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"District 9" Best Sci-fi Movie of 09?
Travis wrote in with a story that says much of what my friends have been saying to me all weekend: "Slashdot covered 'District 9' back in July. I was originally excited to see this movie for its exhibition of exoskeleton robot 'mechs' (see images and video at Hizook.com ). After watching the film this opening weekend, I can honestly say that it was an amazing science fiction movie! Everything was spot-on: the plot, the human elements, the alien elements, the technology, and the seamless blend of special effects with real camera capture. This film should vault Neill Blomkamp into sci-fi stardom, on par with George Lucas and the Wachowski Brothers (of Matrix fame). This is certainly a must-see movie — easily the best movie of the year."
This film should vault Neill Blomkamp into sci-fi stardom, on par with George Lucas and the Wachowski Brothers (of Matrix fame).
Are you saying that this movie is as good/groundbreaking as Star Wars orThe Matrix? I am somewhat dubious.
Don't get me wrong, it looks a whole lot better than most sci-fi movies. I especially like how the first commercials I saw for it were public service announcements about District 9. Then commercials with non-human sympathizers being arrested. Then later you see a commercial with "glick gluck mcglorlock" (translation: "We just want to go home.") and you kinda realize that there's going to be more depth to the story than Starship Troopers (the movie, not the book). Looks interesting, I'll definitely Netflix it.
It might be the best sci-fi movie of '09 but you've still got
While a lot don't have release dates yet and could be pushed back and most will probably suck, that's a lot of competition to dismiss at this point. And lastly, I have great hope for Franklyn (to be released here in the states).
My work here is dung.
I think it's a dumb plot and stupidly put together. I think the acting is terrible and the special effects are terrible.
(makes you wish "so I won't comment" follows Didn't see it doesn't it?)
The third act is where the movie devolved into traditional Hollywood tropes.
The long-awaited shootout with the asshole who has been hounding the protagonist since the first act. Pitting two factions, MNU + Nigerians, against each other. The hero being saved by the downtrodden prawns at the very last minute.
The little alien Wesley Crusher who's in the downed alien craft and after 20 years discovers how he can wake up the mothership to save the day.
How the love for an adult and his child can make anything happen.
Finally two adversaries become friends much like Dragonball Z.
Everything leading up to the end was good but it's like they ran out of ideas.
Okay, they ran out of good ideas.
I think "Moon" has been the only other major sci-fi non-sequel I've seen in the theaters in a long while...
I liked D9 and hope it does well.
/sig
That is a fucking insult if you ask me.
The film has a great look. I think alien films in daylight and with the psuedo-documentary looks are the hardest things to film.
The viral ad campaign has been very interesting with the fake NMU ads and such.
I have much hope for this movie, but if it ends up being just another EVIL CORPORATION movie, I will be disappointed.
You guys in america probably won't have seen it, but Moon was awesome. And didn't "Star Trek" count as sci-fi, at least to most people?
if it were not for the special effects there would have been no difference between the movie and the alien nation tv series/movies of the 80's
So, the Wachowski brothers are famous, but not famous enough for people to remember what they're famous for?
Can't we all at least agree that while this movie may have had its weak points, it also had some very strong ones, and all things considered it is in fact a decent sci-fi film in a year that seems likely to produce a few of those; which, last time I checked, is the exception? From my perspective the past few years have been on average a baron wasteland of terrible purely "Hollywood" style sci-fi films not worth half of what I had to pay to go see them in theaters.
Go see it. Money well spent. The film was really enjoyable (coming from a person who hates most Hollywood films). I think I was most impressed because it was a completely original idea and not a reboot or a sequel. I have to admit though I was partial I was familiar with some of Neil Blomkamp's earlier work.
FWIW District 9 was based on one of his short films titled "Alive in Joburg. Watch it here.
Also I enjoyed Tetra Vaal, an amaing short film about a police bot in South Africa. Stunning CGI. Enjoy =)
Okay, thanks for heads up! I will definitely avoid the sequels!
Thanks for your unbiased review, Neill.
If there is one movie you see all year, see District 9. There's action, aliens, a little romance and one very well written story with some nicely animated cgi. I'm usually picky about sci-fi and almost never wanted to see the latest cool new release, but this movie really is tops. I was even more surprised that parts of the movie brought forth some relatively strong emotions. Also, I think the movie does try to send a message and does a good job of it. Ok, I don't want to be anymore of a movie reviewer here so go see it for yourselves.
I suppose I can agree with the summary if we are talking about the George Lucas that made "Jar Jar" -- but not the George Lucas I imagine existed before that. The movie has a strange mix of incredibly awesome and stunningly amateurish or "dumbed down by committee" pieces that kind of made me angry that it fell short of its total awesomeness potential. Kind of like making a Transformer movie and then produce toys that don't transform. Who would think that's a good idea? Thank god Hollywood would never do something like that, so I wouldn't ever have to explain to a three year old on Christmas, "No, honey, it doesn't transform into a semi truck; it's just a robot" ANYWAY you should see District 9 if you haven't but don't expect it to be soo awesome in total, it's pretty good, though. My wife is the true sci-fi fan so I'll wait for her report back tomorrow.
Saw this yesterday, thought it was awesome. At its heart the plot isn't necessarily that original, but the execution is sublime. The "hero" and many of the other characters and weapons/vehicles/etc. feel so much more vulnerable than in any other holywood movie.
In every other movie you shoot at someone and miss completely if they're the good guy. Or your car/spaceship/cat is invulnerable to missiles conveniently. Not in this movie.
HOWEVER, the combination of shaky cam and gore left everyone I went with feeling a bit nauseous. I'm really not even sure if it was the shaky cam or the gore that did it. Please put a bullet in these shaky cams. For whatever reason they're being used, it's not worth it.
Eaaaaaasssssssyyyyyyyyy there, boy. If you're going to pick names to associate Blumpkin with you could do better than George and Linda.
Does D9 rank with... say... 2001? How about Blade Runner or Close Encounters? Perhaps you meant to give him accolades as an Action/CGI director which is fine but the insufflation of Lucas nuts is a bit nauseating.
It's high time the Academy recognized Joe, the epileptic cameraman, and his trusty pogo stick named "Earthquake".
Seriously dude, it would still have that extra realism if the jerkimeter was at 5 instead of 11.
most people have never heard of them since Matrix, which was ten years ago, which means they need to have their claim to fame mentioned. While many on this site know who they are I bet you could find some readers who don't. If anything getting into the same sentence as Lucas is probably more important to the W brothers than their movie.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I just briefly scrolled through the list and for a half of a second thought I saw "90210" listed as an up-and-coming Sci-Fi movie.
Karma: NaN
I saw District 9 this Friday, and I have to agree that it was a great piece of cinematic sci-fi: an allegory for apartheid with a very human unlikely hero and some great popcorn-fodder action sequences. I'd like to remind everyone, though, that it still has some competition for year's best sci-fi movie in the form of Moon, which is a drama of isolation, loneliness, and ethics set in the stark, cold beauty of space, very reminiscent of 2001. While it doesn't match the action of D-9, it makes up for it with its emotional intensity and thoughtfulness. I highly recommend any Slashdot movie fans out there see both.
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I saw D9 last night and had a very difficult time enjoying it. That was mostly due to being motion sick from the camera work. That is a first for me. If you get even the slightest bit of motion sickness, wait until this one is out on DVD, or sit as far back as you possibly can in the theatre.
Note to directors: Using shaky cam throughout an entire feature length film doesn't make your film look gritty and documentary like. It makes you look like an amateur.
If at first you succeed, try not to look shocked.
Wait, so we're still allowing George Lucas into the highest tier of sci-fi demigods? I was pretty sure he demoted himself down to 2nd tier, and that's granting him some charity between balancing the 1st trilogy, which he didn't get to make like he wanted, what with the surly actors and limited special effects, and the 2nd, which he got to make EXACTLY like he wanted.
Ok, comparing them to the Wachowski brothers probably isn't the compliment the submitter intended. I would assume...
