District 9 - Review, Discuss, Commentary ***SPOILERS*** possible

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Captain Craig, Aug 14, 2009.

?

District 9 - Your grade

Poll closed Dec 12, 2009.
  1. Excellent

    90 vote(s)
    60.8%
  2. Above Average

    39 vote(s)
    26.4%
  3. Average

    11 vote(s)
    7.4%
  4. Below Average

    5 vote(s)
    3.4%
  5. Poor

    3 vote(s)
    2.0%
  1. Yoda

    Yoda Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 13, 2000
    Location:
    San Diego
    I thought the movie kicked a lot of ass. I'm a sucker for faux documentary shaky cam, so that didn't bother me one bit.

    As for the Apartheid thing. Oh for Christ's sake who cares? I avoided spoilers for this movie pretty well, so I didn't even know going in that it was set in South Africa. I think this is just the case of people having preconceptions about what a movie is. You knew it was in South Africa, you knew it had allegorical elements in regard to Apartheid, and you manufactured an image of what the movie was that wasn't accurate.

    Boo hoo!

    Obviously the aliens appeared during the Apartheid era, which is only seen briefly for the purposes of giving background on the ALIENS, WHO WERE THE FOCUS OF THE DAMN MOVIE, and the rest of the movie takes place in the near future, where presumably Apartheid had ended in much the same way as it did in our reality. The allegory is for us to pick up on our own, not to be beaten into our heads with a sledgehammer. To the characters in the movie the alien issue isn't as obvious a parallel to apartheid because the aliens are SCARY SPACE INSECTS. If you had someone in the film say "this is just like how black people were treated in this country and it's wrong", it would be eye-roll inducing and lame.

    The movie felt somewhat inspired by Half-Life 2 and maybe video games in general. The weapons were cool, in a 'video game meets reality' kind of way that I hadn't really seen before. What with the lightning guns exploding people, gravity gun knockoffs, etc.. I loved the whole look and feel of the film from top to bottom. The action sequences were all pretty cool, and for the 30 million budget they did a fantastic job.

    What was the budget on that piece of shit GI Joe? The effects work in this was far more effective. Whereas District 9 at times 'felt' like a video game, GI Joe just 'looked' like a video game.

    I do have some issues with some of the story logic, but I guess they left the alien stuff vague enough to where the story logic isn't bad enough for me to feel insulted. I do wonder why they had to scavenge their own technology for 20 years on planet Earth where presumably they could've collected their tech and filled up their little magic galactic warp power canister much more quickly on their ship. Given the level of oppression they faced and the weapons technology at their disposal I would've thought they could've mounted an effective resistance. I know they said that they were 'stupid worker bee prawns' or whatever, it just seemed a little off. Also, I wouldn't have minded some explanation on how they had learned each others' languages well enough to communicate, but watchagonnado?

    As for having 'cliched plot elements', I'd hate to break it to you, but truly original plots are very few and far between. It's all in the execution, and I thought District 9 executed exceedingly well. I'd love to see where they'd go with a District 10, three years from now. Bring on the retaliatory alien invasion baby!
     
  2. chrisspringob

    chrisspringob Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2003
    Location:
    North Ryde, NSW
    I forget if this was mentioned explicitly, but the impression I got was that the aliens were forced to disown any use of their weapons. Yes, they could try to resist, but the humans would then end up just killing them all. While their weapons were powerful, they didn't seem to be nearly powerful enough to defend them against the combined military power of the whole world, which is what it come to if there was a showdown. The humans could just carpet bomb them from the air, and there's little that they'd be able to do to defend themselves.
     
  3. Blue_Trek

    Blue_Trek Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Mar 7, 2009
  4. USS Mariner

    USS Mariner Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 11, 2004
    Location:
    Homestate of Matt Jefferies
    You fail at life.
     
  5. USS Mariner

    USS Mariner Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 11, 2004
    Location:
    Homestate of Matt Jefferies
    I was immensely impressed with the documentary filming sequences because cameramen aren't supposed to be shit at their job, which may be why you didn't see much difference between the "real-time" and documentary segments.

    This is the main problem with most attempts at shakeycam filming: professional cameramen don't shake that much, even when running or moving. Hell, even my shitty attempts at filming aren't nearly as bad as some of the groan-inducing segments on BSG, partly because of the cameras themselves, which self-adjust continuously and are very forgiving of that kind of filming style.

    If the segments still seem confusing to you, try to remember that the documentary segments almost always have the MNU timestamp and/or present the name and occupation of the person talking.
     
  6. T'Baio

    T'Baio Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2001
    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    Umm...don't you think that is addressing apartheid? Or should they have someone say "apartheid" and wink at the screen just so you know they're referencing it?
     
  7. Blueicus

    Blueicus Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Oct 8, 2005
    Location:
    Torontoish, Canada
    It's not a real movie criticism thread until people simultaneously complain about how the movie goes too far and doesn't go far enough. "Where's the Apartheid? Why are the black people always subordinate?"

     
  8. Gatekeeper

    Gatekeeper Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Dec 9, 2001
    Location:
    United States of America
    Precisely. The opening scenes in the movie are set in 1982. The actual movie, however, appears to be set in 2010 — at least according to the timestamps on the "documentary" portions of the film.

