Anticipate Neill Blomkamp's District 9

From the South African director who was to direct the Halo movie. That fell apart and now, with Peter Jackson's help, has been given a decent budget to turn his short film, Alive in Joburg, into a feature.

"An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth suddenly find a kindred spirit in a government agent that is exposed to their biotechnology. Hits theaters August 14th, 2009."

Alive in Joburg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxmiF5WCF1g

this looks cool

would it kill filmmakers to design a non-humanoid alien for once tho

ya looks cool imo

i am super amped about this

the site is pretty dope

http://d-9.com/

digging this (tentative)

super amped co-sign

http://mnuspreadslies.com/

really excited about seeing this

stoked

psyched

Altho less psyched after seeing second trailer. First really looked like they were doing something different, more of a think piece perhaps, but now it looks more like yer usual conspiracy thriller robot alien explosions fest.

I'm just excited about a new sc-fi flick that isn't a reboot of a previous franchise or a comic book or video game or toy line or whatever.

though slocki 100% otm about this:

would it kill filmmakers to design a non-humanoid alien for once tho

tbf a "think piece" approach seems way worse than just str8 sci fi action like no1 needs to be bludgeoned with real world parallels omg

also i think the robots look dooope

it looks kind of like an reverse version of V, which is cool

i didn't really mean just playing on the obvious "it's apartheid, stupid" parallels. just something a bit more subtle - sci-fi action flicks are ten a penny. but hey maybe they just loaded the trailer with all the whizz-bang stuff. xp.

tbf a "think piece" approach seems way worse than just str8 sci fi action like no1 needs to be bludgeoned with real world parallels omg

^^^ this

speaking of "think piece", has anybody seen MOON?

though slocki 100% otm about this:

would it kill filmmakers to design a non-humanoid alien for once tho

― Attack Attack! and Philosophy (latebloomer), Wednesday, July 22, 2009 3:02 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

knew you'd have my back on this

moon sucks kinda

tbf a "think piece" approach seems way worse than just str8 sci fi action like no1 needs to be bludgeoned with real world parallels omg

also i think the robots look dooope

― (Σx)² (Lamp), Wednesday, July 22, 2009 3:04 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dunno, i kinda don't mind really obvious real-world parallels if they're not coy about it. maybe it's a brechtian scifi movie

or maybe im just sick to death of bullshit like transformers & terminator salvation and am happy that the filmmakers are even thinking about that shit beyond designing goldtoothed racist minstrelbots

i anticipate a lot of handheld camera. maybe it will be almost as good as children of men.

MOON starring Sam Rockwell, dir. Duncan Jones (aka Zowie Bowie, son of David)

ya im still not tired of high-concept conceit done low-budget style

i'm seeing moon on monday and i'm excited.

i thought peter jackson was directing district 9, but oh well, still looks cool.

I loved Moon!

Looking forward to this too.

petey jack is just producing but his name is bigger in the advertisements lol

or maybe im just sick to death of bullshit like transformers & terminator salvation and am happy that the filmmakers are even thinking about that shit beyond designing goldtoothed racist minstrelbots

naw i get u but the whole bsg DUCY shit~~~ i think the real problem w/ those movies is basic retarded characters not a lack of political awareness?

the problem with those movies is retarded everyone

all scifi is about today anyway, i really dont mind if ppl use it to make politically inflected shit, if it's done well. same with any genre.

it looks kind of like an reverse version of V, which is cool

Kinda reminded me of Alien Nation

I've been thinking that the whole time!

oh fyi goldtoothed racist minstrelbots is my fave guided by voices song a+ mention bro

haha

oh yeah forgot about Alien Nation

http://m.blog.hu/ko/kobli/image/aliennation.jpg

"Why are you humanoid again?"

o man james caan

probably not going to see this unless one of the aliens has a gold tooth and cant read

haha

--- SPOILER !!! --

its really more of a gold tentacle

this was pretty good! i had some problems (always bugs me when fake-docs break form shamelessly) but... i have to say... it worked for me. good alien stuff, they made it seemed believably... othered. latebloomer gonna like this.

a friend of mine did some of the early work on the creatures; she said it was a difficult project because the director is apparently quite an asshole and the deadlines were insane

really excited for this

there's a lot of cool smart details. and a lot of good icky stuff!

link to your review when it goes up

i'm actually interviewing the director on monday... will def link tho

i will ask him if he's quite an asshole

curious about this - hope its better than Alien Nation, to say the least

lol plz do, slocki!

this does look really good, be interested to read yr full review

would it kill filmmakers to design a non-humanoid alien for once tho

― gabb 'bag (s1ocki), Tuesday, June 23, 2009 3:39 PM

i kno srsly look @ this shit (i have a copy of this somewhere btw ^.^)

http://www.workman.com/is/pgrow/products/covers/9780894803246.jpg

http://www.seanmichaelragan.com/img/Barlowes_Elder_Thing.jpg

another out of work actor

can't wait for proper lovecraft movie

isn't there talks about some director taking on 'at the mountains of madness'

Director Guillermo del Toro has written a screenplay based on Lovecraft's story, but in 2006 had trouble getting Warner Bros. to finance the project. Wrote Del Toro, "The studio is very nervous about the cost and it not having a love story or a happy ending, but it's impossible to do either in the Lovecraft universe."[17]

fuck that they should do "the shadow over innsmouth"

they'd probably make a completely wack cgi shoggoth all looking like the dust cloud monster out of the mummy ii

latebloomer gonna like this.

:) :) :)

I'm stoked, me and my buddy are going Saturday.

can't wait for proper lovecraft movie

― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, August 12, 2009 4:31 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

my interview with the director fell thru (his plane had to land somewhere weird in an emergency... somewhere lovecraftian?) so review it is.

just keeping u guys updated

Am seeing this in 22 hours, am very looking forward to it.