The first Matrix movie was superb. I remember literally leaping out of my seat in the theater while watching it. It was incredible. The second movie suggested some fantastic things but really hinged on the third movie to determine whether it was great or not - were those hinted elements executed properly or were those hints just me reading into things? And the third movie sucked so hard that it actually dragged down the first movie's greatness while simultaneously revealing just how terrible the second movie really was. In the second movie, they hinted at and suggested some elements which would have created a wonderful lore for the franchise but their complete lack of ability to craft a story (it's now widely known that the first movie's plot was actually stolen from another author, Sophia Stewart) and their inability to subtly finesse a plot showed through in glaring detail when the third movie came out. Their special effects and fight sequences have had a profound impact on action/sci-fi movies since but, as storytellers, they are enormously subpar, to say the least.
Actually, given that the other comparison the submitter makes is to George Lucas (another absolute master of the visual art but novice of storytelling and script writing...), I'm now forced to wonder if District 9 is just pretty pictures and cool fight scenes with a piss-poor plot and an infantile script... Regardless, I know I'm going to see it but the comparisons to Lucas and the Wachoskis makes me wonder...
I consider myself a avid sci-fi fan, but I thought the movie was crap, and I don't see what all the hype is about. I think the plot had potential, but the execution was dreadful.
I haven't seen Moon...but the reviewer in the Houston paper said it was very long and very boring...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
This film should vault Neill Blomkamp into sci-fi stardom, on par with George Lucas and the Wachowski Brothers (of Matrix fame).
If you have to tell Slashdotters who the Wachowski brothers are, then they haven't achieved "sci-fi stardom", have they?
this movie was meh.
Overall, was tremendously impressed with the look, feel, cinematography, etc. Documentary style absolutely made the movie. And I generally loath shaky-cam. Thing is, shaky-cam has generally been used to imply that you *are* someone, so you never see what the hell is happening, whereas in District 9, it makes you feel like you're *watching* something, so you follow the action but feel the peril. Very effective.
There were some *amazing* scenes - I can't go into it due to spoilers, but really, unbelievably cringe-inducing moments of humanist horror. There is a richness to the interaction of the main character with his world that I just haven't seen elsewhere.
My friends and I kept looking over at each other with wild grins on our faces, unable to believe how intense, crazy, and just totally new the whole thing was. I really can't recommend it highly enough.
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I smell a viral marketing campaign.
Kind of like making a Transformer movie and then produce toys that don't transform. Who would think that's a good idea? Thank god Hollywood would never do something like that, so I wouldn't ever have to explain to a three year old on Christmas, "No, honey, it doesn't transform into a semi truck; it's just a robot"
I haven't been down the toy aisle in quite some time, so I can't really tell if this is sarcasm. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the toys don't transform; the levels of stupid in the industry today are astounding. So, is this really the case?
I guess I must be in the minority of people that did not like the movie. I think I would rather have dental surgery than sit through the first 30-45 minutes of the film. The rest was like watching someone play Quake. I like the genre, but did not care for this film at all. Much of the audience in the theater seemed to think the last half was a comedy. I would be more likely to compare the film with Plan 9 From Outerspace than Star Wars or The Matrix.
District 9 is liquid cocaine fed intravenously to your veins for two hours. It is a visual 2 1/2 hour orgasm. Watching this movie will be the most important event of your life and by far the most pleasurable. District 9 was better than my wedding, better than watching my first son born, better than the time I had sexual intercourse with an entire college cheerleading squad while high on peyote.
Words cannot express it. It is like viewing the face of God. Forget the trailers, forget any stills you've seen, forget whatever anyone else has told you. Forget religion, forget God, forget science, forget everything you thought you knew. There is only District 9, and it is beautiful.
Neill Blomkamp is brilliance incarnate. He is divine. I am not sure how exactly he created this masterpiece of visual neurological cues which induce pure pleasure, but I now owe him absolutely everything. He has perfected visual neural interface with the genius stroke of a Renaissance Master and the prowess of an angel.
Watch this movie, repeatedly. You will want to take off work for the next week (perhaps longer) just to watch uninterrupted back-to-back showings. I am currently writing this from a netbook that I sneaked into the early matinee showing. I must now continue to watch.
-Travis
Did anyone see a similarity to Larry Niven's "Protector"? As for the movie; I saw it Friday. OK movie. A interesting portrayal or tip of the brim to the Boer. It could have been made less gory for a better human \ Alien relations story. Three years ;)
... I'll have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster with a side of Plutonium Nyborg
Is it just me, or has "science fiction" basically come to mean action/adventure/horror/whatever with rayguns and aliens?
What ever happened to science fiction that used the premise as a tool to tell us something unpleasant about ourselves? Or to explore human behavior taken to extremes? Or to give us a unique perspective on the world around us?
Looking back on what science fiction used to be... I'd suggest that District 9 is the only sci-fi movie of 2009...
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
I don't see how so many people can get so easily nauseated by this film. Maybe with cloverfield, but the camera was barely shaky at all IMO. There's plenty of movies out there that go with a normal camera and have much more shakey-ness than District 9.
better than children of men or eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
http://aintitcool.com/node/42012
and it won this weekend box office
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/movies/17box.html
the backstory is this south african guy blomkamp was hired by peter jackson to direct a big screen rendering of halo, but then sony backed out of financially backing the deal (conspiracy theorists, take note of sony's video game console conflicting interests here). this was after blomkamp, jackson, wife, and crew had devoted a considerable ramping up of effort on the movie. jackson, feeling chagrined, pretty much said to blomkamp: so, uh, i feel bad, so is there another movie you want to make? the idea was to expand a short blomkamp made about aliens living in a shanty town in johannesburg. as an added unlikely twist, jackson let him star a complete acting unknown who was just his old friend and more of a producer, and not much of one at that: sharlto copley
and thus scifi was history was made
if they made the halo movie, i bet it would be a $200 million popcorn muncher for 10 year olds that would barely eke out a profit after marketing costs and would be utterly forgotten after viewing, like gi joe and transformers this summer. sure, those are fun movies, but do they challenge your mind? and thus, no one will care about them in a month. devoid of any impression-making and watered down to pap by hollywood suits taking meetings with the producer and director
but instead of halo, we get a smart, 30 million historical utterly groundbreaking and original piece of cinema. not bad for a barely known visual effects dude
in a way, thank you sony, for being such asses, but mostly, thank you jackson (yet again) and blomkamp for blowing our minds
more backstory:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/movies/06district.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Thank you for the heads-up. Was just about to push BUY on Fandango for this evening, but not now.
Did this film remind anyone of the metamorphosis, by kafka?
The best part of the movie was seeing a pig used as a projectile weapon. The movie got some laughs -- probably not intentionally. The base message was sound, but the movie was painful to watch. The first half was tedious, and the second half was just a bunch of special effects with little plot.
...but I thought it was a mediocre movie at best, with good CGI. I walked out with a Starship Troopers taste in my mouth, but maybe that was just remnants of a soldier that got disintegrated by an alien man-zapper.
And, eh...you were like *that*, eh? (picture Karen Dunbar making various hand motions...)
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
One of the interesting aspects of this movie is that it only took $30 million to make and made $37 million the first weekend. It doesn't look like a low budget film.
it looks like a remake of 2001 with a twist
So I should go ahead and be disappointed with the rest of his pretentious, over-baked career?
As an aside, if you have to explain (parenthetically) why the Wachowski Bros. are on par with George Lucas in sci-fi fame, then it's very likely they aren't on par with Lucas in sci-fi fame.
Generally, the use of the phrase "Sci Fi" indicates that the speaker is a clueless outsider who would never read, watch or appreciate Science Fiction. True aficionados use SF or Science Fiction.
I can't believe I haven't seen one commenter mention Avatar, James Cameron's upcoming Sci-Fi film. I'm a lot more excited to see that than I was to see District 9.
I'm sure I will be in the minority here, but I left feeling empty because of the gaping holes in the plot. I left the theater feeling like I had taken about 6 restroom breaks and missed storyline, only I didn't leave once.
Here are the issues I had:
1) Where did the aliens come from, why were they in our galaxy? why did they leave? Would it have been so much to ask to piece together some of the back-story for the viewer so we could relate better to their plight?
2) WTF happened to all of the aliens who knew shit about how to run their starship? Why is it their population consists of 99.999-percent idiotic worker-class drones and what happened to their intelligent leaders? Why did precisely 1 intelligent alien survive this?
