Review: District 9
So, like I promised, I'm back with a fuller review for Disctrict 9. I would have posted one last night, but given what time it was and the rate at which I get my thoughts out, I figured it would probably be best if I waited until I could actually think coherently, unless you guys really wanted a review that only consisted of “dfjldsufdsj THIS MOVE WAS ABSOLUTELY AWESOME. THAT IS ALL.” (Which is pretty much all I posted, anyway.)
But when people say this is probably going to be the best sci fi movie of the year? Yeah, I don’t disagree with them (though we’ll see what they have to say when James Cameron’s Avatar comes out).
Just a note: this contains spoilers. I've done my best to keep them small, though.
Basic Summary: When an alien spacecraft appears over Johannesburg, the whole world stops. When it does absolutely nothing for days on end, the world sends in the UN to investigate. After cutting into the ship, UN agents find 1.5 million aliens (called 'Prawns'), all of them sick, malnourished, and apparently stranded. It becomes a humanitarian effort to get them onto earth and treated, but it seems no one has a long term plan, because the aliens’ temporary housing community becomes a slum, and that slum becomes known as District 9.
Tensions, however, are on the rise. People neither like nor trust the aliens, and only the MNU (Multinational United) and crime lords really want anything to do with the Prawns - the MNU because the aliens have advanced weaponry the MNU wants (only the weapons are equipped with biometric triggers, and human DNA will not let them fire), and the crime lords because the aliens are easy to take advantage of (among other things).
Finally, the MNU decides to move the aliens away from Johannesburg, to a new camp called District 10. Enter Wikus, the main character. He has just been promoted to head of the eviction project, and must lead MNU agents into District 9 to hand out eviction notices to the aliens. While there, however, Wikus has a rather disastrous encounter with some of the aliens’ technology, setting the remainder of the story into motion.
In my experience, any story that covers our “first contact” with extraterrestrials tends to go one of two ways - it either follows in Star Trek's footsteps, and portrays the aliens as peaceful or wanting to help humanity, or it goes the way of movies like Independence Day, where they're here to kill us all for one flimsy reason or another. District 9, however, takes first contact and runs in a completely different direction with it.
The story bounces back and forth between a handy-cam, documentary style (complete with interviews with experts and Wikus’ former friends and coworkers) and “actual footage” - things not caught by the MNU cameramen. It is all at once brutal, painful, rage-inducing, sad, and very cautiously hopeful. The humans are not the good guys in this movie. Though Wikus is and remains a victim throughout the film, he is just as guilty as any of the other human characters of ignorance and prejudice against the Prawns (which is actually used as a derogatory term), though he draws a line far closer to moral good than the better part of the human cast.
Scenes in this film filled me with jaw-dropping horror. Humans are epic assholes, and the worst part was realizing how likely that reaction really is. If aliens were to appear in our skies today, and they needed help, it would not surprise me to find the whole situation unfolding exactly the way District 9 did, at least in terms of their treatment and then the decision to move them to what is essentially a concentration camp.
There are no heroes in this story, neither in the aliens nor the humans. This was actually quite surprising, as the tropes would have had Wikus become sympathetic to the aliens’ plight and fight to save them. And while Wikus comes close to being a hero at times, he doesn’t so much perform acts of heroism as fall into them, realizing he needs to take these steps to both save himself and preserve his own humanity, not because he realizes that his first impressions of the Prawns - that they were mindless, lost, and without leadership - were all wrong.
The only truly sympathetic characters are the aliens, and only three of them at that, and even then only two of them survive to the ending. (Odd tidbit: the main Prawn’s name is Christopher Johnson. I’m assuming the MNU gave them human names to keep track of them.)
On top of being morally horrific, District 9 also contains a fair amount of blood and guts. The Prawns themselves are strong and can be vicious, and their weapons…well, I saw a gravity gun, a sonic gun, and something that fired electricity, among other Very Brutal Ways to Die. All of them were used in the film, and all of them were one-hit kills. I do not have a weak stomach, and there were scenes when even I was wincing - to say nothing of the poor people I dragged to see this with me. (tempest_arashi? I’m looking at you. And poor Kayla. Ilu both!)
The effects also warrant mentioning, because they were pretty amazing as well. There were definitely scenes that were more obviously CGI than others, but overall I found the effects submersive and realistic. Prawns were expressive and very emotive, and even when they weren’t talking, you could see what they were thinking.
I will admit to noticing a few plot holes, but they were relatively small and irrelevant for the majority of the film.
Overall, District 9 was positively fantastic, worth all of the hype surrounding it and then some. The previews fail to do the story any justice at all. If you are after a good science fiction story, at long last, this is it. This is really it.
...Unless you have a weak stomach. Then I suggest you avoid it. This film is nothing if not brutal.