Aliens = Mexicans, Earthlings = Americans?

if u want

it also helps to remember it's set in south africa

fuck that they should do "the shadow over innsmouth"

― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, August 12, 2009 12:47 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/cthulhu/

Armond White no likey! http://www.nypress.com/article-20206-from-mothership-to-bullship.html

"Fools will accept District 9 for fantasy, yet its use of parable and symbolism also evoke the almost total misunderstanding that surrounds the circumstance of racial confusion and frustration recently seen when Harvard University tycoon Henry Louis Gates Jr. played the race card against a white Cambridge cop."

Oh Armond.

railing against this movie's take on race while defending transformers 2 is just... well it's just armond white.

"Amidst the grotesqueries and social squalor, Blomkamp and Jackson interject the satiric mode of the Down Under mockumentary Cane Toads to depict the fearful encroachment of Others."

Pretty sure Cane Toads is an actual DOCUMENTARY as well, but whatever.

i'm looking forward to seeing this on saturday, and trying to avoid too many reviews

just armond being armond

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/cthulhu/

― max, Wednesday, August 12, 2009 10:00 AM

tori spelling dnfw

Saw this (District 9, not Cthulhu). It was... disappointing. No spoilers here, just comments.

It starts off really well, full-on pseudo-doco style, but then there are occasional lapses from this, and then after 30-40 minutes it just gives up on it and becomes a sometimes clever but basically pretty straightforward action/adventure/gunplay film. While this is mostly pretty well done, it's so much less than the film that your imagination started to put together based on the teaser material that it can't help but disappoint, and I was actually a bit bored. The world's full of quite good action/adventure/shoot-em-ups, and I didn't need another one. What it lacks are clever sci-fi racism/refugee mockumentaries.

Also, the whole plot hinges on a REALLY STUPID bit of pseudoscience that was a hoary old cliche when Doctor Who did it.

REALLY STUPID bit of pseudoscience

For real. It's a proper "is that the best they could do" moment.

sometimes clever but basically pretty straightforward action/adventure/gunplay film

yeah that's what i figured, ho hum oh well will prob see it anyway for the lols.

ya diverging from the docu style kind of gets on my nerves but tbh i'm kind of sick of the mockumentary thing anyway. i thought the action shoot-em-up stuff was pretty well done and fun.

ayo my review

http://is.gd/2fAFc

Good review, Mark. As I say, my main problem really is that this movie didn't measure up to what I was hoping for. If I'd seen it "cold" I'm sure I would have liked it a lot more. And yeah, Sharlto Copley was really good.

Good review, but one mistake jumped out at me.
"Despite sharing the same quadripedal basic body structure as human beings "
We're four-limbed, but not four-footed. Shoulda been bipedal.

Sorry! Really good review otherwise...made me want to see the movie.

noooooooooooo!!! i was wondering what the hey with that one

The studio is very nervous about the cost and it not having a love story or a happy ending, but it's impossible to do either in the Lovecraft universe."

lololol

please make this movie!

I wanted to like this a lot, and the beginning was great, but a lot of it was Verhoeven-style ultraviolence without the Verhoeven-style concept-the-ultraviolence-makes-you-feel-shitty-about.

oh goodness, that Cthulhu movie.
I was 2nd AD on that and it was a strange experience.

ha! did u hook up w/ tori

nope I did her paperwork
she was nice but definitely kinda 'out there'
prob what you'd expect though

really some absurd personalities on that film though

I enjoyed the movie for the most part, but had to shake my head at the fact that a film that serves as a flimsy allegory to apartheid employs as its villains cannibalistic, 419-scheming, cheating, ultraviolent, voodoo-worshiping Nigerian pimps? Seriously?

will probably see this tonight. am saying BLOMKAMP! a lot in anticipation

this was pretty fuckin terrible lol

it's so much less than the film that your imagination started to put together based on the teaser material that it can't help but disappoint

QFT

much too much shooting for my taste ... i started to get that feeling i got towards the middle-end of "children of men", when i was like, is all that this movie can do make me afraid that the hero will get shot?

i should say heroes

yah it was alright but i was expecting something a little smarter and subtler

hype kills

saw it 2nite was pretty dope - i didnt really hear abt it til recently and im not a scifi person or concerned w/its conventions - glad they didnt try to make the apartheid allegory too airtight - they let the aliens be unique and fallible in their own nasty way - def over did the shooting a lil much but i liked the way it was filmed - sort of gritty and video gamey and the alien weapons consistently brought the lols - they maybe couldve added a twist at the end where we learn something abt the nature of the aliens or something - i dunno it was fairly sweet overall - a little gross for my tastes - there was a lot of gratuitous grossness - it was funny too i laughed a lot

why is the alien named chris johnson? - that shit had me dyin - idk it was all basically ridiculous ~ its gonna earn 5x what it cost 2 make tho so district 10 will be out march 2011

District 69

that's the porno version, obv.

The Asylum "mockbuster" version: Sector 10
The sequel to the asylum "mockbuster" version : Sector 10 vs Megashark

the alien being named chris johnson was a great joke

this was amazing and great. though i was also thrown by the chris johnson thing. like i didn't even pick up on it until the very end.

the focus on the one dimensional villains is a fair criticism. especially since the stone cold army guy and the nigerian gangstaa were way less interesting then the MNU suits. the handling of the two heroes was great however. i kept thinking of gordon freeman.

did anyone not get that "christopher johnson" was like a government-issued human-style name?

Yeah, I thought of US-style Ellis Island renamings. Chris and his kid were like the only two completely sympathetic characters.

Saw it at the big suburban multiplex and it was sold out, big crowd of people waiting to get in as we left, shit is gonna make $$$

i had no idea that this was so anticipated and built-up, despite this thread's title

compared to most summer action/sci-fi flicks it hasn't been. also it wouldn't be rated R.

really liked how friendly and enthusiastic the main char was at the start while treating the prawns horribly.

definitely agree more could be done with the premise, but this was pretty entertaining. that prawn mech was badass.