3) How believable can it be that this fluid has a very specific dual purpose of a) turning humans into Prawns, and being unleaded gasoline for your starships?
4) The gore was completely over the top and detracted from our enjoyment.
5) We made the mistake of sitting close to the screen and the shaky camera gave me a splitting headache.
I felt like this movie is a lot like the Defying Gravity series on ABC. The movie is trying so hard to tell a heart-wrenching story that the sci-fi aspects become a crappy afterthought for the writers.
Someone help me understand this...
So the aliens aren't interested in their own retarded-powerful weapons while the African Guerillas have a bunch of them? Instead many of the aliens are stockpiling human weapons????? That and the African government is allowing the thugs to live and trade [human weapons] amongst the aliens while the african thugs are stock-piling alien weaponry (one of which MPU has never seen before - the exoskel)???? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!!!?! Help me understand how this doesn't blow holes all through this story and I'll tell you this is an excellent movie.
Other than some obvious flaws in the story, it was entertaining. Comparing it to classics like the Matrix. No, not even in the same league.
The movie was shot without a script and there was no use of green screen.
Can you believe that? Huzza!
If there was any shakycam in it, that was sporadic and limited at best (worst).
I base that on the fact that I don't remember any, and I've sat through all of it (some of it couple of times) and Serenity and I've liked it all.
OTOH... BSG annoyed me constantly with its continuous shakycam so I was barely able to last to mid-season 2. Never saw it entirely. Don't plan to.
Could watch Firefly again though...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I suppose Peter Jackson's name was the only thing that kept this from being laughed out of Hollywood. 'District 9' and 'Moon' are the best sci-fi movies I've seen in awhile.
I feel that Star Trek and Terminator were both better Science Fiction movies than District 9. Overall, I feel the acting was much better in the Star Trek and Terminator. The fact that the Trek fans hate it because it goes against the Prime Objective and this and that is irrelevant. It was still a great movie if you are completely unbiased about it. As for the best movie of the year, The Hurt Locker was a better movie in my opinion, the acting, plot and filming were all done perfectly in it. It was probably one of the top three recent war movies made with Private Ryan and Letters from Iwo Jima
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Not a bad movie, but a very simple story. They could have done a lot more with it (like explore the ethics of what the lunar mining company did or how Earth reacts of the news or whether (spoiler alert) the original guy on Earth knew about the whole thing.)
I haven't seen Moon...but the reviewer in the Houston paper said it was very long and very boring...
The reviewer in the Houston paper probably doesn't know how to deal with movies that aren't filled with explosions and gunfire. It's got an aggregate score of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is better than District 9's 88%.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
I enjoyed the film quite a lot. I think it has had one of the best ad campaigns in years. I've seen billboards with advisories against picking up alien hitchhikers (warning of a $10,000 fine). The best was the ad banner on a bus simply saying "This bus is for humans only!" and the prawn icon with the red slashed circle. Brilliant, and massively attention getting. I can't recall the last time I heard people at work discussing a billboard.
Thanks for the heads up about shaky cam. That puts "District 9" on the "maybe when I can watch it for free" list.
I don't want to have to concentrate physically to be able to follow the story.
I go to the movies to entertain my mind, not my eye muscles or my vestibular system.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I enjoyed the hell out of Moon. It was awesome. And after it was over, I remarked how one great thing about it was that it was science fiction in the classic mode. Not like the cheesy rehashes like Independence Day or, dare I say it, Star Wars, where the SciFi elements are just a motif and have nothing to do with the themes.
District 9 however was bad enough that I left early and asked for my money back. God, the plot holes! I mean, I'm glad everyone liked it and all but gag; it's not the second coming of anything.
Well, there's no aliens, though GERTIE is (by definition) remeniscant of HAL. :D
Its like 2001 in that its sci-fi with no action and very few characters, set entirely off-world. And it uses miniatures rather than CGI
I haven't seen Moon...but the reviewer in the Houston paper said it was very long and very boring...
Ouch. Sounds like they were reviewing the extended edition of Peter Jackson's Return of the King by mistake?
Warning, might be spoilers:
:-/
Let me say that I was highly disappointed with this movie, and surely I can't be the only one. I went to see it last night, and walked away not recommending it to anyone. There were definite plot holes, the hero (Van De Merwe) I had a hard time rooting for instead of rooting that we would just get shot. He was weak and pathetic, and only had courage while in the exo-suit, and even then, he was wishy-washy. His character was sort of like Borat, the sound effects sounded like the Matrix, and I just couldn't believe the government would allow the Nigerians to become so powerful inside the district, especially when they knew how dangerous they were. The father in law was evil for no apparent reason, and his wife suddenly believes Wilkus without explanation why? I don't know, I just don't buy it at all. A lot of the gore was unneeded, and made me turn away from the screen a few times... Did we really need to see him biting off his nails? And yes, I did think the parts where the humans blew up from the alien weapons were cool, but it just begs the question, why weren't the aliens using the weanpos to revolt instead of selling them to the Nigerians?
All in all, I just found the movie to be simply unbelievable (yes, I KNOW it is only sci-fi, but still, c'mon!) that were this situation to occur, I just can't see people acting like that. I'd expect tighter government controls, with more international pressures. If this movie wanted to be about apartheid, which is a good social justice issues movie, it needed a little more believability to it, and a little more on the interactions between humans/aliens when the aliens first arrived.
Mod me up or down, I don't care, it was just that I was expecting so much more, and left feeling like I got a better deal on the popcorn
Just because you shake to the rhythm of the camera...
huh. I always thought the shaky-cam was to cut costs on special effects. Your CGI doesn't have to look half as good when the viewer can't even tell what's going on in the picture.
They should have made the connection to the real historical Apartheit more strongly. A lot of people going to see D-9 will not get that, if they have even ever heard of it. Hell, my daughter's friends have never even heard of the Grateful Dead and the Who; I doubt they've ever heard of District-6, or Stephen Bantu Biko, or Nelson Mandela, etc.
I have read too many /. comments about the "shaky cam" making people dizzy and people getting sick from the gore. What a bunch of panzies!
This is an awesome film. It is less gore-filled then most recent horror flics and the "shaky cam" is no where near as bad as everyone seems to think it was. The shaky camera scenes do a good job of adding to explosions and other noise in the environment. Also, remember this film was partially shot as a "documentary," so some of the shakiness was the fake camera man being thrown about (like when they were filming hut-to-hut).
You are certainly entitled to not like this film; everyone's tastes are different. But if you thought it was too gory, you threw up, it made you sick, or it made you dizzy....you have some issues.
I loved the movie and thought that overall it was an excellent film.
If it's your favorite Sci-Fi movie of 2009... it IS the best Sci-Fi movie of 2009. Anyone who doesn't love it as much as you is an idiot. If someone says something about their "opinion", just tell them that their opinion is WRONG. Also, everything is a competition, especially your feelings about movies, music, TV and other media. There is your experience, and there is the WRONG experience. Don't let them get away with some bullshit about "subjective experience". Use some words like chiaroscuro. Talk about how it has no plot. Just because one event caused/led to the other doesn't mean it has a plot. It has a plot if you like it. If you don't, it doesn't.
If a movie you like does well, that just proves how right you are about the awesomeness of the movie. If it tanks, it's because most movie goers are mouth breathing cretins who know nothing about cinematic aesthetics.
If you hate the movie and it does well, it's because of those same knuckle draggers. If it does poorly, then that just proves that you were so right about how bad it was that even the plebes didn't like it.
Everyone should feel and think the same way you do.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
As I said I haven't seen the movie yet, but it was said that if you didn't know about the Apartheid, as many younger filmgoers may not, you would see it as just a believeable sci-fi plot.
Because the attention span of US cinema goers is about 10 minutes. Tops...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I suppose I can agree with the summary if we are talking about the George Lucas that made "Jar Jar" -- but not the George Lucas I imagine existed before that.
You mean, the George Lucas who decided that space ships in a vacuum behave exactly the same as airplanes in Earth's atmosphere? Or the
George Lucas who worked so hard to capture the exact sound of an Imperial Star Destroyer in space? Yeah, he really sold out when he added Jar Jar to The Phantom Menace.
