District 9 :.: Who's seen it?
POSTED BY: cljohnston108
UPDATED: Thursday, February 18, 2010 01:44
VIEWED: 7182
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Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
I see folks talking about "obvious" flaws and plot holes, but I really don't see it. All the science that "didn't work" was alien tech, so how can you judge? It certainly had its own logic and its own internal consistency. But in a lot of ways the sci-fi was just a disguise for a film that manages to touch on most of the geopolitical evils of our day. I loved how the despicable Blackwater stand-in was presented as a quasi-humanitarian organization with uniforms reminiscent of UN Peace Keepers. Or how the aliens' love for catfood recalls the morbid news stories of the elderly poor eating pet food that were so popular back in the 80's.
I agree with you. I didn't really think the science of this film was all that important and really didn't find myself focusing on it during the movie. With the cat food, when
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Wikus was lost in District 9 and had to find food, he ate cat food. To me this meant that the general population misunderstood the Prawns. The Prawns didn't love cat food like everyone thought. That was the only food they good get.
One thing I'm surprised no one has really talked about was
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the abortion scene.
I was completely shocked at this. I was appalled and ashamed at the ease in which my fellows humans did this.
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*** Possible spoilers ***
I thought overall it was ok.
Acting/casting was excellent, Sharlto Copley deserves a lot of the credit for any positive reveiws - he was in almost every frame it seemed - if you didn't like his performance chances are you didn't like the movie.
I can do without any of the morality lessons thank you - I see that every day and I get it already. I want my scifi escapist and not to be a rehash of what's wrong with contemporary earth. Seriously, what's the point? Did Star Trek morality lessons ever change anyone's mind?
The Nigerian thugs were a bit cliched.
The documentary style feels over used and contrived. It actually felt comical (as in funny bad) at first.
The idea of knocking on a million+ doors to serve eviction notices...
The matching of cg lighting to live scene lighting was very impressive to my eye. The mothership above the city as well as the prawns interacting with humans - all well done.
I liked it, I'm glad I saw it, and I'm looking forward to future projects by this director Neill Blomkamp, but I surprised by the level of acclaim it seems to be getting. I wonder if it would be different if Jackson wasn't attached to it.
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If you've gotten this far into the thread, you should be expecting spoilers by now. If you aren't expecting them, consider yourself warned of them in this post. If you haven't seen the film, you may want to skip this.
Yes, the lander reminded me a lot of a Firefly, around the engines 
Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
All the science that "didn't work" was alien tech, so how can you judge?
Alien tech it might be, but there are certain laws of physics to be considered. I mean, I enjoyed the movie well enough, but I spent a good portion of it wondering how the ship could just hover there if it was broken. "Oh, the ship doesn't function, they can't fly back home or indeed anywhere, but despite not being capable of moving or opening for lack of some sort of transport pod, this huge ship is perfectly capable of hovering in the air over District Nine, impervious to gravity for twenty some-odd years." I'm sorry if that sounds a bit scornful, but it took me out of the movie a lot, even moreso when I found out that the whole problem was that the lander transport pod thing was missing. That's it? Really? Talk about poor design. Alien tech or no, I thought that didn't work very well on a science level. And all of that aside from the fairly main plot point that rocket fuel could somehow change the genetic structure of a human being. Rocket fuel. Rocket fuel not being injected, but with a bit splattered on the skin and quickly mopped up. This can turn a human into an alien. Successfully. Really? You think that science 'works,' because it's 'alien technology?' Alien technology, alien rocket fuel, which has presumably never encountered humans before, but can perfectly alter their genetic structure? I found that very hard to swallow. I know it's all secondary to the actual content and obvious commentary of the film, but no, the science didn't work. There's only so far my suspension of disbelief can get on simply, 'alien.'
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HERE BE MAJOR SPOILERS! YE'VE BEEN WARNED!
Yikes, PhoenixRose. Wull, at the risk of bringing your considerable ire down upon me as well as the movie, I think you're kinda not using your imagination here, and refusing to accept some pretty basic conventions of alien technology. You can't expect Einsteinian physics from alien spacecraft, considering what we've been given to understand about "UFO's" over the years. Their ships would obviously have a relationship to gravity that we cannot fathom. There have been uncounted sci-fi books that tried to account for the gravity thing--why is it so hard to imagine that an alien spacecraft "at rest" would remain somehow "outside" the effects of gravity when you have no idea how it could do such a thing in the first place?