    Any number of things could have changed WRT apartheid during that 28-year timeframe. After all, from 1982 onward, this *isn't* our timeline anymore ... it's a parallel reality to our own.

    I enjoyed the movie very much. I do believe it's set up a sequel, though, in that "I'll return in three years" mojo it had going toward the end.

    Gatekeeper
     
  9. davejames

    davejames Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2001
    Location:
    Sac, Ca
    Yeah the shakycam does get a bit exaggerated at times, but it's mostly just done for effect.

    I mean, I don't think we were meant to assume that there were LITERALLY people with video cameras documenting every intimate conversation in every room of the Galactica (and on the Cylon basestars for that matter). lol

    It was just something done to make the scenes feel less stagnant and more "real," and I thought it was pretty effective.
     
  10. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jul 16, 2001
    Location:
    Trekker4747
    It's entirely possible that apartheid never happened in this universe. I mean it is a totally different universe than our own so things are likely to be different.

    Apartheid was being aluded to here it doesn't matter how/when/why it happened in this universe. It's irrelevant to the story becuase in this story the aliens are being treated as the blacks were in South Africa. That's what an alegory is. You remove the thing you want to talk about and insert something to make the story more interesting/engaging for audiences.

    Where are the blacks in this alegory to apartheid? They're the ALIENS!
     
  11. Thrall

    Thrall Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Jun 12, 2007
    Location:
    A Quesada Free Zone.
    Meh.

    I liked it better the first time when it was called Alien Nation.

    The trailer looked like a very preachy, big budget, Outer Limits episode. And the movie was basically just that. My god this movie was preachy. I don't mind messages in films. Far from it actually. But they just beat you over the head non-stop for two hours about how "RACISM IS TEH BAD!!", the most cliched thing to be preachy about. Well no fucking shit it's bad. Gene Roddenberry was able to tell us in 45 minutes what took you 2 hours to do. And he had hot alien strippers. The only way this director could lack subtlety any more then he already does is if he was on screen screaming at the audience "THIS IS SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT APARTHEID!!".

    The way it would always shift between a real movie and a documentary was annoying. Make up your frickin' mind already.

    Content wise, it's everything a NuBSG fan would love. All humans being evil(or as Ron Moore calls it "flawed") and doing evil things to the poor innocent aliens because humans are so evil in their evil ways because they're evil. Evil. Every human should have just had a big, black mustache they can twirl. That's how one-dimensional all the humans are. Ok, the main character isn't totally evil. He's a pussy as well. Eventually he takes the side of the Angels, but it's just to save his own ass and because the Alien DNA is making him good and pushing all the evil human DNA out.

    I did like the action scenes. They were intense and ultra-violent and the shoot out at the end was fucking awesome. Too bad the movie couldn't have been just that.

    If you're into those "humanity sucks" messages, you'll love this movie. Personally I'm a big fan of the species that invented The Reverse Cowgirl.
     
  12. melancholymecha

    melancholymecha Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Aug 21, 2002
    loved the movie!

    no wait- I fookin' loved the movie! :lol:



    ok seriously great film, though I didnt really thinlk it was all that deep or complex (for one I agree that the military guys were pretty one dimensionally eeeevil) & at the end it just kinda became an all-out action sci-fi film, but a damn good one! Copley was fantastic, I really felt for him & just loved when he got into the mecha & started kicking ass! :cool:

    so was that really Wikus at the end? poor dude.
     
  13. The Boy Who Cried Worf

    The Boy Who Cried Worf Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 12, 2008
    Well I already knew that, but it doesn't change the fact that this movie sucks.
     
  14. The Sneeze Police

    The Sneeze Police Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Mar 9, 2005
    Location:
    East Coast of the US
    I cant say whether it was a good movie or not, but I can't say I enjoyed it. Maybe it was a bit modern for my taste.

    One thing I did like was Christopher's characterization. He was the most humane character in the movie.
     
  15. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jul 16, 2001
    Location:
    Trekker4747
    I'm very marveled, and full of humor, that last week's big-budget mega blockbuster of a movie, GI Joe, which cost 100+ million dollars to make had special effects you'd see in prime-time TV while this little movie, made on a fraction of the budget GI Joe had, has jaw-droppingly realistic looking SFX. The shots of the spaceship were so realistic looking you'd think they built a giant space ship out of foam and parked it over the city.
     
  16. Greylock Crescent

    Greylock Crescent Adventurer Admiral

    Joined:
    Jun 3, 2009
    Location:
    Walking The Path
    ^ I agree completely. My objections to certain omission from the film notwithstanding, D9, along with Moon, should serve as a wake-up call that solid, compelling sci-fi doesn't *have* to have bloated budgets.
     
  17. Agent Richard07

    Agent Richard07 Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jun 20, 2001
    District 9 was #1 this weekend and brought in $37 million.
     
  18. Mr Light

    Mr Light Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Dec 7, 1999
    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    I just saw it today and I really liked it. I can't believe it only cost 30 million because it looks like 100 million! Had a real Children of Men feel to it. The only thing I felt was wonky was the ship's fuel makes a human turn into a prawn. Why is that? Because they use tech that runs on their biology?
     
  19. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jul 16, 2001
    Location:
    Trekker4747
    Christopher was really well done as a character as was his relationship with the main guy.
     
  20. Agent Richard07

    Agent Richard07 Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jun 20, 2001
    Yeah, pretty much.