It seems they "fixed" it for the second one; at least now they have a bunch of transforming transformers. But for the first movie, it seemed the majority of the toys did not transform. My son has a rather neat looking Optimus robot, about a foot tall, that has wheels and doors, looks like the movie character, but does not transform.
Nowadays one of the resources of directors that do not know how to move along a plot is to use shaky cameras.
Shaky cameras have been done ad nauseam since Blair Witch Project, it was an interesting device, I am sure it can be used as an expressive tool, but nowadays is just a refuge for the lazy film maker.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I gotta say watching it in the theater was a waste of money, yes the story and the graphics are great but the documentary format was annoying as hell. It was so obliviously setup for a sequel and you can tell parts were cutout of scenes that they make reference to. in the end it was a damn good try but missed the mark alittle.
The reviewer in the Houston paper thinks that Michael Bay is a Cinematic GOD.
Dont listen to that reviewer.
Michael Bay.... EXPLOSIONS!!!!!!! WOOOOOO!
This is a well executed movie by most counts. The CGI is excellent, and I happen to like the choice of "documentary" style filming (oh, people will bemoan the "shakycam," but I feel like it helps integrate the CGI with the live action components). The main character's role is well cast. and his flawed and human responses to his bizarre circumstances are quite refreshing. With the exception of the 3rd act (more in a bit), the pacing is very well done and the movie flows quite well.
Any claims of originality are a bit overstated, though. By setting the story in South Africa, parallels to human-on-human behavior are much less subtle than you'd normally find (and I don't think that this is to its credit). In truth, the story is a combination of many familiar sci-fi tropes: the grotesque but misunderstood aliens, the nearly omnipotent greedy multinational corporation, the *SPOILER* horribly cliched (but very well realized) transformation of the main character *END SPOILER*.
I think the movie is at its worst in the 3rd act, when it devolves into a full-on action flick for an unnecessarily long 30 minute stretch.
Again, very well executed. It may even be the best sci-fi flick of the year, though it seems a bit early to judge that. Just don't go into the film expecting it to cover any new ground.
Moon is real SciFi.
The Hollywood studios have hijacked the term and many people are sheepishly obliging with gusto.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The problem with the movie is that the whole premise is flawed. The humans don't act like humans. They have no knowledge of the aliens and don't even seem interested. They shove ET into a ghetto and there are no scholars, philosophers, doctors, scientists or even media trying to gain access to them? No one on the whole globe cares at all, except for an evil haliburton type company. Really? Sitting in the audience I couldn't help but think that someone involved in this glossy, shiny turd would have pointed out that their core audience is going to be made up of people who would be on the first plane to Johannesburg to see an alien.
And that is not a spoiler, that is just the trailers. It felt like it just missed some key plot points. A sequel has the potential to be much better, especially if it explains why the aliens are so ineffectual, another serious gripe.
That's the one movie I'm really looking forward to.
James Cameron + Sigourney Weaver + Huge Budget = Hopes for a movie equal to Aliens.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
I'll have to disagree here. There were many plot holes in District 9. Moon, OTOH, was incredible. It was sci-fi for truists. The kind of movie I want to see a sequel *and* a prequel to.
No way, man! We all know that 2012 is going to be the best science fiction movie of the year!
(I do, of course, emphasize the fiction.)
Movies are a visual medium, so if you can't be bothered about taking care of the visuals, then you should not be making movies.
Rule number one of making movies is that you only move the camera only if you really have to. There are many good reasons for this, one of which is that you can actually make many members of your audience sick ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaky_camera ).
Note how the reviving movie of this fashion, The Blair Witch Project, was aiming to make the movie look amateur. That is the effect that you achieve if you overuse this, and given the age and experience of the director it seems that the effect may be completely unintended, because he is, for all practical purposes, a novice in the craft of making films.
All the fanbois of the Net Generation, who can't stand still and wear their short attention spans as badges of honour will be rabidly supportive of this movie, after all they have trained themselves not to puke by playing video games with similar aesthetic values, the art of good film making be damned.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
A great special effects movie is the one where you do not even notice it. District 9 is very good - you know it's special effects, but you don't really notice them at all. Just like most of the LOTR - only better. Peter Jackson influence is clearly evident.
All in all, its a wonderful movie - goes a bit deeper than most of the so called sci-fi.
No doubt there will be people crying over "but how is it possible??". Ignore them. They were the same who clapped when we uploaded virus into the alien computers in the Independence Day.
I don't think Blomkamp was out to make the next "Star Wars" or "Matrix." He took the resources and talent he had, and he produced this film.
Frankly, "District 9" is the most fun I've had at a movie in a long time. I'm impressed that it has engendered such debate (who the hell is talking about the last Harry Potter film?), but for all the talk about deep themes and plot holes I've really got to wonder if people just watch stuff because it's entertaining any more.
Transformers doesn't even count because Michael Bay blows
Why is this modded as flamebait? It's informative!
There was some subtext explaining these things that was very easy to mix given the pacing and the
The biggest thing to remember here is that this movie is set OVER TWO DECADES after the aliens arrived. In that time, they've spent some time integrated with humans and human culture before being segregated out again. It's also apparent that District 9 was established slowly -- not in a single fell swoop (like the design of District 10 as seen). In that situation it is easy to imagine certain members of the underground gaining some influence and establishing themselves in D-9 as the aliens were moved there before the eventual legal status of the area was determined.
Re: weapons. It seems that there are several "castes" of the aliens -- a worker caste (the majority found) and a higher technical caste. The worker cast may not have had the correct DNA or the correct training the use the weapons and the weapons may have been designed to not accept them as users -- therefore they are worthless to the aliens and good only for trading.
And it uses miniatures rather than CGI :D
I don't think 2001 is very watchable, but models instead of CGI does attract my attention. Halfway decent models often look much better than halway decent CGI.
Moon is real sci-fi, whereas most "SyFy" (used as a derogatory term) is action with aliens at best. District 9 is more sci-fi than most action films, but falls somewhere in the middle.
Moon, by the way, aired at SXSW 2009 in Austin in March. Plenty of us Americans know how to appreciate real sci-fi.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
completely wrong forum for it, lol
the demographics of slashdot are not exactly friendly to "julie and julia"
and your opinion is well-bourne out
http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/movies/07julie.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I had the opportunity to interview writer/director Neill Blomkamp and Sharlto Copley, who plays Wikus van der Merwe. Here's the link to the interview and to the review I published this past week. I think that Blomkamp will continue to impress us if he keeps focused on further developing the story and the characters in his future films. Is it a perfect film? No. Most sci-fi is far from the depths of where cinematic drama can reach, but this is a respectable start for a first time film director who was spared, I will say, of the critical failure that Halo is destined to become. As someone else mentioned, I've also followed Blomkamp's work from Tetra Vaal to his CitrÃen and VW ads, and the film short "Alive in Joburg" which I've linked in the interview page URL I've posted here.
I don't get the hype this flick generated...It was trite, preachy, gross, inconsistent and massively overrated. Another movie that pushes CG and shock value to the guilt ridden self loathing masses. Bleh
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
I understand. But as someone who remembers apartheid, all I needed was to read the plot and its location, and I knew immediately that it was meant as commentary on apartheid. Anyone who has studied international politics, even in the slightest high-school education sense, ought to remember apartheid in connection with South Africa.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
I haven't seen Moon...but the reviewer in the Houston paper said it was very long and very boring...
Reviewers in local papers certainly ARE notorious for intelligent reviews of movies, and NEVER only write good reviews of mainstream "funny" or "action" movies.
So, like The Matrix, which had generations of humans used as a power source because the robots couldn't fly above the clouds to get to the solar power they needed, it's flawed from the core out like a rotten apple. Shiny and nice on the outside but rotted and disgusting to anything more than a first glance? Yeah, I'll be avoiding this one, the reviews that talk about anything less superficial than the special effects have panned it.
I found it hard to sympathize with the self-absorbed whiny idiot lead character. And watching fakes news reels and security cam footage made the film quiet boring for me. The aliens remain mysterious throughout the entire film, no questions about them are answered. And in the end nothing feels resolved, aliens are still on Earth. What the hero fought and killed to stop for the entire film happened anyways. And I'm surprised that an America that is hypersensitive to racism didn't have fits about a film where blacks were portrayed primarily as murderous thugs with strange superstitions.