Huge plot holes and other problems, but there was a lot to like. Also, it had 1/5 of GI Joe's budget and looked 5x better.

seriously. cgi is fine when it's in the hands of people who know what to do with it.

Keeping the allegory at arms length, I thought this was an above-average episode of Outer Limits. Lead human was horribly grating though - OK I get the Steve Carell/Michael Scott/uber-nebbish but would someone just fucking shoot the guy already. Ditto with father-in-law. Apparently the Lethal Weapon 2 Law is still in force - any white-haired South African in a position of power is automatically evil and not to be trusted.

Would have liked it a lot more if the movie was filmed entirely from P.O.V. of lead alien and son.

i cannot believe this only cost 30 mil!! i liked it even though it turned into Halo at the end (complete with a fukkin warthog sequence) (with a literal nigerian scammer, who is a cannibal) (and a cute lil alien tyke, who shall henceforth be known as 'little alien pepe'), the dumb action half of it was so well done that I didn't care too much that it decided not to develop all those interesting ideas it throws at u in the beginning. basically the first half is complex and mysterious and interesting and part 2 is 'the kingdom'

little alien pepe--lol

just saw this, was sort of underwhelmed. well made, but the story is really silly (as allegory or anything else). the middle section i thought was pretty tedious. it picked up once he teamed up with the alien dude, but it still didn't make any sense.

I've thought about this for awhile and, y'know what? Straight up sucked. I want to forgive its faults so bad because it was an original concept in a sea of shit franchises with (at least half of) a non-standard form, but the cannibal Nigerian horde (reminicent of the natives in Jackson's King Kong; dude's got a fetish), the uselessness of the violence, the numerous tonal and plot inconsistencies... nope.

I want to, but it'd feel disingenous to hold it to a lower standard than bigger Hollywood sci-fi stuff.

well to make the sort of obvious comparison, i thought children of men was borderline incoherent too, but its setting and world were a lot more fully imagined than this one. and its action scenes were a lot more exciting.

See, Children of Men is one of my favorite movies of the aughties, and I'm just not feeling the similarities. I mean, yeah, form and tone, obviously, but as far as incoherence, justification for events (both in plot and in subtext), etc, it seems like a vast, vast difference.

the premise in CofM only felt about half-thought-out to me. but yeah, i think it's a much better movie.

now that i think about it, i bet the genesis of this thing was probably less 'let's tell a thoughtful story about ____' and more 'HIGH CONCEPT, WE HAVE A HIGH CONCEPT HERE,' (wayne knight/nedry voice) at which point they all dusted their hands off and went to eat some fukken vegemite or some shit. it was probably the most videogame-looking movie i've ever seen. things i liked:

-the bit where the robot shot like a charge attached to a wire into the lead nigerian's skull and then it exploded, it reminded me of fist of the north star because of the way the guy's head swelled before exploding
-loved the reference to the fly, the part where he loses his fingernail is shot for shot from the fly remake
-the sequence where he's forced to test weapons (goes downhill after this)

it was probably the most videogame-looking movie i've ever seen.

OTM..I had some serious Half-Life/Halo flashbacks during this

-loved the reference to the fly, the part where he loses his fingernail is shot for shot from the fly remake

yeah, lots of fly-ishness.

Good to see this has been getting mostly positive reviews, and has been made a hit in the US. Stoked as ever now.

i enjoyed this but it also drove me crazy. so much of it barely made sense or could have been improved with some better writing.

it bothered me that everyone could understand the alien language and vice versa. it would have been more interesting (and better explained the total marginalization of the aliens) if communication wasn't commonly possible, but the main dude was able to after his transformation started to take place.

that didnt bother me. i actually liked it as a detail, that humans and aliens couldn't make each others' sounds but that they would have become functionally bilingual after 20 years. then again i live in montreal.

Good to see this has been getting mostly positive reviews, and has been made a hit in the US.

yeah, despite my reservations about it i think it's cool that it's making money. 2nd week will be interesting, because i wonder what word of mouth will be from everyone who went expecting a more normal summertime movie.

(there were some walkouts in the theater i was in, but not too many. and there was some applause at the end.)

as someone who never sees action movies until years after, and in fact has stepped into a movie theatre three times in the past year, i enjoyed this thoroughly. the scene where they're forcing him to test weapons was truly squirm-inducing.

^^^the best scene by far

Had a few walkouts in my showing. Also some doofus fratboy type who laughed at all the wrong things exclaimed "Heh! Dumbest movie ever!" when the credits started rolling. I thought it was decent, definitely fell victim to the weight of the hype though. I gotta agree with the "didn't love it but I'm glad it's doing well" sentiment. It was kinda oddball and I'm glad fucking GI JOE or some shit didn't roll over it this weekend.

i think the reason this feels so disappointing is because the set-up/setting/potential it had is so so great. Like, what unbelievable potential

the thing, even more than the dehumanized nigerian cannibals, that made me eye-roll is that it was ultimately about the white human dude. its like, if this is an allegory for refugees, here's another story that sets up these oppressed ppl & then makes them 2ndary characters ... every time chris johnson was involved, i was way way more involved in the film. he was the film's most interesting/sympathetic character. although i liked the visceral-ness of the human dude's metamorphosis (it helped that i had a bad headache while watching so it felt even more visceral for some reason ... maybe im turning into one too!!) I wanted the movie to be about the aliens ... i wanted to meet more aliens & give them more agency beyond this one solo genius alien. its like, obviously we're supposed to think the humans are dehumanizing these ppl who are actually victims of historical context, but ...

the other weird thing about the allegory is of course that in this case the aliens are outsiders instead of the historical residents of this area. which makes it a really really different story. which is probably good.

white:apartheid::human:d9

in the 1st half i was waiting for the dad alien to reveal a 'total recall'-style group of rebel-aliens who were planning something. instead it was just this talented 10th dude

i liked the visceral-ness of the human dude's metamorphosis (it helped that i had a bad headache while watching so it felt even more visceral for some reason ... maybe im turning into one too!!)

