Slashdot Mirror
District 9 Rises From the Ashes of Halo
JohnSmedley sent in a story about what might be the last SciFi film worth caring about this summer. He writes "Wired has an interesting piece up on the upcoming District 9 release. District 9 rose from the ashes of a failed Halo movie and expands on 'Alive in Jo'Burg' which is a South African short film by Blomkamp. Both the short and full feature films expand and explore a premise in which aliens in space are treated as badly as illegal immigrants and the underclass. The story begins as a damaged alien craft lands in Africa. The foreign race is quarantined in a remote area called District 9, and from there are subjected to xenophobia, and the desire of a multi-national conglomerate to steal their technology. The film is an exploration of what would happen in terms of segregation between an alien race and humans, subjecting the stranded visitors to the very human condition of greed, fear, and exploitation. District 9 will be in theatres on August 14'th, and you can view the trailers from the viewpoint of Multi-National United."
At least these aliens are slightly more alien, but they're still bipedal oxygen breathers with bilateral symmetry. I look forward to the District 9 TV series, but not to the romantic relationship between Detective Matt Sikes and (what is now) a giant bug living in the apartment next door.
You can state, but that doesn't make you entirely correct. You do so have constitutional rights. The only constitutional rights you lack are the ones specifically granted citizens such as voting rights, or people born here, such as eligibility to be president, or a few age requirements. Everything else in there which applies to "the people" applies to you. Quoting the ACLU for examples because it's much easier than compiling myself:
"every person in the United States has the right to due process and equal protection; to criminal proceedings that afford a right to counsel, a jury trial and freedom from double jeopardy; to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment; to freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and to freedom of speech, religion and association."
Same could be said about "V for Vendetta" and "Equilibrium". Bah, just go read or watch "1984".
However, watching or reading 1984 just flat drains the soul. The other two movies are more entertaining, have a happier ending, yet still deliver the core of the same message as 1984. Does it soften the message? Somewhat. However, they reach far more people, and those that watch it don't usually kill themselves during the closing credits.
Respect the originals, yet keep refreshing it to new audiences. Often, those that like the new versions end up hungry to read about the original source material.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
I think the biggest thing about Moon is that it is the first hard science fiction film in a long time that has gained even the meager attention it has. Hard Sci-Fi is a dying breed, as far as I can tell from the last decade or so.
Maybe Moon didn't introduce any new ideas. But it did present those ideas in a medium where it is easier to evoke an emotional response, if it's done correctly. Moon did it very well, at least in my opinion, and it reached a wider audience than most sci-fi.
If Moon is playing near you, I highly recommend you see it.
Besides, how are we all supposed to read 1984 when Amazon.com deleted it from all our Kindles?
FWIW, it took evolution millions of years to come up with a wheel. this is a very efficient way of moving intelligent beings with use of biomagnetics (repulse + attract) around a solid water crust with a nitrogen atmosphere. I'm not so sure this is a "one in hundreds" of potentially useful evolutionary ideas, but rather one in very few. That it's trilaterally symmetric comes from cellular agglomeration, and there is so far little supporting evidence that alternative mechanisms can support a three meter tall intelligent organism well
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm still hoping that this movie will actually be a good, cerebral Science Fiction story; rather than just another disposable alien-action movie built on what would otherwise be a great plot to explore.
Still crossing my fingers.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Fantastic? Meh. It was a rehash of a lot of ideas we've seen done in films and books over the past 20-30 years, with nothing particularly new added. Go re-watch 2001, Bladerunner and re-read some early John Varley instead.
I'm getting so tired of this nonsense. Bladerunner was a film noir set in the future with robots. It wasn't new. Asimov did androids struggling with their (lack of) humanity in the 50s, and all Dick added was his drug addicted sense of a decaying reality to which Scott added a very provincially 1980s aesthetic. Go watch Metropolis and the Maltese Falcon. There, see how easy it is to throw stones at a good and viewing-worthy film?
Fact of the matter is that premise doesn't matter. Every premise has been done. Every idea has been pushed through the salad-tosser that is the writer's pen. What remains is the actual writing, and in the case of film acting and directing. Moon is, as I've heard (and I really do want to go see it), well written, acted and directed. If the idea is also compelling, that's great, but do we go to see a murder-mystery because we've never seen a detective confront the suspects before? Do we go to see space opera because we've never seen ships shooting at each other before? No, we go because we, as humans, enjoy the act of story-telling. It's an art, and good art is good art, even when the subject has been painted/drawn/written about/sculpted or filmed before.
The whole point of 1984 is to make you feel like shit. If you were uplifted by a hollywood type happy ending, it would lose much of its power. Why is it that many people think a movie that makes you feel bad is a bad movie ?
The two movies you mentioned are the typical hollywood stuff ... entertainment and almost nothing else. Not bad for blowing a couple hours, but nothing that will change the way you look at the world like 1984 has done for many people.
And how are space aliens supposed to enter the country legally?