If you don't trust my review, io9 has two: a spoiler free one here and a spoiler-heavy one right here: And then Entertainment Weekly has one here. They gave it an A, which is pretty rare for them.
But when people say this is probably going to be the best sci fi movie of the year? Yeah, I don’t disagree with them (though we’ll see what they have to say when James Cameron’s Avatar comes out).
Just a note: this contains spoilers. I've done my best to keep them small, though.
Basic Summary: When an alien spacecraft appears over Johannesburg, the whole world stops. When it does absolutely nothing for days on end, the world sends in the UN to investigate. After cutting into the ship, UN agents find 1.5 million aliens (called 'Prawns'), all of them sick, malnourished, and apparently stranded. It becomes a humanitarian effort to get them onto earth and treated, but it seems no one has a long term plan, because the aliens’ temporary housing community becomes a slum, and that slum becomes known as District 9.
Tensions, however, are on the rise. People neither like nor trust the aliens, and only the MNU (Multinational United) and crime lords really want anything to do with the Prawns - the MNU because the aliens have advanced weaponry the MNU wants (only the weapons are equipped with biometric triggers, and human DNA will not let them fire), and the crime lords because the aliens are easy to take advantage of (among other things).
Finally, the MNU decides to move the aliens away from Johannesburg, to a new camp called District 10. Enter Wikus, the main character. He has just been promoted to head of the eviction project, and must lead MNU agents into District 9 to hand out eviction notices to the aliens. While there, however, Wikus has a rather disastrous encounter with some of the aliens’ technology, setting the remainder of the story into motion.
In my experience, any story that covers our “first contact” with extraterrestrials tends to go one of two ways - it either follows in Star Trek's footsteps, and portrays the aliens as peaceful or wanting to help humanity, or it goes the way of movies like Independence Day, where they're here to kill us all for one flimsy reason or another. District 9, however, takes first contact and runs in a completely different direction with it.
The story bounces back and forth between a handy-cam, documentary style (complete with interviews with experts and Wikus’ former friends and coworkers) and “actual footage” - things not caught by the MNU cameramen. It is all at once brutal, painful, rage-inducing, sad, and very cautiously hopeful. The humans are not the good guys in this movie. Though Wikus is and remains a victim throughout the film, he is just as guilty as any of the other human characters of ignorance and prejudice against the Prawns (which is actually used as a derogatory term), though he draws a line far closer to moral good than the better part of the human cast.
Scenes in this film filled me with jaw-dropping horror. Humans are epic assholes, and the worst part was realizing how likely that reaction really is. If aliens were to appear in our skies today, and they needed help, it would not surprise me to find the whole situation unfolding exactly the way District 9 did, at least in terms of their treatment and then the decision to move them to what is essentially a concentration camp.
There are no heroes in this story, neither in the aliens nor the humans. This was actually quite surprising, as the tropes would have had Wikus become sympathetic to the aliens’ plight and fight to save them. And while Wikus comes close to being a hero at times, he doesn’t so much perform acts of heroism as fall into them, realizing he needs to take these steps to both save himself and preserve his own humanity, not because he realizes that his first impressions of the Prawns - that they were mindless, lost, and without leadership - were all wrong.
The only truly sympathetic characters are the aliens, and only three of them at that, and even then only two of them survive to the ending. (Odd tidbit: the main Prawn’s name is Christopher Johnson. I’m assuming the MNU gave them human names to keep track of them.)
On top of being morally horrific, District 9 also contains a fair amount of blood and guts. The Prawns themselves are strong and can be vicious, and their weapons…well, I saw a gravity gun, a sonic gun, and something that fired electricity, among other Very Brutal Ways to Die. All of them were used in the film, and all of them were one-hit kills. I do not have a weak stomach, and there were scenes when even I was wincing - to say nothing of the poor people I dragged to see this with me. (tempest_arashi? I’m looking at you. And poor Kayla. Ilu both!)
The effects also warrant mentioning, because they were pretty amazing as well. There were definitely scenes that were more obviously CGI than others, but overall I found the effects submersive and realistic. Prawns were expressive and very emotive, and even when they weren’t talking, you could see what they were thinking.
I will admit to noticing a few plot holes, but they were relatively small and irrelevant for the majority of the film.
Overall, District 9 was positively fantastic, worth all of the hype surrounding it and then some. The previews fail to do the story any justice at all. If you are after a good science fiction story, at long last, this is it. This is really it.
...Unless you have a weak stomach. Then I suggest you avoid it. This film is nothing if not brutal.
If you don't trust my review, io9 has two: a spoiler free one here and a spoiler-heavy one right here: And then Entertainment Weekly has one here. They gave it an A, which is pretty rare for them.