D-9

Saw this last night. Really good. The guys who did the Transformers movies should really take note - the final 20 minutes is how you do proper good 3D animation that appeals to the eye, not the rubbish those guys do that just looks complicated bits of machinery and grey and black metal constantly folding inside and out of each other for two hours. Mindblowing CGI stuff, this.
 
There is actually a really good reason for the similarity: Tetra Vaal was done by the same writer/director. The film is directly based on Blomkamp's Alive in Joburg (as others have mentioned), but Blomkamp has worked his obsession with the slums of South Africa into many of his projects, Tetra Vaal included.
 
Direwolf said:
There is actually a really good reason for the similarity: Tetra Vaal was done by the same writer/director. The film is directly based on Blomkamp's Alive in Joburg (as others have mentioned), but Blomkamp has worked his obsession with the slums of South Africa into many of his projects, Tetra Vaal included.
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My brother said that in the MNU science lab, you can see a Tetra Vaal poster vaguely in the background somewhere.
 
I liked the movie a lot so I'm going to focus on interesting plot holes.

#1

The prawns had alien weapons. Why would they trade them to the Nigerians for cat food, instead of ganging up and using them to drive the Nigerians out themselves? This may be related to my second point...

Why did the aliens at no point display any kind of collective consciousness of what was going on? It was very bizarre. Put people in the worst possible situation, deprive them of their dignity, and they will still form a community. But there was no evidence of this in District 9. The aliens were like broken fragments, squabbling over scraps and rarely if ever grouping together except in pairs. Moreover they just didn't seem to have any concept of where they were, of what their situation was. Wouldn't a reporter have gone in and asked one of them what their culture was like, why their ship came to earth, what their prospects are? Wouldn't security forces have tried to establish this? Wouldn't there have been something? I don't quite see this as a plothole because it seems intentional. With the exception of Christopher, who apears to be designated volunteer backup pilot of some kind, none of them had any idea what was going on. Christopher's friend (who dies early on) certainly didn't. This leads me to wonder whether there was originaly going to be more backup for something that a news reporter mentions near the beginning: the idea that these aliens are a 'worker caste' without leadership.

Oh yeah, my brother had a pretty interesting theory as to what happened on the ship:

They were all confused and malnourished and packed together because it was a people trafficking operation.
 
#1
They didn't want to drive the Nigerians out, they wanted their fix of catfood.

#2
I suspect the idea of the prawns on earth being a 'worker caste' has some truth to it. As for what this means for Christopher I am unsure. Perhaps he is some kind of 'intermediate' caste.

#3
Quite possibly, though I would imagine for (covert? Illicit?) colonisation rather than refugees as is usually the case on Earth.
 
#1 and #2

Yeah, but giving their guns to the Nigerians they remained exploited and powerless. They could have still got cat food, but on their own terms, and without human bastards squatting in their territory and exploiting them. This is why I think it must be something to do with their casteness or whatever the reason is that they don't have any group social awareness...it would be a potent metaphor if, far away from home, in hostile territory, abused and oppressed, they all scattered and seperated into barely-sentient scavengers, but not even humans do that...and of course it'd make sense if it were 50 or a 100 years after the mothership ditched, with second or third generation aliens having forgotten why they were there, but that's not the case. So it must be something, there must be some reason. It seems unlikely that this aspect of their society (or lack thereof) was an accident.
 
#1 and 2

It was said really early that they were a sort of worker and they lost all their drive, or some such phrasing. Basically they got to Earth and they all got stupid. Too stupid to take the catfood by force and too stupid to do anything but rummage around in the garbage.
 
Oh yeah, I heard that said, but it was a random soundbite from a news programme and therefore quite possibly bullshit. As you say, though, seems to check out.
 
I figured that there were several different possible reasons for that. One was the given explanation of them being a worker caste, but it needs to be remembered that the audience is never given any good information on who the prawns were or where they came from. They are extremely alien, and don't necessarily organize or prioritize the same way that humans do. There are an infinite number of psychological reasons that they would not want to be productive. For all we know they were nihilists and don't see the point in organizing on a world not their own.

The weapon question actually ties back into that though. The presence of weapons and especially the mech suit suggests that there was indeed quite a bit of organization going on behind closed doors in District 9, since it makes no sense that those objects would have been ferried down along with the Prawns from the ship, and had to be pieced together from junk or fabricated, or at least retrieved from the ship. The yellow Prawn first seen with Christopher seemed like he could have been a part of some other Prawn organization, or even the Prawn equivalent of a terrorist cell. Most of the history or District 9 is skipped over, and it is quite possible that there have been conflicts between the Prawns and South African government, but it is also obvious that if there was conflict that the Prawns lost and lost badly. So now it has just degraded into low level antagonizing and organized crime.
 
well...the fact that they had weapons and pretty powerful weapons at that. it really begs the question why didn't they act. the exosuit was obviously a purely military unit, suggesting they have warlike tendencies. unless they were somehow pacifists, which they clearly weren't. really...trying to argue why such an advanced civilization fell to the likes of us is really mind boggling.

to really spice the situation up...if i were the story writer, i'd imagine the prawns were a slave cast under another more advanced civilization, but they managed to steal a ship and flee. but that also wouldn't make sense.
 