Perhaps I'm out of touch with the mainstream because the movie has a good rating in general, I couldn't give it more than maybe 6/10 (compared to 8.9/10 on IMDB). And I normally like everything from hard SF to space operas to action-scifi. This film just didn't do it for me. It wasn't horrible, I didn't walk out, but I'm not going to bother seeing it again or taking any more of my friends to it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You need to get out more (I assume you are from the US), and you need to see more than your Hollywood crap.
In fact, I am sorry for the movie that you watched it.
I've seen it twice now, and it is a good movie - but unlike some AICN commentary may claim, it is nowhere on par with the likes of The Thing or Aliens, and it's certainly not the best Science Fiction of 2009.
A majority of the weaponry, aliens, and visuals were taken directly out of a little thing called Half-Life 2, and the bits that weren't, were pulled from other popular first person shooters. The story over all was mediocre, once you see past the obvious parallels to some of the actions we as a species inflicted upon our fellow humans in reality. I certainly never felt any concern over the main characters fate, or the aliens, and any sequel that gets made can only bring this film down by planting it firmly in the category with the likes of Independence Day.
That being said, the movie itself has some excellent visual effects (though several were also borrowed from the Watchmen), had solid pacing, and is worth catching as a matinee.
Ever here of Snopes? http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/matrix.asp Case was dismissed for no evidence. (She didn't even show up.)
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
This film should vault Neill Blomkamp into sci-fi stardom, on par with George Lucas and the Wachowski Brothers (of Matrix fame). This is certainly a must-see movie -- easily the best movie of the year.
You mean he'll be in the group "those should have stopped their major franchises about two to three movies before they did"? I admit I'm looking forward to this film. But being declared on par with George Dialog Torturer Lucas and the Wachwoskis (I wish I had taken the blue pill before the second and third movies) isn't saying a lot.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
The trailer made the movie look like it had much more tension in the plot... but no world ending weapons hosted by intellectually superior aliens. Instead you had a bunch of cat food eating over sized crickets that were stupid... oh and the way the aliens and humans talked so easily... again stupid. The star actor was a complete idiot the entire movie. Let me chop of my finger to stop the spreading... ok right. What part of this movie was great exactly? It was like Independence Day after the stars took a few bong hits.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
/. conveniently removed all the blank lines I put in to give people an opportunity to avoid it :-(
It's a buddy cop film (witness the parting scene) and a shoot-em-up. It barely even delivers on the apartheid parable before jumping with both feet into bloody firefights.
I liked it, but its not a great sci-fi movie.
Moon is a great sci-fi movie. Go see it.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Seriously, why is everyone raving about this movie? There were plot holes everywhere, to much CG. It was like Peter had called up Bay and asked to borrow his actionscenes, and then trippled them. How does a ships fuel make you into an alien? Why don't these aliens capable of making amazing technology KILL EVERYONE IN THERE WAY AND GET THEIR OWN DAMN CATFOOD BY FORCE?
You've not seen Moon, then.
This movie was really good, and it was really deep. I walked out of the theatre mindfucked and in a daze.
You've not seen Moon, then.
No, I have not.
Something that I will correct as soon as possible.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Michael J. Fox
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
I suppose I can agree with the summary if we are talking about the George Lucas that made "Jar Jar" -- but not the George Lucas I imagine existed before that.
You mean the George Lucas that made the Ewoks???
Are you saying you like Jar Jar or that movies should never fool with physics? Or that you just don't like Star Wars in total? I'm confused.
didn't "Star Trek" count as sci-fi, at least to most people?
No, FTWinston, Star Trek was a documentary, and the events happened in realtime.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
This was barely science fiction.. you could make the exact same movie without the aliens and spaceship. Nothing that was good about this movie had anything to do with science fiction, and the aliens themselves had NOTHING to do with science. I was terribly disappointed with these creatures which may as well have been mutants for their similarity to humans. The effects were, of course, astounding, but otherwise the movie was sorely disappointing.
Moon is a much, much better science fiction movie.
This was the worst movie ever made! Come on!
The guy inhales the ship fuel and starts to transform into an alien!? What's that?
And aliens forming a slum!? Where are the rich countries to rescue? Like the US would have no interest in bringing them out
and studying whatever tech they had... And how do the aliens behave like wild animals and are still so advanced?
It just does not add up. This is a horrible and ridiculous movie. I just can't understand how people can like such terrible stuff.
People should just go watch the Cosmos series by Carl Sagan and they would understand why this is such a ridiculous plot.
This movie is just a symbol of how decadent is the human society these days. It even makes me sad to think that this is the
kind of stuff that people like to see. Destruction, death, crime... this is just another lame pretext to make skulls explode with
computer effects. No intellectual value at all.
This is the problem I have with many people who go see a great movie like this and dissect it for perceived flaws that are actually its strengths:
1. The movie is a "snapshot" into an event. It is not the entire story, nor should it have attempted the be the entire story. (What I mean by "entire story" is, trying to tell EVERYTHING that happened from ship arrival to conclusion) -- THat's the type of lame crap Hollywood movies do and always FAIL at. I much prefer the JJ Abrams "mystery" angle, where a good story is in not trying to explain eveyrthing, than to have them give us these lame-ass explanations for things, like Radiation = super powers! yeah, ooookay.
2. The small snapshot of a story shown to us threads several subtle threads , as well as the most obvious one, and it all provokes THOUGHT and discussion about the topics rather than trying to explain them, or take any particular side to them etc.
Yeah, the aliens are shoved into a ghetto, but does the movie explicitly try to say "this is wrong" or anything to that effect? I think it merely showed several sides to the issue and makes one think about what WOULD we do if this happened? Humanity does this to each other all the time, using a variety of distinctions as our excuses, such as nationality, wealth, color of our skin. Most of us would argue and believe it to be wrong using the reasoning that we are all human. So what if the D9 scenario actually happened? What WOULD we do? They AREN'T human, so where do we draw the line?
Anyways, the premise raises dozens of other questions about what would we do, and I guess simple minds just won't see the depth this movie has beneath its kick-ass surface.
The movie was not that great. Interesting to be sure, and the ad campaign was lights-out brilliant. The movie itself? An excercize in Blizz-Activision corporate strategy. Take what's been done before and make it better. Characters felt underdeveloped, the "what you can't see is more exciting" technique was smashed into our head with a brick the whole flick, and the unresolved ending is par for the course these days, when creating a franchise is always better than making a complete story. "Man is the bad guy" is old and cliche, and they didn't do it in a new and innovative way. The people who seem really excited about this movie don't seem to watch many movies, I guess.
I'd put this with G.I. Joe and the latest Transformers. Some good bits, and fun overall, but don't expect too much or you will be sorely disappointed.
Overall, was tremendously impressed with the look, feel, cinematography, etc. Documentary style absolutely made the movie. And I generally loath shaky-cam. Thing is, shaky-cam has generally been used to imply that you *are* someone, so you never see what the hell is happening, whereas in District 9, it makes you feel like you're *watching* something, so you follow the action but feel the peril. Very effective.
There were some *amazing* scenes - I can't go into it due to spoilers, but really, unbelievably cringe-inducing moments of humanist horror. There is a richness to the interaction of the main character with his world that I just haven't seen elsewhere.
My friends and I kept looking over at each other with wild grins on our faces, unable to believe how intense, crazy, and just totally new the whole thing was. I really can't recommend it highly enough.
This is a god damned advertisement, I don't care who tells me otherwise. Why does this stuff get modded up?
Wikus is a bureaucratic simpleton thrust into a situation far beyond his grasp. One of the major things I enjoyed about the film was watching the development of his character. With every plot twist, I had to wonder -- is he beginning to see? Does he understand now what he's been a part of? Is he beginning to get a better sense of life from the Prawns' point of view?
It was that constant character suspense -- do I want to root for Wikus yet or not? -- that was part of what made the movie such an edge-of-the-seat experience for me.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Is it just me (and forgive me if I haven't read all of the 400 comments on this post), or is this movie an unauthorized adaptation of Half Life 2?
