THIS IS A FUCKING AWESOME MOVIE… but I knew that before I saw it. I have said, since my junior year in some screenwriting classes, that Sci-fi is perfect way of dealing with present day issues. For instance, Battlestar Galactica had human suicide bombers blowing up Cylons and bingo, critics hailed it as greatest TV series ever! So it looks like someone here took their old “socially relevant” Anti-Apartheid screenplay set in Soweto and turned it into a cool movie that is action packed and full of ideas.
Here is fresh idea #1: First contact with the Alien race is not a glorious white lighted, 3rd close encounter where all the abducted
children come home again. Instead the aliens are a starving race of bug-like things that eat tires, are addicted to cat food and are
generally considered a pain in the ass.
Fresh idea #2: The aliens don’t do their research when they decide to hover over Johannesburg, South Africa, a town with a spectacular history of dealing with those who are ‘different’ than themselves. For you kids who never went to college in the glorious late 80’s, we drank AND made a difference with a boycott of that country to stop its oppression of black people or something like that. I just remember that I would not buy my beer from a Shell Gas Station, and because of that Nelson Mandela was elected.
So 20 years after they arrive, racism and bigotry against these aliens abound and they are relocated to a Shanty town called District 9. All of this you learn in the first THREE minutes of the movie. From there things take off. And for once, I am not going to be Mr. Spoiler! You just have to see it.
Peter Jackson, is the only name on the credits that anyone recognizes. Other involved were working on the HALO movie with Mr. Jackson that thankfully died on the vine and so he brought this to the table as a make-work project. I am sure that everyone wanted to stay close to Jackson in case something else ramped up, so director Neil Blomkamp and all the pre production staff took a pay cut, and deliverer way above their pay scale. Neil’s only other real credit before this was as lead 3D animator for “3000 miles to Graceland” where I can only assume it was his job to paint some talent onto Kevin Costner.
Neil’s shoots the movie in a documentary style that blends into a narrative fairly seamlessly, adding security camera footage to move the story forward at a healthy clip. Being from South Africa himself, he captures the mundane systemic racism that these Aliens experience, which, as I recall, was the main argument for why it couldn’t change, the entrenchment of the entire culture. Thus, the 80’s boycott of the entire culture, including rock stars that weren’t going to “play Sun City”
“District 9” is a movie where you can finally use your useless degree in international studies, poli sci or even worse, liberal arts, that you wasted 4 years of getting in college instead of getting an MBA, (and then bankrupting America and still collecting a bailout bonus on the backend… suckers) Now you can feel free, at every party from now till the oscars, to go on and on about how “all political will is a mix of moral ambiguity and fascism” or “that it is inherently myopic to distribute relief aid to third world countries unilaterally instead of multi
linearly.” Please use at least two examples from this movie to back up your thesis so people will know what the hell you are talking about. And remember to footnote your sources.
—Dean Haglund