The movie was alright, but I felt no real emotional connections at all, which was surprisingly. Everything felt like it was just thrust on me and before I had a chance to feel anything the movie was over.
 
While they show Prawn weapons as being amazingly powerful, they're not invulnerable. Even the mech suit gets disabled by a small force, and any insurrection would end up fighting the entire South African army. We never see more than a few weapons here and there, and it is quite likely that not too many exist due to the difficulty of making or getting them. Even worse is the vulnerable position that being grouped in D9 creates for the Prawns, if they did try to stage an insurrection, it is entirely possible that the government would just firebomb the hell out of the camp and be done with it. Of course, I'm still assuming that normal Prawns think the same way as humans.
 
Raziaar said:
The movie was alright, but I felt no real emotional connections at all, which was surprisingly. Everything felt like it was just thrust on me and before I had a chance to feel anything the movie was over.
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I think that's because the filmmaker expected us to empathise with Wikus even though they go to such lengths to portray him as obviously prejudiced against the aliens. The problem is, most people are smart enough to pick up on that prejudice before shit starts going down with Wikus, and by that stage it's a lot harder to empathise with a bumbling goofy racist. That, and there's not enough time spent establishing his character as anything more than a worker for that contracting company.

Not to mention, when you finally begin to empathise with him later in the film, he starts pulling dodgy shit that makes you hate him again. He knocks out chris, steals the ship and almost leaves him to be executed by the company (whose name escapes me) even after he's been saved by Chris's son. He's an ass.

My problem with this film is that a lot of problem come out of it thinking it's smarter than the average film. Yeah, it is, but not by much, and it's fair less original than people give it credit for. At it's core, it's a "running-man" feature that relies on reversing a few genre tropes (Aliens are dumb, hero is really a jackass, Aliens don't land in first world nation) to assert it's originality over the genre.

The thing that annoys me is that even know people say District 9 is the most original film they've seen in years, yet everyone seems to have forgotten the brilliance of Children of Men, another similar sci-fi film that's both a running-man story, deals with racism (and politics) and even manages to stay original while dealing with genre tropes. Now that's an original sci-fi film.

That, or maybe they haven't seen it.
 
TBH I can understand the criticism some give it but I did really enjoy it and especially given how bad movies have been this year it is one of the best released.

Also yes children of men is woefully underrated and if you haven't seen it then see it.
 
Sparta said:
My problem with this film is that a lot of problem come out of it thinking it's smarter than the average film.
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That isn't a problem with the film, it's a problem with the people watching the film. Saying, "It makes me angry that people are saying this film is smart; what about this film and that film and these other films," that's not a problem you have with the movie, that's a problem you're having with people praising the movie.

Which is really quite ridiculous if you think about it.





As to all the stuff we've been talking about in spoilers, just to let you guys know the DVD is supposed to have some extra stuff about the way the prawns lived, so I've heard. Might illuminate some things.
 
Darkside55 said:
That isn't a problem with the film, it's a problem with the people watching the film. Saying, "It makes me angry that people are saying this film is smart; what about this film and that film and these other films," that's not a problem you have with the movie, that's a problem you're having with people praising the movie.

Which is really quite ridiculous if you think about it.
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That's the thing, I know it's ridiculous but that doesn't stop making it anymore annoying to me. Oh well, it's still a good film anyway.
 
Good rule of thumb for most anything is to ignore the fanbase for something, or you'll end up getting mad.
 
jverne said:
well...the fact that they had weapons and pretty powerful weapons at that. it really begs the question why didn't they act. the exosuit was obviously a purely military unit, suggesting they have warlike tendencies. unless they were somehow pacifists, which they clearly weren't. really...trying to argue why such an advanced civilization fell to the likes of us is really mind boggling.

to really spice the situation up...if i were the story writer, i'd imagine the prawns were a slave cast under another more advanced civilization, but they managed to steal a ship and flee. but that also wouldn't make sense.
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Did you not listen to the movie? The point was that these were all of the workers or possibly slaves. None of them have any initiative except for red vest who is obviously different from the rest. Imagine if we sent a ship full of down syndrome Americans to Vietnam with only the captain to run things.
 
Great Movie. Did you know the actor who played Wiccus or whatever his name A: wasn't an actor and B: didn't have lines?
 
Haven't read all 10 pages, but has anyone considered the possibility that their weapons

weren't really weapons at all? Perhaps in the world they come from, they're mining equipment or the like, used to blast holes into mountains to extract whatever resources they need. As it happens, they're also great for disintegrating humans, prawns, or any other biological life form. But maybe they were a peaceful race, and the thought never occurred to them to use them as weapons until they witnessed humans using their weapons against prawns. Same could go for the mech suit, used for heavy lifting, and only had "weapons" as part of its mining capability. Just a thought.
 
Fragalishus said:
but has anyone considered the possibility
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It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it stands much scrutiny. The prawn weapons don't seem to fulfill a specific brief outside of a unique efficiency in killing things, and given their rather excellent diversity, it's difficult to argue they'd be useful for mining. It's conceivable that they're used for some other, non-violent alien purpose, but this purpose isn't revealed by the film.

We've seen prawns ripping people apart, too, so they're definitely capable of (some pretty extreme!) violence, although I'm not sure we ever saw any internecine conflict in the film.

So your idea is definitely possible, but I don't think it's all that probable.
 
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