The name of the movie is a play on District 6, an area of Cape Town, South Africa. District 6 had its people moved by force: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_Six,_Cape_Town
District 9 was just a blend of an Apartheid/segregation movie with probably Independence Day. Also thrown in is the odd evil corporation. This does not maketh real scifi. Decent watch for CG et al but not going anywhere on the honors list. Can someone point out one bit of originality in the movie? Also lately hollywood has made the "evil corporation" theme very fashionable. I think most governments (ones even with a socialist bent) would function along very similar lines.
But I like it for its philosophical ending. Once you get past too much Nicholas Cage, I thought the plot was interesting.
You refer to Transformers as if it had some material included in it that was not "dumbed down by committee".
We must have watched a different film called "Transformers".
This was way, way better than Transformers, in that it was clearly created from a script, and not an action movie template with 3 minutes of "sci-fi" exposition.
That was you? Next time, would you mind staying in your seat?
--- The Guy Behind You
If this is the best the world can do, then that's a sad thing. I mean the lack of imagination in today's stories is stunning. Yeah, the story in itself may be nice. But we have top-notch CGI today. So give me something that blasts even living spaceships, strange non-human-like aliens and the weirdest nanite-tech etc out of the water.
I wish they would make a movie out of the Hyperion Cantos. With a really crazy (army of) Shrikes and an impressive cyberspace "Ummon". ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Interstellar refugees are basically colonized indigenes but with antigravity hyperdrive and tentacle lips. I await with bated breath Obama's critique concerning this teachable moment in cinema history!
Seastead this.
since it got a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, the reviewer in the Houston paper is in the minority
because it says something true and stupid about humanity: "what have you done for me lately" is amped up to ridiculous extremes in expectations once you do anything notable in life
it doesn't matter how amazing your output might have been, but if your latest programming project/ movie/ merger acquisition/ classroom lecture/ etc. is subpar, you're treated like shit. worse, in fact, had you never achieved anything previously at all. people develop high expectations for you, and so when you do something that would otherwise be appreciated as simply mildly well done, you are instead despised
i'm kind of amazed how legends like einstein and gandhi are able to maintain such love and admiration, considering their failures, in terms of physics theories and political efforts, are well-documented and are huge
i can only hope such shallow sour grapes are temporary, and people are remembered in the long term after their deaths for the heights of what they achieve
for example, ridley scott made blade runner and alien
but he also made a good year and body of lies
maybe the key is if you fail, fail outside the genre in which your most rabid fans inhabit, as then they won't even notice your failures
but no, peter jackson made the excellent lord of the rings trilogies, and then he made that totally forgettable king kong movie, and nobody seems to hold that against him
look: lucas made star wars. lucas can milk the star wars universe for decades and rape it of any redeeming quality you hold sacred until it makes you want to vomit... but he still made star wars. so that achievement stands no matter what he does later. same with the wachowski brothers and the matrix
i think after their deaths, people will remember them for their best, and not what came later in their careers, that disappoint the obsessed fanboys to the point of ungrateful shallow mindless hate
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I find it amazing that so many people are ecstatic over this movie, especially the "professional" reviewers. I guess when Hollywood churns out so much garbage, it's not too tough to look good by comparison. In my opinion, District 9 was merely watchable, with the annoyances outweighing the few redemptive aspects.
Given the plot setup I was expecting the movie to tackle some real issues that would seem relevant to today's society. Segregation, pre-emptive violence, The Other, etc. Instead I got two hours of tired Hollywood cliches. The Most Moral Man wins. Love is more important than life itself. Big Corporations are Evil. Big Guns are cool. Soldiers are assholes.
Not only that, I thought the implication that the public would reject the aliens out of xenophobia to be a depressing view of humanity. The scene where it showed the "bugger lovers" holding signs up was particularly revealing of the writers' idea of human nature: the Megacorp was about to go in and commit illegal evictions and a small handful of people show up? I'm pretty sure there would have been a much larger worldwide outcry.
In fact, the entire shantytown doesn't add up. What I got out of the movie was the implication that these aliens were shoved into the shantytown because they seemed stupid, but were actually really smart, as evidenced by the whole computer lab alien. If they were really smart, there would have been some political representation/structure that humanity could have dealt with. Instead they were apparently worthless.
Instead of exploring these (explainable) inconsistencies, which would have made an interresting movie, instead we are stuck following Wickus on his comedy of errors, who I found morally repugnant and illogical. The power of a movie like this is to put you in the main character's shoes, imagining what it would be like to be in his/her situation. In this case, Wickus is simply too stupid for me to imagine having made his choices. "Hey I'm about to be taken away in a spaceship from the people who are trying to kill me, but since it's going to take longer than I thought I'm going to punch my savior in the face, kidnap his child, and try to fly his alien spacecraft by myself!!!" Fucking retard.
On the plus side, it had good CG, with some fun gore that made a Jason flick look tame.
You know after the movie was over I had this overwhelming sense of sadness for the Aliens. I know it was all CGI. The aliens didn't know the concept of lying and were extremely gullible. Although they had the strength of 10 men they were mostly a passive species. They had advanced weaponry but didnâ(TM)t use it for offensive purposes.
every single book that was ever written, has elements of material that came before
you can't tell me a story that i can't find elements of in something before. even shakespeare harkens back to ancient greece and rome (sometimes overtly)
this doesn't mean originality doesn't exist. but it does mean that some people have very weird definitions of what constitutes a rip off. even the same story, told from a different perspective, can be groundbreaking and original and revelatory and highly creative. there was this guy in the 70s who rewrote the beowulf legend from the point of view of grendel, sympathetically. this is entirely original and highly creative, even though its the same old story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grendel_(novel)
everything we do, everything we make, is based on the work of who came before us. even in something like science, einstein or newton, could not have made the breakthroughs they made without relying on the contributions of their contemporaries and predecessors. and we view what they did as completely revolutionary
and yet there's a weird vocal minority out there who actually believes you write stories/ do science in some sort of vacuum... or you rip other people off. no in between. when in fact every cultural and scientific output that has ever happened actually occurs in the grey area in between those two extremes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Mmmm... Jar Jar sucked, but was the least of the problems with the new Star Wars movies. More to the point, dialog, character development and motivation was inane across the board in the new movies.
The point is, people jump on Jar Jar as if that one character was the problem with the movie. The problem as I see it was that George Lucas was not interested in realism, either in physics, or in characters in all six Star Wars movies. He didn't suddenly "go bad" with the new series; he just didn't have any material left that would make a good story without any attention to some kind of realism after he made Empire Strikes Back.
"This film should vault Neill Blomkamp into sci-fi stardom, on par with George Lucas and the Wachowski Brothers (of Matrix fame)."
Clearly we differ, but I define stardom as something along the lines of "not requiring parenthetical identification".
It was fook'n good! Did you not feel like saying fook a lot after watching it?
Wikus
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I saw both District 9 and Moon.
While District 9 is certainly a good movie, it's way over-hyped by fanboyism. Case in point, and lets be honest: the ending to D9 is rather "meh." I consider D9, while entertaining, neither the best Sci-Fi flick nor the best movie of the year, especially since the year's not even over yet.
Moon, on the other hand very much impressed me. I find it a far more replete with "pure" science fiction concepts than D9, which was largely action oriented.
Don't get me wrong though; I'm not here to completely rain on the D9 parade. I really did enjoy the movie, and it is worth seeing. But come on now.
They've also been script-posting to forums along these lines. Seen the film, it's ok, but nothing like the greats.
This kind of blatant, nasty advertising really pisses me off.
(Possible spoilers, read at your own risk).
It's stated at the beginning of the movie that Wikus, the protagonist, was an average employee of Multi National United, but he's appointed to head the major task of evicting the aliens from their District. When his boss is interviewed in the documentary, he states that the fact that he was married to the protagonist's sister had "nothing to do with his decision to promote Wikus" (in other words, sister begged boss to hire her brother). Therefore, we can assume Wikus was not a talented guy in his field, nor is he even qualified to do something like that. His character is portrayed as such a person.
As for Nigerians having power in the District, have you ever been to Africa? Not to mention the fact that the company, Multi National United, as it's name (and it's headquarters resemblance to the U.N. headquarters) suggests, most likely has a major influence in governmental politics.
