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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."
You forgot Moon.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Go ahead and cross off the Time Traveler's Wife from that list, its not really Sci-fi and its been getting low to mid range review scores anyway.
The Surrogates does seem kinda cool though, looking forward to see how that one does.
Don't forget James Cameron's Avatar, I think that is due out in December.
Here ya go.
Alien Nation was a social comment on racial tension in the USA, while District 9 is based on Apartheid, but the similarities are definitely there.
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Shakycam can add some flavor/character to a movie. But I think they could do that much with some brief snippets of shakycam, rather than tens of minutes or an entire movie of it.
Even for "documentary style" - kids playing in the front yard while dad walks around with the cam is one thing. But many of the shaky cam scenes would involve a tripod even in a documentary.
In other words, when was the last time you felt nauseous watching an ACTUAL documentary?
(ok so we don't watch a lot of documentaries on the big screen, but I think it still holds true)
Firefly was well known for use of lens flares and shaky cam, particularly in the outer space scenes, to make the effects much more realistic. They were the first to bring it back, but they did it on purpose. Google "shaky cam firely" and see for yourself.
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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.
I suspect you're kidding, but to address that: MPEG 1 and MPEG 2 both compress similar sequencies of macroblock motion vectors such that there isn't a lot of difference between two frames at different offsets and two frames at the same offset in terms of how easily they're compressed. Camera movement certainly requires more bytes to encode, but not nearly as much as you might think. Further, both variants of MPEG 4 (ASP and AVC - aka H.264) include Global Motion Compensation, allowing frames that are almost identical save for camera movement to be compressed almost as if there's no movement at all. I suspect most pirates use ASP and AVC. About the only codecs I can think of for whom camera wobble would be an issue date back to the early days of compression: H.120, Amiga ANIM, or at the other end of the scale HD-MAC. So, no, cinematographers are not shaking the camera to prevent the movies they're working on from being distributed over the Internet. Cinematographers introduce what might be termed film artifacts (wobble, grain, that kind of thing) to build moods in the mind of viewers. Wobble in this case makes sense because they're trying to give the movie a documentary feel. Without watching it I can't tell if it's bad or not. Man on Fire made me feel physically nauseas. On the other hand, I never had a problem with the Bourne movies. You can do wobble so it doesn't hurt the audience, it depends on the skills of those making the movie.
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Dear Mods,
Before giving someone a Score:5 for BS, please confirm the facts,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Stewart
There is not a shred of evidence to support that Sophia Stewart penned the Matrix or Terminator. In fact, the description of what was submitted was far from a complete movie. There was no case that was won and no evidence supported.
In fact, this holds as much credibility as a dossier used by the Bush/Blair/Howard govt as hardened evidence.
AC
------- THIS POST CONTAIN MAJOR SPOILERS -----------
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.
A protaganist and a "Hero" are not the same thing. Hollywood forgets this, and in turn, many moviegoers forget this. I'm sorry you had a hard time rooting for an ignorant, racist, cowardly protagonist, but that was the point of the character.
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.
This is a very Amero-centric point of view. Just because something like this is not plausible in the United States, does not make it far-fetched. The situation with the Nigerian warlord happens all the time in less wealthy or stable countries.
The father in law was evil for no apparent reason, and his wife suddenly believes Wilkus without explanation why?
You complain about the depth of the main character than complain about the one-sidedness of a minor character with minimal screentime? We don't see enough of the father to know much about him, aside from his greed. As for his wife, that's called a romantic subplot...she chose to love her husband regardless of the lies around her.
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?
Yes, I happen to think we did. The nails being lost did exactly what it was supposed to: sent a shiver up your spine. I prefer a movie that doesn't shy away from the dirty details of it's events. It potrayed the messy and tragic reality of Wilkus's condition.
why weren't the aliens using the weanpos to revolt instead of selling them to the Nigerians?
Explained directly in the plot. Almost all the aliens were worker drones with little free will of their own, bred to follow orders. They were very good at building things, but only rarely did any have the drive and wit to form complex plans (Christopher). I have to question if we watched the same film.
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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.
It is precisely the main human protagonist's flaws that make him interesting and give meaning to his redemptive acts near the end of the movie.
Dangerous to whom? District-9 was completely sealed off and by well-armed corporate mercenaries, so the Nigerians were not much of a threat to the citizen of Johannesburg. And as for being dangerous to the "prawns", well, it's pretty clear the powers-that-be didn't really give a shit about them.