i agree/relate 2 this but 4 the reason we were sittin too close to the screen & i was stoned. transformation felt tooo long 2 me cuz of this but maybe not idk

I think all the "zomg the nigerians were a horrible stereotype" stuff is overplayed because maybe their nationality meant something, maybe it didn't, but this sort of criminal shit happens! The fact they were eating the alien guys doesn't make them that much worse than the South Africans, who were a little stealthier but trying to do the same shit in their secret alien autopsy lab.

i think ppl just found it especially jarring in an anti-apartheid movie about sensitivity towards alien pps

http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/08/17/what-secrets-lurk-within-district-9-white-anxiety/

some commenters conclude the movie is irredeemably colonialist, orientalist...similar to the Whole Foods conspiracy.

while the subject of racial-allegorical sci-fi is in the air, lemme just again recommend the books of octavia e. butler to anyone who hasn't read them. (because i'll take any chance to recommend her.) makes district 9 look like the muddled kid stuff it is.

have not read this whole thread -- can someone explain why the slum was littered with alien weaponry? a) how did it get out of the mothership and b) why aren't the aliens using any of it? trading most of them all away for drugs is a weak reason. if the MNU had confiscated as much of it as they could, and what's left is too few to do much with except get yourself killed, ok (but the stuff is so powerful!).

i also wondered why the ZA gov't would allow a foreign mafia to operate in such a delicate environment, even if it was a slum. if there was a criminal element, it'd be run by the aliens, with profiting collaborators on the outside! that's how slums work! the lack of exploration of alien society, either its remnants from before they landed, or what had sprung up provisionally in the camps, was a minor disappointment.

other than that, really good!

so many quotes of dead alive! the sweater vest, people exploding in pink goo, gross body horror, puking...

"the lack of exploration of alien society, either its remnants from before they landed, or what had sprung up provisionally in the camps, was a minor disappointment."

this was what i was wondering yeah

re: the aliens not having any agency despite their superweapons, strength, etc., i kept thinking of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QDesiwFIuc

i kept wondering if chris johnson was supposed to be unusually intelligent for an alien, or if the implication was that all the aliens had the capability to be as smart but had degraded through living on earth in camps. i know they said they were mostly workers not used to thinking for themselves but does this mean chris was one of the leaders who was stranded on earth somehow or that he was just an unusually smart worker or what? basically why was he so different from the other prawns, or was he actually different?

yeah the one commentator said it was 'speculation' that they were workers w/o their leadership caste (or whatever) -- i couldn't figure if the existence of christopher johnson with his hidden shuttle is supposed to support that idea or undercut it

see, all these questions are the things that to me just made the movie silly. it presents this scenario that just doesn't make any sense on its own terms. (and thereby undermines whatever strength it might have had as allegory.)

yeah exactly.

also it seemed weird that christopher johnson was so shocked by the medical experiments (ie standing aghast while people were shooting at him, then being convinced that now he should save his people) since he had already seen his friend murdered by the government with no consequences, been living without rights for 20 years, etc.

i half expected c johnson to look at the experimented-on alien bodies, then interrupt wickus to tell him, these are all former humans. basically this movie turned out to be much simpler than i expected

i dunno, i got the feeling the movie had a pretty worked-out backstory and i liked that they never spelled it out

me too! that would have been better.

xp

i also don't quite get why fuel for a machine would have some kind of retroviral genetic element to it that would transform a human. i get that their technology was tied to their biology, but, come on. (this is getting me to Not A Predator Ship territory, i realize)

xps

why would it NOT.

i mean who the f knows, maybe it has some sort of biological basis. i mean really. let your imagination out a little here.

i don't know about that slocks. some of the press mentions something about their homeworld being destroyed, in which case what is christopher johnson going back for?

xp

lol u got me there xps

and also it took twenty years to refine that amount of fuel, most of it got skeeted on dude's face, but there's still enough to power that giant spaceship back to the alien homeworld? i guess so.

also, how was the ship hovering for twenty years without any fuel???

what, who mentions that? isn't it all speculation? i LIKE how nobody can get an answer about what's going on. i mean honestly, are you people really clamouring for more transformers-style stupid mythology and backstory? it works fine as it is. xp

jordan i believe the answer is "alien technology"

i thought the fuel was for the shuttle, not the whole big ship

if i had the sense that the filmmakers weren't just making shit up as it suited them i would feel better about having things left to my imagination (which i usually like)

oh yeah, i think you're right about the shuttle. but wasn't there something wrong with the ship, that when the aliens arrived they were trapped and starving in there? or was it just that their leaders had shipped them off like cargo maybe?

i dunno, i got the feeling the movie had a pretty worked-out backstory and i liked that they never spelled it out

― 'steen suicide (don't drive it) (s1ocki), Tuesday, August 18, 2009 2:07 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think people's problem, as has been spelled out above, is that the movie sets up a bunch of possible awesome and interesting backstories in the first half hour and then just goes with the most boring and obvious one. and honestly i don't care about mythology and background, but when a movie blatantly brings up all these questions and then doesn't answer them, it's hard not to nitpick

fair enough. but i think a tidy wrap-up of everything would have been a disappointment. i think they could have gone a different way w/o answering those questions, perhaps more satisfactorily.

yeah. i didn't hate the movie or anything, just felt like it wasted a lot of potential.

Really enjoyed this. Appreciated that the movie tries very hard to go both high brow and low brow, amusingly.

Guys, obviously the majority of the aliens were telephone sanitizers and hair stylists, while Chris and his kid were part of the pilot class. The smart ones figured out it was a sucker mission and jettisoned the command pod before the ship permanently docked with earth, and they had to figure out how to program it to get back to their planet and get enough fuel to re-dock the command module. During the remaining period, Chris determines that sending all his people home is important after all because the humans are cruel, and even telephone sanitizers do not deserve a grisly fate.

the scene at the beginning where the eviction team burns down the seedling house or whatever and was laughing about how it sounded like popcorn i thought maybe trumped the forced weapon testing in cringe-inducingness

myself and most the theater kind of chuckled at that scene. how cheery he seems to be, roasting a shack full of babies!

what i also really liked about this movie is that it fits in nicely with my theory that bureaucracy is the most evil creation mankind has ever unleashed upon the earth.