I saw the film on opening day, and I loved it. I agree, best Si-fi movie of '09.
More like the Evil United Nations, if you get the "slight nudge" of the acronym and the all-white "peacekeeper" vehicles and choppers.
It is not a movie about aliens, it is a movie about humans and humanity. Everything you see in it as human-alien attitude and relationships, already has a precedent in human history. It is a social commentary and not a sugar-coated hollywoodcraprollercoasterride. The violence is unglamorized and borders on sickening.
If you want mindless entertainment with satisfying blows and asskicking, look elsewhere.
If you want to be exposed to the gut-wrenching experiences millions of human beings still face as a part of everyday life, this is just the ticket for you.
After seeing this, I can now say, yes, I can imagine how people in fugitive camps / slums feel. And, if you look at laws applied in "urban gentrification" projects, you will see we treat our "poor" in similar ways. The "social services" scene confiscating the child for it's own good was a brilliant example. Not even made up.
Star Wars gave us an attempt at a solid future universe with magic and technology to match our imagination. The (first) Matrix gave us a satisfying universe based on the core omnipresent premise that we live in a dream/virtual world.
District9 gave us a taste of our dark side, the atrocities we cheerfully commit against each other, the worst kind, coming from the "civilized" good citizens with clean desks. It is not a pleasant one, but important.
It is an important, masterfully created document, wrapped as a sci-fi movie.
Not everyone is ready for it.
((((((((( WARNING)))))))))
District 9 SUCKs.......!!!!!! REAL LET DOWN..... There is nothing more to say...
giving this movie any more attention is just plain unwarranted
Ja, ek het eintlik van distrik 6 gehoor, en ek het dit ook gesien. Which is Afrikaans, the language of most of South Africa's whites and people of mixed race ("coloureds"). So much for establishing my bona fides as a South African white, now let me say what I said the first time I posted about the movie: The movie might be a better remake of Alien Nation, with far better integrated effects, a more realistic interpretation of xenophobia (all the TV interviews with people in the street in the movie were asking questions about illegal immigrants in South Africa from places like Zimbabwe) and better actors (sharlto copley is really, really good), but for me as a South African, apart from the obvious bit of (probably misplaced) pride that I feel because of the film's South African directors, scenario and cast, the main thing is that for once a good science fiction movie is not about self-obsessed Americans.
For me, it's really nice to have another perspective on a scifi movie, much like Pitch Black, the original Riddik movie also had that fresh feeling of an orginal cast, story and theater. The second Riddik movie had that typical overblown American Hollywood smoothy crap which suffocates any good story.
District 9 is good because it's fresh and untainted with Hollywood.District 9's sequel, bought out and slaughtered by soulless Hollywood ghouls will probably be terrible.
I saw this movie last night and I quite enjoyed it. It was good, hard SF. There were aliens and space ships and exotic technology/weapons. But, despite the apartheid references and the incredible special effects, it - like good sci fi does - ultimately tells us more about ourselves.
Wilkus is a bit of an anti-hero, not in the sense that he's a reluctant hero, but he's not really a very good person yet he comes through in the end. Despite superficially losing his humanity, he becomes more human as his condition advances.
There are those that are picking up on perceived plot holes, such as why the government allowed the Nigerians so much power in the District, and why didn't the aliens use their advanced weapons to revolt - to the first point I'd say that the government generally didn't care what on earth went on in the District slums. If the Nigerians were rising to power, so be it, they had power over the aliens, but the area was pretty tightly controlled, so there was very little chance of spillover of this power into the outside world.
As for why the aliens didn't revolt - by and large they were all workers. You only see a couple of more intelligent aliens, the pilots or scientists, most of them were more like drones. In addition, the aliens wouldn't have gained much by revolting against humans - they were effectively trapped on earth and couldn't afford to fight an ultimately losing battle against the whole of earth to carve out their niche. They may have been able to win some temporary concessions, but ultimately any resistance would have been futile. They just wanted to get their shit together and get home and none of the corporations or government entities tasked with overseeing their wellbeing were in the slightest bit interested in helping them leave when there was advanced technology to plunder.
In the end however, the thing that really got to me was the handheld, documentary style camera movement. Even documentary producers these days can use simple yet effective steadycam mounts and whilst in parts it may have added a bit to the realism, overall it was very distracting and motion-sickness inducing.
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All the TV interviews were real unscripted questions asked of real South Africans on illegal immigrants in South Africa. I quote from here: To give the short a realistic feel, Blomkamp interviewed real people about the influx of immigrants into real-life Johannesburg; their frank answers to questions about Zimbabweans and other refugees were transformed into documentary-style commentary on extraterrestrials unwanted by a fearful local population. (See Alive in Joburg below.)
Everyone harping on about how this is about Apartheid is wrong. It's about modern, everyday xenophobia, alive and kicking in place like South Africa and havens of moral rectitude like the US of fucking A where just as many people hate foreigners because they're, uhm, foreign as people anywhere else do.
But no, it's set in South Africa, so it must be about Aparthied, right? I mean nothing else ever happened there, right?
More depth to the story than Starship Troopers (the movie) is setting the bar pretty low. It's pretty hard to imagine a movie with less depth than that.
I liked the movie quite a lot.
... but I think that's the only flaw in the movie.
I got the notion that
1) all the aliens were sick and because of their sickness they could not think clear enough to do anything beyond basic things.
2) they were all on drugs -> catfood
The only thing they needed the fuel for was the little ship - the little ship might have been the easiest way to operate the big ship - but in their condition and situation it took them 20 years to build it.
The kid and his father were not eating catfood, the father, somehow, had gotten well. The kid was probably born in the district and not sick at all.
Agreed - it is very weird that the fuel also acts as a virus/bioweapon
> for those of you who have seen it. Please give me a reason to see it other then the Special effects.
It pulls off the mockumentary look rather nicely, and the physical props and set (within a Soweto shanty town) provide a visceral sense of squalor. I wouldn't be surprised to find that it literally reeked, like a butcher's dumpster that hasn't been emptied all summer. In retrospect, it's true that the story plays out very conventionally, complete with the touching end. What sets it apart from - say - SST is that there are a great many scenes that feel like Michael Moore's film crew is out gathering footage that he's going to skewer the evil big corp. with in the forthcoming "Prawns On the Braai".
Plus, after an hour of witnessing the mortal fear of the protagonist, I *really* wanted a few of the characters to die a grisly death. However, I could just be easy to please. It wouldn't be the first time.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Clearly you don't know much about visual effects. Integrating effects into a shaky-cam shot is far, far harder than doing it with a locked-off or smoothly moving camera.
Yes, I know you're not supposed to pick on plot holes in "sci-fi" movies, but still... :) :)
- Why there wasn't any kind of military picket around the ship? You mean everyone got bored and then just let a few hundred tons of alien ship and technologies float around? Really? Without it being picked clean on "spare parts" by locals/guests/people who always wanted to have an alien souvenir?
- Aliens are selling weapons? But they don't use them. Because they are "workers"? But they have this huge stockpiles of those weapons. But humans can't use weapons either, but they do buy them. Eh? Or is this the souvenir part?
- When someone mutates, isn't it better to kinda isolate the subject and see where it leads instead of just immediately do the autopsy, that will show that subject died due to an autopsy? Or this is the side effect of scientists getting disinterested in alien technologies in 20 years?
*sigh*
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Perhaps that this was made anticipating most of the audience to be DVD viewers? Or perhaps it was because the editors and cinematographers do their work on small screens? The massive size of a cinema screen amplifies the jerkiness. I imagine it would look a lot more normal on a home TV screen or a computer monitor used by an editor.
... and then they built the supercollider.
This film should vault Neill Blomkamp into sci-fi stardom, on par with George Lucas and the Wachowski Brothers (of Matrix fame).
If you have to explain what someone is famous for, then they're not really famous, are they?
So the new meme is WTFM (watch the frakking movie) instead of RTFA?
Why was this modded as flamebait? It's informative!
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Saw it this past weekend, liberal use of the "F" word, even the aliens are cursing, seems they picked up some bad habits from us humans.
The "We just want to go home" scene that is shown in the commercials is not in the movie at all, must have been cut.
