(no subject)
Wolf and I saw District 9 on Saturday. It was fantastic and visceral and smart and just...wow. Spoilers beyond here.
I've read some reviews complaining about what an unsympathetic douche the main character is. He's supposed to be unliked. I mean, he was just kind of bumbling until the scene with the alien babies (feti? fetuses?). He aborted all of them because the aliens didn't have licenses to breed. It was easily one of the most terrible scenes in the entire movie and that includes the blood and guts later on. Not to mention Wikus and the others at MNU using the slur "prawn" to describe them all the time.
The movie was very clearly about apartheid in South Africa. Even if you hadn't heard a single thing about the movie before you saw it, you could figure it out very quickly. Once Wikus becomes a fugitive, I felt some sympathy toward him, but there's also a lot of schadenfreude. He wants to save his own ass, but at the end does the Right Thing.
It's open-ended and there is a lot that's not actually explained. Like why did the ship end up orbiting Earth? Were they lost? Will "Christopher" ever come back to help his people and cure Wikus? Will the humans treat the aliens any differently?
Okay, so the answer to the last question is almost certainly no. They want the alien weapons, but they can only be used by a certain DNA signature. The humans are performing grotesque experiments on the aliens, who just want to go home. One of the warlords, a Nigerian, even eats an alien in the hope of being able to use the weapons.
You can't go into the movie expecting a sci-fi adventure movie. There is a giantic chase and a massive manhunt, yes, but the focus is on the ugliness of human nature. Once Wikus begins transforming, he's no longer seen as a human. I think that's the most chilling scene in the entire movie. All that's changed physically is his arm and now with the DNA, he can use alien technology. But the human scientists don't even look at him as a human anymore and I don't even think they call him by name.
All in all, I highly recommend it. Wolf and I both agree that it's one of the smartest sci-fi movies we've ever seen and he counts it in his top three (though he doesn't know what the other two are).
I've read some reviews complaining about what an unsympathetic douche the main character is. He's supposed to be unliked. I mean, he was just kind of bumbling until the scene with the alien babies (feti? fetuses?). He aborted all of them because the aliens didn't have licenses to breed. It was easily one of the most terrible scenes in the entire movie and that includes the blood and guts later on. Not to mention Wikus and the others at MNU using the slur "prawn" to describe them all the time.
The movie was very clearly about apartheid in South Africa. Even if you hadn't heard a single thing about the movie before you saw it, you could figure it out very quickly. Once Wikus becomes a fugitive, I felt some sympathy toward him, but there's also a lot of schadenfreude. He wants to save his own ass, but at the end does the Right Thing.
It's open-ended and there is a lot that's not actually explained. Like why did the ship end up orbiting Earth? Were they lost? Will "Christopher" ever come back to help his people and cure Wikus? Will the humans treat the aliens any differently?
Okay, so the answer to the last question is almost certainly no. They want the alien weapons, but they can only be used by a certain DNA signature. The humans are performing grotesque experiments on the aliens, who just want to go home. One of the warlords, a Nigerian, even eats an alien in the hope of being able to use the weapons.
You can't go into the movie expecting a sci-fi adventure movie. There is a giantic chase and a massive manhunt, yes, but the focus is on the ugliness of human nature. Once Wikus begins transforming, he's no longer seen as a human. I think that's the most chilling scene in the entire movie. All that's changed physically is his arm and now with the DNA, he can use alien technology. But the human scientists don't even look at him as a human anymore and I don't even think they call him by name.
All in all, I highly recommend it. Wolf and I both agree that it's one of the smartest sci-fi movies we've ever seen and he counts it in his top three (though he doesn't know what the other two are).