The baby-roasting scene was a little much, in retrospect. I think they were trying to show that the humans didn't think much of the aliens, but they pushed it much heavier later.

Really enjoyable movie.
The complaints in this thread... wowzers
Analyzing allegory and logistics of the aliens... and also complaints about how we only get one story out of it.
And people cringing over alien abortions...

I have to disagree with every complaint made over the past 5 days... people mostly asking why? why? why? I feel that all this intellectual dissecting of the movie has kind of ruined it for some people. Theoretically it was all possible and there is no need for asking why. Watching the movie I wasn't once thinking about allegory or logistics...

(Maybe I did kind of think about "prawns" as "cockroaches" but there was no meaning to any allegorical implications that the movie made (in my opinion). Maybe that's partially why none of that was upsetting.)

I guess I was better off going in to the movie not really knowing anything about the plot. But leaving the movie... I can't help but be apathetic about every single complaint made over the past 5 days in this thread. It was just a really great movie. Logistics schmistics.

and allegory be damned

it's not so much that ignorance is bliss. more like hyperactive intelligence is piss

When's this out in the UK?

(btw - please don't take offense to my last comments... I'm not trying to rain on anyone's mentality in general... I just don't agree with any allegorical or logistic complaints made about this movie)

It's out next month in the UK - (checks) Sept 4th. Two long weeks.

I can see what you're saying, Captain, but the whole plot rides on the logical equivalent of saying that if you drink some petrol you'll turn into a dinosaur.

you've never consumed petrol have you?

I don't think the aliens on the ship were actually just worker class, I think it was one of the condescending theories about the aliens that made the humans feel better about ghettoizing them.

^^^ posts like that are why I'm glad the movie didn't spell that shit out... I like that idea

Just saw this, thought it sucked.

Even the CGI alien cockroaches are more human than the humans in this movie.
Why weren't aliens whipping ass with their hot shit weapons?
Took a white dude.

fuck halo, can this dude make a robotech movie or what

I had to bail on this movie 45 min. in--for the first time I just found the whole thing a bit too intense.

I don't think the aliens on the ship were actually just worker class, I think it was one of the condescending theories about the aliens that made the humans feel better about ghettoizing them.

― ENERGY FOOD (en i see kay), Friday, August 21, 2009 10:48 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

this is what i assumed

the unanswered questions about the aliens and humans' ignorance of their goals, culture, etc would be a lot less unsatisfying if the film had maintained the faux-doc form. imagine if we'd seen that spaceship rise up and NOT known whether it was part of a big alien underground effort or The Only Intelligent Alien In The Million Plus Population and his plucky kid.

but then if the movie was 100% faux-doc and actually acknowledged the social policies of the country the aliens landed in it would make about a tenth of what it will at the box office

also it might have come across as unbearably effing preachy

I feel that all this intellectual dissecting of the movie has kind of ruined it for some people. Theoretically it was all possible and there is no need for asking why. Watching the movie I wasn't once thinking about allegory or logistics...

i was mostly thinking about allegory and logistics during the stretch in the middle where i was very bored. if you're going to have a nonsense story, you need to distract the audience from the nonsense, even if it's with more nonsense. the whole thing where dude is on the run and having tearful phone calls with his wife and generally just flailing about, i was just not interested in him or what was going to happen to him.

I don't think it would be unbearably effin' preachy to acknowledge the existence of apartheid in a film that starts in apartheid-era south africa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNReejO7Zu8

the original short film, which if they'd fleshed into a full-length faux-doc wouldn't have run the risk of preachiness (i guess D9's Defiant Ones plot is so cliche we don't really consider it preachy) so much as run the risk of requiring the audience to have the slightest interest in south african culture

i liked this overall. the one major gripe i have was that the trailer shows an interrogation scene with an alien saying "we just want to go home". so the entire movie i was waiting for this scene to give some sort of exposition on the story of the aliens and who they were, why they were there, etc. and it wasn't there. i get s1ocki's point about it not being all that necessary and that overexplaining things sux but im still annoyed at the misleading trailer and feel that the movie suffered a bit from its total lack of explanation which is just as bad as over-explaining.

I don't think it would be unbearably effin' preachy to acknowledge the existence of apartheid in a film that starts in apartheid-era south africa

― da croupier, Sunday, August 23, 2009 9:33 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dude ... its an allegory about apartheid ... wouldnt that make the allegory totally ineffective if it was EXPLICITLY BRINGING UP APARTHEID

if acknowledging apartheid would make the allegory totally ineffective then maybe they shouldn't have set the film in the country where apartheid existed. i mean if this is the case, then what the fuck do you need an allegory for, they had apartheid!

i don't acknowledge the nazis in my movie where zombies invade poland in 1941 because the zombies are an allegory for the nazis

the movie take place in aparthied-era south africa iirc

DOESN'T take place

if acknowledging apartheid would make the allegory totally ineffective then maybe they shouldn't have set the film in the country where apartheid existed.

oh i guess it does xpost

yeah supposedly the aliens showed up in the 80s.

besides, blomkamp has the aliens living with the black population in the original short film, which actually uses quotes from South Africans about refugees from zimbabwe as if they were talking about aliens. I'd guess D9 doesn't mention apartheid because they don't want to have to explain the concept to audiences, not to protect an allegory.

anyone smart enough to know what "aparthied" is honestly doesn't need the connection between aparthied and South Africa spelled out for them. Anyone who isn't smart enough should just enjoy the cool alien movie which has lots of exciting explosions.

i think setting a film in south africa counts as "acknowledging apartheid"

btw i figured this movie takes place in the near future. the non-alien guns they were shooting were sci-fi looking to me

if there'd been a simple "the arrival aliens is credited for the smooth dismantling of apartheid" soundbite that would have been fine since most of the film happens afterwards, but it seems odd to not acknowledge the social policies of the country the film is set in at all. and i'm not sold that setting a film in a country counts as acknowledging its history.

it's not like this was my major beef with the film, just one of the many things that felt glossed over

i'm not sold that setting a film in a country counts as acknowledging its history.