I liked it but it has a few holes in the back-story like:
1. How the humans seem to magically understand the alien language which is just audible clicks and pops?
2. Likewise how do the aliens magically understand the version of English spoken in South Africa?
3. Why are the aliens here? Did the have car trouble, are they refugees etc.....
4. How does a human genetically mutate after getting sprayed with what is eluded to as fuel for a spacecraft? It might have been more believable if the liquid was alien medicine or a virus.....
All in all it was mediocre, also leaving itself open for a sequel...
It's hilarious to me how many people are willing to ignore the completely unnecessary over-the-top silliness at the end of this film and still put it on a pedestal as intelligent Sci-Fi. At one point a guy in a mech suit fires a pig from a gravity gun. That's not intelligent filmmaking, that's on par with the silliness of Transformers 2 or GI Joe. Having an apartheid metaphor at the opening of the film doesn't make up for the complete lack of intelligence the final third of the film displays.
These things became clear in about twenty minutes of review. . .
1. The Director loved "Appleseed" (the comics) and borrowed heavily from both Shirow's designs and world-building atmosphere.
2. The Director is about as insightful as Shirow in other ways. Has a lot to offer in terms of certain world dynamics, like what a machine soldier might be like in the field, but on the other hand, has the social insights of a mildly brain-damaged 10 year-old.
3. Cliche, cliche, cliche. The short film, "Temp" (featuring a robot working in an office setting) was both beautifully rendered and cleverly shot, but the story was incredibly annoying. See point #2. Watch it and see for yourself. It's about on par with those brain-locked idiots who made Stargate (the movie) and Independence Day. What the hell was he thinking? That it would be cute or something? Jeezuz. You cannot mix "Anime Cute" with Shakey-Camera "Hyper-Reality" work; they occupy different aesthetic realms. The same principal is at work which makes eyeballs popping out of the head in surprise, funny in a Bugs Bunny cartoon but weirdly ghoulish when the same thing takes place with live action. --The sad part is that he probably didn't work this out even after performing the experiment of making an expensive short film.
4. Based on what others have to say about the film, evidently, Neill Blomkamp is also entirely naive when it comes to world politics and larger socio-dynamics, which is too bad. If this guy teamed up with a writer who wasn't a child, then perhaps something amazing could have happened. I think I'll wait for the download on this one. Sorry. I don't go to the movies just to see some clever computer animations and grind my teeth at thundering quantities of "stupid".
-FL
District 9 was HORRIBLE. The plot made no sense: a fleet of over a million aliens armed with insane weaponry are seriously turned into effective POWs? The weaponry works only with them, is NOT confiscated effectively from them, and it's demonstrated later in the movie that just two untrained people each with a single alien gun could take out a huge underground militarized compound. I also find it kind of hard to believe humans could see the aliens' weaponry and technology and have to balls to treat them so horribly without fear of sparking a complete human beatdown by some galactic community. So the premise sucks to start with.
BRUTAL inconsistencies plague this film. Little bullets take down a mech armor (which in a previous scene was shown to be able to stop bullets midair...go figure) while a guy with a tiny shield made from aluminum siding was deflecting them. The guy piloting the mech had, of course, INSANE weaponry, and yet used them in a retardedly conservative way while under fire from an entire platoon. "Oh gee, I'm gonna stand here and get shot at and only once I'm nearly beaten down will I use the biological homing rockets to wipe out everyone in one shot." The protagonist also didn't wipe out the band of black market criminals he stole the alien weapons from despite knowing they vowed revenge...it would have smacked less of stupid-villain-letting-the-good-guy-escape-because-he-used-a-stupid-over-elaborate-scheme if he had just blown them all to hell the moment he grabbed the crazy gun and raided their armory after they were no longer a threat. It was basically dragon ball z in sci-fi form - instead of going super alien right off the bat, the main guy plays around and gets beaten up a bit before doing anything that even makes remote sense.
And the shaky camera crap was awful. It made me sick to my stomach. When our eyes are scanning our surroundings and not tracking anything in particular, they don't move smoothly and instead jerk incrementally. Between jerks, we're temporarily blind. This is to prevent motion sickness. The camerawork in the movie mimicked a ground reporter documenting everything. Consequently, there's a lot of shaking and quick panning of the scene going on. Since we're not moving our eyes, we don't get the temporary blindness thing going on and since the camera is scanning the surroundings, it induces motion sickness. So the camerawork gave up a lot of function to follow form. Some people aren't affected so badly by it, but it's still unwise to do anything in a movie that could repel viewers without adding to its plot or impact. Creative idea, but retarded to actually USE it.
So no. This was one of the WORST movies I've seen this year.
I saw District 9 last night and I have to say I was incredibly disappointed. After reading the good reviews, I was expecting to feel something during the movie, but instead it was just another action movie. Nice special effects, but the plot and characters were just awful. The main character has absolutely no personality; he changes his behaviour from scene to scene I guess to fit what the writers thought would be best for the action.
Just watched a cam version of this film.
I have to retract some of my earlier prognostication. The film was actually pretty good. --While it was still a formula story with some glaring logic holes, the production values made it utterly fascinating. I've never seen anything quite like it before. I'd certainly pay money for this film, and probably will now that I've seen and enjoyed the stolen version.
Cheers, all!
-FL
The majority of the film is not in shaky-cam, so don't let that keep you from seeing the movie. It's there, but only as one of a number of tricks used to give the impression that you're watching documentary footage pieced together after the fact. It also uses CCTV footage, and footage from helicopters pursuing the main character, and so on. Shaky-cam is only for those scenes that were literally taken (in-movie) by someone with a camcorder, i.e. where it makes sense, which is only a small subset.
This isn't Cloverfield or Blair Witch. For one, the whole "documentary" isn't supposed to have come from one (shaky hand-held camcorder) recovered video source, but from many. For two, the movie is only a pseudo-documentary, in that only some of the scenes represent footage taken in the movie universe, while some scenes are from a traditional 3rd-person-omniscient viewpoint and filmed both steady and well.
I'm happy to report this includes the big action sequences. No jumbled-what-the-hell-is-happening action filming like in some movies *cough*Batman*cough*. It's usually brutally clear what's happening. Then afterwards the viewpoint will switch to a security cam, or a heli-cam, and you see what everyone on the outside got to see. It was the most effective use of the style I've seen, and definitely where faux-documentary-style movies should go.
Definitely worth seeing in the theater. The special effects were great, and yeah he lets you get a good look at them. :)
Oh, and the message -- it isn't subtle, it's about racism and refugees and xenophobia, but it does anything but keep the movie from being entertaining. I'm not even sure "message" is the right word, more like "subtext". It's just a fact that bigotry and hate lead to shitty things happening, just like it's a fact that refugee slums are shitty. This forms the backdrop to the movie, but it's not like the hero comes to some grand epiphany that only love and respect can lead to peace between aliens and humans or something. The characters and plot develop naturally.
The enemies of Democracy are
Don't worry. I won't spoil it. Watching it will take care of that.
Warning to Sci-Fi fans. Don't bother. This is really a poorly directed, slow moving Apartheid documentary, -black people + aliens. the first 1 1/2 hours of that movie should have been the first 1/2 hour. the last 1/2 ...hour should have been the second 1/2 hour. then they could have filled the last hour of that movie with the cool things that they alluded to happening right at the end.
Meanders around never going anywhere, then ending abruptly leaving you wandering where the rest of the movie went.
I would actually like to see District 6, the Apartheid documentary this is based on.
if you see District 9, remember that the nasty things people were saying about those aliens, were from actual interviews where South Africans were talking about people. and those slums you see, are the real ones people actually lived in.
Apartheid was a horror that shouldn't be forgotten. but this movie is one that should.
More like the Evil United Nations, if you get the "slight nudge" of the acronym and the all-white "peacekeeper" vehicles and choppers.
Sorry, but the MNU was much closer to a Blackwater, Wackenhut, or Halliburton than a UN analog. A multinational, for-profit corporation, specializing in military contracting and private security services.
The UN had it's own representation in the film, in the ineffectual "human rights observers" from the "UIO", who stood by while the aliens were forced to sign their eviction notices at gunpoint.
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