Just because a facet of someone's personality (which one would likely normally keep a secret) comes to the surface later in a story does not mean there's no apparent reason for it. Besides, the reason for the father-in-law's action was apparent: greed (and the fact that he didn't much care for his son-in-law).
The aliens did not stage a revolt using their superior technology because they were stupid drones who lacked initiative. This was all explicitly stated near the beginning of the movie, and repeatedly demonstrated throughout it (e.g. trading the mech-suit for a hundred cans of cat food).
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it's now widely known that the first movie's plot was actually stolen from another author, Sophia Stewart
A quick look on the net bears another story, Snopes is a good place to start.
Other than that, you are spot on.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
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
IO9 has an interview with Neill Blomkamp giving a lot of the back story explaining #1, #2. See http://io9.com/5331799/district-9s-director-tells-us-all-about-his-alien-back-story
especially don't go telling someone else their opinion isn't valid because they haven't seen it. Seeing movies isn't free, so people have to make their buying decisions based upon things other than actually viewing the movie.
That was exactly my whole point. If you want to watch movies based on the opinions of people who haven't seen them, you're welcome too. You can also read books based on reviews by people who haven't read them, go to restaurants based on reviews by people who haven't eaten there etc. It does cost money to buy books and eat out as well so therefore you shouldn't listen to people who don't care enough to actually pay to try something when you can get untested opinions for free that are just as "worthy".
For everyone who is raving about Moon:
It was a very limited release
It opened in 8 theaters, peaked at ~250 and is currently showing at 100 theaters.
If you didn't live next to a few major cities, you can't and won't see it.
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o0t!
I'm not a hard scifi nazi like some people; I enjoyed me some District 9. But the biggest plot hole in the movie is the fuel causing genetic mutation. That's just ridiculous. But it was completely necessary to the plot as written. And, I loved the ending :)
Why does everyone think that canister was fuel? I don't remember if they ever mentioned it was fuel. Was it mentioned? Anyway the mothership moved without it, the problem was that component was damaged in the small ship. We don't know their history, technology, hierarchy. Actually we know nothing about them. The liquid could have been something biological (virus, bacteria, queen's blood, ... ) which would explain the mutation of the guy. That canister thing could have been anything. It could have been a computer component (fuse, circuit, gelpack ala ST:voyager) that transmits data/energy/something using the liquid. The ship's "key" that uses the bio-liquid inside to grant permission to use it. There are lots of explanations, don't know why everyone is fixated on "fuel". Maybe they said it and I forgot but I really dont remember it.
What makes you say that it's not scifi? The fact that it's a chick flick, too, doesn't make it not science fiction
Probably related to the fact that the writer says that she "never thought of it as science fiction, even though it has a science-fiction premise" (source).
(it's now widely known that the first movie's plot was actually stolen from another author, Sophia Stewart)
Other people have corrected you on this, but it's worth pointing out the limits of the similarities between the Matrix and Stewart's story:
- It's set following an apocalyptic war
- It featured a character who was subject to a prophecy that he would right all the wrongs in the world
- This character was repeatedly called "the One"
- It portrays black people positively (she actually called this out as a similarity, and tried to convince us all that no white script author would do this)
- It has a black character known as "the Oracle" who makes prophecies
And, err, that's just about it. The actual plot, it appears, is somewhat different (although the self-published book is apparently no longer available to buy, so it's hard to be certain of this).
It also features time travel and a character sent to protect "the One"'s mother from some kind of attack or other before he is born, leading her to also accuse The Terminator of being ripped off from her story. Obviously this is just as much total bullshit as the Matrix claim, particularly seeing as most of the elements that she claims were ripped of from her were actually ripped of from a Harlan Ellison TV script, written and produced nearly 20 years before Stewart wrote her book.
The ONLY negative I have towards the movie is that the lead character drops the F-Bomb well over 200 times throughout the course of the movie. The last 20 minutes was a constant barrage of "Fuck...fuuuuck! Oh Shit, oh shit, Ahhh! FUCK!" It got to the point where it was almost laughable for how many times he cursed and made me question the intelligence of the lead character.
I think that is part of what they were after. The lead character wasn't supposed to be an all-american, square-jawed ridgy-didge action hero. He's a middle-management screw-up who leads a boring life, is bigoted against the aliens, is quite happy to treat them as less than human and then he has the events of the movie thrust upon him. He's an unwilling participant in the whole affair, and he's quite typical South African. The swearing wasn't over the top, I hardly noticed it as it fitted in quite well with the rest of the plot.
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