"i'm setting my next movie in Japan in 1946. It could really take place anywhere though"

hey, if you made a film about aliens landing in japan in 1943 and didn't mention the war at all, people might find that odd too.

i thought it was very clear and precise about life in post- (POST!!) apartheid ZA but ymmv i guess

Anyone who has a working knowledge of, like, the ONE THING people know about south africa shouldn't find it weird they didn;t mention it--because it's totally obvious.

Anyone who DOESN'T have that knowledge, can enjoy the movie anyway.

Where's the problem?

That Law And Order episode about the fire in the rock club didn't have to mention Great White by name

i demand historical accuracy from my science-fiction!!!

The thing that bothers me most about Godzilla movies is that they had to have a monster instead of just showing Japan getting nuked.

definitely was, which is why people are mostly complaining about the rushed-over first twenty years of interaction with the aliens

xpost whiney, it's not totally obvious what happened when an alien race showed up in a country where the races were kept separate. in the short film, it's clear that the aliens are made to live with the black population. in d9, it's just said that aliens were mixing with humans but things weren't working out. it would have been nice to at least briefly acknowledge the major historical event the aliens would have been getting all up in. sorry if this is such a challop for you guys.

apology accepted

also if the aliens are an allegory for apartheid then shouldn't they be running the show?

http://image.listen.com/img/356x237/4/1/7/5/995714_356x237.jpg

I.... AINT GONNA PLAY DISTRICT 9

totally believe queen and laura branigan would have no problem playing a space alien-run segregated resort

da croupier you sound totally ridic -- its supposed to be a ref to apartheid -- if they made that super explict (vs how it was, 'super-obvious but allegorical') then it would be way weirder.

u dont think when they're like "everyone things the aliens would show up over new york or london..." at the beginning, that just MAYBE they're HINTING at the idea that their appearance over Johannesburg means something??

i mean, ppl upthread were complaining about how the allegory was too obvious, meanwhile you think it isnt obvious enough?? i dont agree with either but if i had to pick sides id def say yr the one who sounds nuts here

the chronicles of ridic

deej, please read what i wrote again. it's not a matter of thinking the "allegory" is too obvious or not.

i mean if you think acknowledging the existence of apartheid would "ruin the allegory," then what ruins the allegory is that blomkamp has the aliens land during apartheid. godzilla waited till the '50s to show up, you know.

i don't think it's certain the the "aliens land during apartheid." i never got a fix on when the movie was supposed to take place, but like i said, based on a few technological clues i figured it was a little ways in the future. apartheid ended in 94, so the movie takes place sometime five to ten years from now?

judging from lines on the movie's website, the aliens had to have landed by 1989 at the latest

there were also dates on some of the video footage in the movie. the earliest i saw said 1983 and the latest 2010.

lol i'm ignoring anything on a movie website on principle!

wikipedia says 28 years ago, which seems a bit long (imdb's wiki says 1990 - the year Alive In Joburg is set in) but no nerd has stepped up to change it

i dont know why its so weird still -- i would just assume that things happened basically the same way they did irl

it's a relatively minor quibble (if you like we could go into how shittily the film works as an allegory for apartheid - though I don't think the filmmakers were actually trying to make it a good one. again, the short film actually based the aliens more on the influx of Zimbabwean refugees), but it's not unknown for retroactive sci-fi to acknowledge how a supernatural event effected culture. watchmen got a lot of mileage out of it.

i get "whatever, shit blowed up real good" as a defense of the film's holes more than anything about ambiguity (which if anything I could have used more of when it came to the aliens) or allegories. even blomkamp seems pretty aware the movie doesn't actually add up to much allegorically:

There was too much of me in it. I pretty quickly started realizing that the smartest thing to do, especially with my first film and the fact that I have to grow a lot as a filmmaker before I do anything serious is just make something that’s accessible and more of a ride, that’s more fun...There’s no question that there’s many, many, many elements of Apartheid and segregation and now xenophobia in South Africa that have made their way into the film but they provide the sort of foundation that the film rests on top of. It’s like a framework that’s there and it provides a very strange alternate reality because there’s aliens involved, but it doesn’t beat you over the head. So if you see the film, it’s like I’m not trying to force those kind of soapbox beliefs of mine onto you. I’m simply saying this is all stuff that affected me when I was a kid and I put science fiction into it.

from here

What happened to that interrogation scene from the trailer ("tell us how to use your weapons")? I guess it was just cut from the final film?

i dont think you can minimize the allegory just because of that quote or bcuz it turns into a shoot em up in the last half.

obviously, as sci fi, its better (and smarter) that its not a direct representation (thus 'allegory') -- i mean, the fact is, aliens are aliens, ("are you saying black ppl are aliens??") and in some ways this is about immigrants more than it is about the kind of system that existed in S.A. -- in that case, the oppressors were also the invaders.

i mean, im not sure we entirely disagree -- i wish there was more to the aliens since the movie was really ABOUT them, u wish there was less, but i think either one would make more sense than the weird middle ground were both getting from it as is.

but pretending its not an allegory?? it pretty much underlines that it is about these things in terms of setting, specific language, the forced migration, etc ... i think its ridiculous to suggest he wasnt trying to make it about something larger.

i know morbs whole thing about the dumbing down of america is really popular but very honestly, i dont know that this wouldnt have been as popular had it tried to engage with these issues in an interesting way.

