District 9: A Three-Part Review

So I (Steven) was thinking of reviewing District 9 myself, but I thought it would be much better to do a joint review on it. Zach, Jeff and I saw it last Friday night, and overall thought it fantastic. However, presented here are our more detailed opinions.

Warning: We will not censor our information, and there will be spoilers. If you haven’t seen the movie, go see it. It’s good. Really good. If you have, read on.

Jeff

I first want to point out that the only reason this movie was made (according to the Wikipedia article) was that the Halo movie fell through due to disagreements and Peter Jackson felt obligated to fund another film for Blomkamp, so, yeah, I’m really glad that they never made that Halo film (even though the trailer looked pretty sweet). Also, just to throw it out there before I get into the grit, I really, really enjoyed this movie. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a movie in theatres this much since probably The Dark Knight.

While this film was unique and great in many ways, some of which Steven writes about below, one thing that struck me throughout the movie was a parallel, I believe intentional, between the prawns and the Formic species from Ender’s Game. The thought actually didn’t occur to me immediately, but some time into the movie when one of the “interviewees” says that the aliens don’t understand the concept of ownership. Other parts in the movie kept obscurely reminding me of the Formics as I watched, but when I got home after the movie I cracked open my copy of Ender’s Game, opened up the Formic Wiki page, and start to find more and more of what I think are references to the Formics. Among them are the lack of ownership in Prawn society, the derogatory handle of “Prawn” (corresponds to “Buggers”), a hive mind society, and also the negative human reaction to actions that the Prawns didn’t even think would be a problem. The Wiki page for the Formics deals with this, and it is a theme critical to Ender’s Game, one that I thought was quite blatantly borrowed for District 9. Says the Wiki page:

“Humanity’s first contact with the Formics resulted in bloodshed, leading humans to conclude that the Formics were hostile. However, the Formics had not intended any hostility. As a species with a hive mind, they believed that an individual is expendable. Thus, when they killed individual humans upon first contact, the Formics ‘gave it no more thought than a human would [give] clipping his toenails’. It was meant not to be a hostile act, but rather serve as an acknowledgement of human beings as another hive minded species. Once the Formics realized that humans were sentient individuals, unlike themselves, they immediately halted their attacks. Unfortunately, without any means of communication between the two species, humanity did not realize this fact.”

So once you’ve seen the movie you can see a lot of parallels that I really enjoyed between the two fictional species. Essentially, this movie was not only great as far as the cinematography, acting, and directing went, but also in that it dealt with some great themes regarding alien races that are very reminiscent of what Orson Scott Card used in Ender.

Steven

In the beginning, this movie seemed like some sort of allegory to the oppression of blacks in the early-/mid-20th century, and there were many parallels — the discrimination, the “Humans Only” signs, the treatment, the slums the aliens were living in, the derogatory “prawns” — but, in the end, it turned out to be much more than a simple metaphor.

At first, the interview-style cinematography and dialogue annoyed me, because I like my movies to be more cinema-like, and less non-fictional, but the documentary style paid off in the end, and the present-tense epilogue was very nice. The last third of the movie was solid action anyway, which made up for it.

However, the single best aspect of District 9 was how realistic of a situation it was. Aliens have almost always been portrayed as intelligent, and usually with superior technology, and these (and other) sci-fi tropes were used. What made District 9 a completely atypical alien invasion film was that it wasn’t an invasion, and it wasn’t a straight-up massacre. The humans initially tried to help the aliens, and even though this ended up badly, and with violence and discrimination, I think it portrayed a more realistic idea of what would happen if aliens actually did come to our planet. We wouldn’t blow them up a la Independence Day, we would try to make peace at first, or at least experiment on them. And if aliens came to our planet, most likely they would do so on a scientific mission, not one of conquest.

Zach

District 9 is easily one of the best movies I’ve seen in a theatre in a pretty long time. What I think seperated it most from the average alien film is the fact that the further you get into the movie, the more you want the aliens to win. Most of the humans are pretty much total assholes, whilst the majority of the aliens are portrayed as more tragic figures. And Wikus van der Marwe, the main character, isn’t your average action movie star. On multiple occasions I actually thought that he was being pretty stupid, but then, you have to realize he is really just meant to be a guy who is ridiculously freaked out about turning into an alien.

So while the first half of the movie is generally meant to pull at your heartstrings (which is does quite well), the second part is donated to nothing but complete awesomeness. This movie easily has the most number of people exploding from being shot with alien laser rifles in any movie about accepting one another I’ve ever seen. Not only that, Wikus gets in an alien Mech thing and pretty much shows everyone whose boss. It is awesome. To the billionth power.

And if all that isn’t good enough, the alien leader is named Christopher Johnson.

Conclusion

So, to conclude, District 9 was maybe one of the better movies in a while. There’s really not a whole lot more I can say to wrap this up, except for that you should definitely go and see this movie, and you should subsequently tell us what you thought of it in the comments.