mean about expectations though. When you go to a movie with a certain set of beliefs before you walk in, you are setting yourself up for dissapointment. I did this with Terminator, Salvation and was bummed when the film didn’t really live up to the hype. I would see D9 again 10 times before wasting more time on Terminator Salvation. Just my 2 cents.

david

#65

You know, it never even occurred to me that the fuel mutating humans is a bit of a stretch. Now that I think about it, it does seem a bit insane. However given the fact I hadn’t thot of it and no one else seemed to have picked up on that means it was an effective plot device.

#66

I think the fact that they spent a lot of time setting up the fact that the alien tech had some kind of biological component sold it for me. The fact that it would have a viral effect on humans seemed plausible.

#67

CAUTION, MORE SPOILERS HERE!The more I think about it, the less I think I liked it. I’m not going to dump on it or change anybody’s mind, but I found the whole thing kind of absurd and implausible. The main character’s actions and motivations seemed completely off to me, and I saw this film with my best friend who is from South Africa and he shared the sentiment. I mean, they’ve been here 20 years, they have high tech weapons that only work for them, there are humans who’ve studied their biology, social structure, and are even fluent in their language, but in a quasi-documentary about them and their forced relocation not one is interviewed. We simply see the violent, short-sighted humans trying to cow them, not showing any regard for their lives, and of course unprepared for the inevitably violent reaction. I had really hoped for more. I love character based stories, but the story part has to make sense. I get the tech being integrated with the prawns’ DNA, but that doesn’t begin to explain the mutagenic effect in my mind. And why would it take them two decades to collect enough of that fluid, if they collected it all from bits of their own salvaged tech in the first place? I suppose you could posit that whatever it was had somekind of weird half-life thing going and had to sit around for a certain amount of time, but I dunno, imaginations great and all, but I’d rather be engrossed in a film than make excuses for it. And where is the U.S. and the rest of the world’s governments on this issue? After 20 years we’d probably have gone to war to get the tech or nuked the thing out of the sky… not to be cynical or anything.

#68

No problem. I was on that side of the fence for Star Trek :slight_smile:

And why would it take them two decades to collect enough of that fluid, if they collected it all from bits of their own salvaged tech in the first place?

Well, it seemed to just be Christopher and his friend working on it, not a collective effort.

#69

Monster Jester, I think you are forgetting that the aliens are the worker bees. They are not the leadership which were wiped out. They are basically sheep with no will or direction. They exist. They eat trash. They don’t really understand what the hell is going on. It wouldn’t even occur to them to pick up their own weapons and fight back. What they do know is that they want to go home.

#70

SPOILERS CONTINUE HENCE! Sure that’s partially true, and implied, and said, as is the notion that they don’t understand ownership of property et cetera, but they also have language, and space craft, and individual huts, and they riot, and considering how several randomly defend the main character at the end, the extent of their intelligence and the motivations for their behaviors remains decidedly ambiguous. That’s not necessarily bad, of course. I guess the sheer volume of unanswered questions in favor of moving from set piece to set piece just turned me off.

#71

What I got from that was that the change had overcome (whatshisname) enough that he was identified as ‘one of our own.’ Intelligence doesn’t even have to enter into that equation.

#72

Dude that very thing happened in real life. It was Apartheid. The huts in which they shot the film were not set but real places where the black South Africans were forced to live. Just a few years ago they were looked down on as third or even fourth class citizens at best. Many of the interviews that were shown where people talked about what they thot about the prawns were real people discussing real feelings about Nigerians living in JoBurg.

And as for the ships fuel changing Wickus. I am pretty sure it was mentioned that they used Nanotech which if it was linked to the prawn DNA it would make sense that it would attempt to turn Wickus into an prawn. Its not a side effect it just the nanotech doing what it does best.

The Prawns attacking and rioting is easily explained. Take ants. You take one away from its hive and it will still bite you.