i wish there was more to the aliens since the movie was really ABOUT them, u wish there was less, but i think either one would make more sense than the weird middle ground were both getting from it as is.

yeah it's definitely that the info we're given only raises more questions. they should either go full blair witch and leave us in the dark or invest more into the story. but judging from that interview i think he'd even shirk at calling it an allegory (or at least something as specific as "an allegory for apartheid") - he takes imagery and details from real life shit in South Africa, but the story itself is just "science fiction" (and is really benefiting from Transformers lowering the bar).

and is really benefiting from Transformers lowering the bar

haha otm

Spaceballs looks like 2001 in comparison to Transformers

really i think the south african setting is confusing people, because the movie's scenario (however poorly thought out) works allegorically -- to the extent it does at all -- as a refugee story. nothing about it actually signals apartheid, except of course for being set in johannesburg. and a refugee allegory is fine, i have no problem with that, except that it stumbles over the basic fact that in most refugee situations (including the one spelled out in the movie), people mostly want the refugees to leave. but seemingly the aliens also want to leave, and even have the means to, if only they can collect enough alien space juice. and so instead of everyone sorting this out and working together 20 years ago, they have somehow developed this antagonistic relationship. you can partly explain it as a plot by the weapons company to keep them around to study the weapons, but the weapons company is only one player in the scenario -- there are references to them being under international supervision and human-rights pressure and so forth -- and so ... well, this is why i was resisting going into trying to talk about the incoherences in the movie, because as soon as you start they all just sort of pile up on top of each other.

and you can say it doesn't matter if a sci-fi shoot 'em up makes any sense, which would be fine if the movie wasn't being praised a lot of places for being so smart and thoughtful and whatever. it's not really any smarter than independence day.

the moral of the story is we need to stop handing over international conflicts to independent contractors who only siphon resources and violate human rights with the help of skinhead goateed psychopaths.

also: don't fuck with alien weaponry

also: cat food - advanced civilizations eat it. your cat is actually smarter than you think.

and: however gritty and grimy your faux-doc sci-fi allegories are, it always helps to have a cute kid. even a cute crustacean kid.

I LOVED this movie. The best part is how it shows the aliens as disgusting and annoying and we're never quite sure if they are actually some kind of drone-class and if "Christopher Johnson" (obviously a great detail) is one of the "smarter" ones or if we, like the general populace in the movie, are simply racist. This implication, especially as the movie eventually makes us really care about these extra-terrestrial CGI bugs, is what makes the movie for me.

Also, I suppose this movie could have been made with Rio or Mumbai or The West Bank as a backdrop but South Africa seems like the perfect place to tell this tale because the story is obviously a mirror of apartheid and townships etc etc.

Finally, I love Octavia Butler's work and I think she would have enjoyed this movie a great deal. I don't think this movie is trying to be the sci-fi embodiment of the works of Homi K. Bhabha just as I don't think 'The Matrix' thinks it is Baudrillard. However, as an entertaining lay intro to post-colonialism, I think it's quite effective and actually leaves a positive message for the viewer to internalize.

I suppose my biggest complaint is that the bad guy organization is called "Multi-National United." They might as well have called it Evil Corporation, Inc. It really should have just been the UN.

Also, this is extremely nerdy, but does anyone remember an old RPG called Traveller 2300 or simply 2300 AD?

My only real complaint about the movie was its predictability; it just went exactly where I thought it would go and even ended the way I suspect it would, which seems like a big set up for a potentially more exciting (or disappointing) sequel dealing with alien evacuation, etc.

The best part is how it shows the aliens as disgusting and annoying and we're never quite sure if they are actually some kind of drone-class and if "Christopher Johnson" (obviously a great detail) is one of the "smarter" ones or if we, like the general populace in the movie, are simply racist. This implication, especially as the movie eventually makes us really care about these extra-terrestrial CGI bugs, is what makes the movie for me.

Totally disagree. The degree to which the film discouraged this ambiguity was one of my main disappointments. With the exception of two adult aliens and one child, they were depicted without exception as a single one-note archetype. The filmmakers gave us zero material with which to extend the speculation you make above. In the film we saw, other than the three "smart" aliens, zero out of two million had formed any kind of community (or plan to escape); zero out of two million had negotiated a different relationship with humans than the standard one (eg: true middlemen with the Nigerians; or (literally) hired guns for the Nigerians/MNU, shooting weapons in exchange for money/catfood; or scientists, diplomats, liaisons - anything!).

I don't think the film earned yr compliment in any way. (Compared to say, Bamboozled.)

Ah, but if there are a few smart aliens then there must be others and maybe we are just misunderstanding them. This is exactly how western culture believes it moves beyond racism. We dehumanize and call an entire race savages for generations and then we find one or two who can write a poem and bring them before the king and take them on a tour of europe etc etc and then we believe we aren't racist anymore. Also, I couldn't finish Bamboozled.

if this was a faux-doc where the filmmakers found two smart aliens, we might be able to extrapolate that there were more smart ones running around. but the film abandoned that POV and suggested that this ONE guy with a spaceship in his basement was working with the help of his plucky kid and a solitary accomplice that didn't know shit. if the film had revealed less, it could have suggested more.

I still think the film held back quite a bit. It shows well-meaning experts speculating on why the aliens act or don't act the way they do.

I love how the ship ominously hovers for months like Childhood's End or The Day the Earth Stood Still and everyone expects grays or beings of pure light or super robots or something to descend and instead they break in and instead find a floating shanty. I found it fantastic, highly original and unexpected (even knowing quite a bit from the trailer).

I like how there isn't some expert breaking down their whole social strata for us in a 3D powerpoint.

by abandoning the faux-doc form for action movie omniscience (at which point it's kind of pointless to "hold back"), the speculating talking heads just become a prelude narrative device for the Defiant Ones movie that follows. they might as well have broke down the social strata in 3D, because they already discussed how the survivors were utterly leaderless and nothing in the action movie that followed suggested otherwise (the lack of collective action is another reason complimenting the film as a "mirror of apartheid" seems off-key).