Furthermore, it seemed to me that the aliens they found onboard were assumed to be some kind of uneducated labor force. Perhaps the thing was just "in neutral" or "park" and no one knew where the gear shift nob was and the aliens weren't telling. Seems to me that if all alien tech was "dead" in any but alien hands, the humans would never have figured out anything about any of it and would be stuck making assumptions.
And jeez, obviously the black liquid was not just "rocket fuel." It had properties that went far beyond fueling spacecraft. Why should that be so out of bounds? I don't think it was rocket fuel, anyway. Yes, the child called it "fuel," but that was a translation of his alien click language. We sometimes call electricity "juice" but that doesn't mean it comes from a fruit.
I thought it was far more special than that--obviously it was. The humans in the movie understand that only aliens can manipulated alien tech, so they presume that it has "something to do with alien DNA" and get busy with the biological experiments. They never had any success with that line of thinking did they? Maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe this liquid makes anything it touches more like the aliens--maybe it is a biological agent that functions according to some sort of psychic magnetism that brings the physical structure of whatever it touches more into harmony with the alien consciousness. Yeah, sure, this is woowoo stuff, but nothing more woowoo than Robert Heinlein might dream up.
The principle that such a substance might reveal is that our minds, our identities, in part at least, determine our physical natures. We are humans and look and function as humans because we think we are humans at the most basic level--our identities are fixed at the core of our being and that's what determines our morphology. So this alien liquid, which is possibly "alive" or "conscious" or "sentient" in some way, connects with the core of Wikus' identity and starts to make him more alien. And his body begins to show this profound shift in his identity. Interestingly the most profound change happens in his hand and arm where he was wounded. It's as if the template that his body was using to heal his arm had been altered and he was "healing" into an alien form.
It's nothing too earth-shattering, it's just Kantian--the idea that consciousness precedes essence, "proven" in the movie by the alien "technology." The more advanced alien technology in the movie was shown to be thought activated--the command module, the mech--and it seems reasonable to me that the liquid may be a conduit. Its effect on the alien technology was to make it more like an extension of the alien's mind/body, so to speak; it's effect on the human body was to make the human an extension of the alien's mind/body as well. Kinda puts a whole new spin on "identity politics," don'it?
HKCavalier
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Like I wrote, this is a great first film. You gotta remember this guy has NEVER directed a feature film before. Peter Jackson had directed 7 films before LOtR.
Does it deserve all the critical acclaim? IMHO, not really, but in the context of what most of the sci-fi that is being handed out these days who can blame them for being a little excited? Compare it to GI Joe that cost 5 times as much?
Your thoughts?
BTW You won't see me pull any punches on Avatar though. $300 million and more than 20 films under his belt. It had better live up to the hype.
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Saw the movie. Liked it. There were some obvious ( to me ) plot holes, but over all, a fun, action packed summer thriller.
I still liked MOON, more, however. I felt that story worked better, over all.
The camera work wasn't in the least bit a problem for me, and I wish Cloverfield had incorporated some of that style. Having 1st hand video shots for 100% of the movie, for 2 hrs on the big screen, is a bit much. The various cut aways from close to wide area shots made viewing much more appealing.
My 2 cents.
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it´s fantastic, that´s all I can say.. It makes Michael Bay look like a total idiot
"Summer Glau can simply walk into Mordor.."
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Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
The camera work wasn't in the least bit a problem for me, and I wish Cloverfield had incorporated some of that style. Having 1st hand video shots for 100% of the movie, for 2 hrs on the big screen, is a bit much.
Quarantine did the whole handheld camera technique for the whole movie and I thought it worked very well for that movie. It was done much better than Cloverfield and actually made sense for the movie.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Mangolo:
Like I wrote, this is a great first film. You gotta remember this guy has NEVER directed a feature film before. Peter Jackson had directed 7 films before LOtR.
Does it deserve all the critical acclaim? IMHO, not really, but in the context of what most of the sci-fi that is being handed out these days who can blame them for being a little excited? Compare it to GI Joe that cost 5 times as much?
Your thoughts?
BTW You won't see me pull any punches on Avatar though. $300 million and more than 20 films under his belt. It had better live up to the hype.
Other than Star Trek and Transformers, can you name 5 better films this summer?
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In order:
In the Loop
Moon
The Hurt Locker
Star Trek
Food, Inc.
Up
District 9
Transformers would be at the bottom of my list next to GI Joe
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