#73

They have a giant fraking robot that they know how to operate and they trade it in for cat food. they also are willing to accept subjugation. I dont care if they are unintellegent- they have powerufl weaponry and know it. They would be killing everyone with those guns, not trading it for cat food.
Aslo:NONE OF THE OTHER ALIENS KNOW ABOUT THE ESCAPE PLAN. Could they not have catalyzed the process of escape, or helped him in some way? Especially towards the end, where he could have said, I don’t know, “Hey guys, buy me five minutes with all the stashed superweapons we have that we never use and we can escape!”

#74

Not really a plot hole, but look at the big picture of Christopher’s character: you have a character that has supposedly been trying to escape from this terrible life for twenty years with his son.

He wants to save his people from this hell. This character sees, firsthand, every day, how terrible people, or at least the people around him, are. Later in the story, he sees that said people dissect prawns with no regard for them. They’re treated worse than dogs. Finally, he is betrayed by the only person he’s ever trusted,Wickus, the person he promised to help. This person takes away his son.

And at the end, its not so much that Christopher goes with Wickus. That makes sense. It was his lines of dialogue where he says “I can’t leave you behind!” to Wikus, like Wikus is his best friend. Wikus’s betrayal did absolutely nothing to change the character of Christopher. Not. One. Thing. And at the time, Wikus not only thew him under the bus, he doomed every single Prawn on earth.

And none of those things affected the actions of Christopher’s character. That’s why I felt he was flat, and that’s why Christopher’s character was my biggest problem with the movie. He has no character arc and he doesn’t change at all from beginning to end, despite facing situations that should have changed him. He was a puppet.

#75

I take point about Christopher’s character, but otherwise this movie rocked. I particularly loved the first 45 minutes. Wikus is just a great comic character.

It’s heartening that cheap CGI is allowing directors like Bloomkamp and Duncan (Moon) Jones to produce intelligent, exciting sf on modest budgets. Maybe a GWC podcast on new SF cinema would be timely???

#76

Oh yeah CJ did NOTHING to warrant being thrown under the bus. C’mon. “Yeah man I’ll TOTALLY FIX YOU in three years”

“What was that last part?”

“Nothing, let’s get the fluid”

Point is, they screwed each other over and then both tried to make up for it.

#77

I enjoy the discussion about the film’s plot points and encourage it. I don’t take anyone pointing out flaws as a personal affront or anything I’d get upset over. I think it’s fascinating, and there’s no way the movie can be perfect.

Both main protagonists lied to get their own way, and in the end, both did what they needed to do.

You reference the behavior of the colony, but this is one of those things where I don’t know how I can argue against the director’s idea of how the society of prawns works. I can’t say that their behavior is unrealistic because it’s an alien species. I at first wondered about them converging on the awesome villain, but if you think about it, he is weakened and alone. It seems to me that two strong humans alone would be enough to convince any group of prawns that they could not fight back, but one alone who has already been through a battle?

#78

You haven’t seen addicts in action, have you?

As for using the weapons, remember the MNU had rocket launchers on the perimeter. I’m guessing any use of the weapons would have worked about as well as Wickus’.

Aslo:NONE OF THE OTHER ALIENS KNOW ABOUT THE ESCAPE PLAN. Could they not have catalyzed the process of escape, or helped him in some way? Especially towards the end, where he could have said, I don’t know, “Hey guys, buy me five minutes with all the stashed superweapons we have that we never use and we can escape!”

Apparently not. Christopher seems to be more intelligent than the others by a fair margin. That’s unexplained, but not really a plot hole.

#79

Its not that they are unintelligent its that they are physically unable to make decisions for themselves. Chris was slow to adapt to the notion of trying for a rescue. And even then he couldn’t do it himself. he had to fly to his home world so he could get something to control the hive . I am pretty sure there have been Star Trek stories following the same idea. A Borg Drone gets cut off from the collective and becomes almost incapable of survival. They still are far superior to the humans but stand no chance of winning against them.

#80

They screwed eachother over, Cj was willing to forgive.

The Alien was more Human then the human.