There is collective action at the end, even if only to save Wikus.

I mean, we can criticize the film for it's analysis of apartheid, but it is very obviously consciously about apartheid.

that's a big "even if only." as i posted above, blomkamp is going to great lengths to hedge when people say "ooh mirror of apartheid." he wants it to be seen as a popcorn sci-fi with obvious visual refs to apartheid, but he knows better than to call it anything near a parallel and his fans should too.

ya i mean it is very obviously kind of about apartheid without saying much about it.

i mean with a title like that...

i just don't think its any more impressive than like, starship troopers wearing ss uniforms. but i guess people go apeshit over that too.

luckily you've got it all figured out

(just teasin')

was gonna say, don't throw stones, film critic

JUST PLAYIN

does revenge of the fallen have any visual cues swiped from real life? like bumblebee and josh duhamel hoisting an american flag iwo jima style?

The main plot problem for me is why Christopher Johnson would hide his technology and plan from the human leadership. I'm sure they could have worked something out. I felt like the trailer was saying that we were keeping some kind of fuel away from them. I think a truer response would have been a relocation to an island with a ton of UN money thrown at the "problem". The reason this doesn't happen is because of the conscious attempt to implicate the viewer in this apartheid allegory.

I'm surprised that the treatment of the aliens doesn't seem to improve after the ship leaves (because it's obviously going to return with back-up). Also, why was it that the one guy was in jail simply for exposing MNU?

does revenge of the fallen have any visual cues swiped from real life? like bumblebee and josh duhamel hoisting an american flag iwo jima style?

― da croupier, Sunday, August 30, 2009 1:49 PM (46 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not exactly. but it's got a LOT of shots of aircraft carriers and people marching proudly on their decks

and a lot of shots of planes taking off and landing (non-transformer planes)

so it's got refs to Pearl Harbor if not Pearl Harbor, at least

haha.

Also, I actually do think Starship Troopers (the film) is an amazing commentary on fascism (and a brutal critique of the book) which similarly implicates the viewer (would you like to know more?). It only slightly falls down in this by choosing to be on the corny/caricature side which is successful on other levels.

Revenge of the Fallen is an allegorical mirror of the whole of race relations in America since Columbus.

jk

i think it's a commentary on entertainment and its relation to fascism and its aesthetics. the corniness is part of it. it's like nazi spaceship 90210.

has someone ever figured out what verhoeven was trying to teach us with The Hollow Man? Cuz that's the one I could never figure out the game to.

don't be invisible

ah, beguiling in its simplicity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tsBZYlP_Vw

has someone ever figured out what verhoeven was trying to teach us with The Hollow Man? Cuz that's the one I could never figure out the game to.

― da croupier, Sunday, August 30, 2009 5:56 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"with great invisibility comes bad movie"

still lmao at "little alien pepe" way upthread

"with great invisibility comes bad movie"

ugh

could have done better than that

I loved this film for two main reasons: the casting of Sharlto Copley as the lead (the most interesting antihero I've seen in ages and a transfixingly desperate presence) and the real sadness that pervaded it, especially in the closing sections. Christopher Johnson's subtitled clicks and grunts for lines like "It's too far" really hit me, as did him just standing and staring at the experiment on the table. No great release at the end, and that didn't strike me as an annoying "Next year if we do well at the box office: District 10" ploy - it felt just like an awful melancholic emptiness.

The holes in the film's logic bothered me at first (principally those surrounding the physical power relationships between the aliens and the MNU troops), but by the end they didn't matter.

u only gave it half a star u rube

You have taught me a new word.

"U"?

so i download it today... only to have my husband tell me he wants to see it in the cinema. sigh. :-)

that's rough. sorry to hear that

life is hard

I couldn't make it past the first 15 minutes of this. Could they have made the metaphor any more brow-beatingly obvious?

uh dude ... its supposed to be obvious.

funny thing about metaphors

Such sudden changes of tone in this film, the way it starts off so farcical, quickly becomes disturbing and traumatising and then becomes 24 with aliens. Fantastic, though.

Agree about the first 15 minutes, but then it pretty much dumps the allegory (wisely) for top class Halo-like sci-fi blasting. You even see a dude's arm comes off, so you know it's all good.

Also it's more of an allegory for cyclical segregation and anti-immigrant feeling than a straight metaphor for apartheid - the black South Africans are happily there blowing up prawns but the Nigerians aren't much above the prawns in the social order.

I haven't read the whole thread but is it true that the initial interview sections are real interviews, primarily with black South Africans talking about immigrants from other African nations? And that it's cut to make it look like they're talking about aliens? If so then looking at the film as a straight allegory for apartheid really is missing the point.

that was how he did the short film, inna Creature Comforts stylee, not sure if any of the feature material is the same

the South Africa/apartheid thing is definitely a red herring allegorywise

With a few days perspective I've really come round to this film. The way it shifts from comedy to sci-fi action to genuinely affecting is well done. The anti-hero stance of the lead guy is great aa well, making him properly rounded in terms of being an asshole with a heart without it being at all clumsy of schtick-y.

as well

clumsy or schtick-y

slocki, spencer c otm. this was pretty great, and neither as simplistic nor as obvious as many of the above criticisms seem to be stating.

although fucked if i could get behind the image of this guy in an all powerful robot suit:

http://www.hbo.com/news/img/252x190/rhys_252x190.jpg

Hahaha yeah Murray popped into my head about 30 seconds into the film.

yeah, but i mean constantly. even in the suit. maybe especially in the suit.

Who is he?

the band's manager from flight of the conchords, kiwi stand up comic rhys darby.

Ah.

I LOVED this movie. The best part is how it shows the aliens as disgusting and annoying and we're never quite sure if they are actually some kind of drone-class and if "Christopher Johnson" (obviously a great detail) is one of the "smarter" ones or if we, like the general populace in the movie, are simply racist. This implication, especially as the movie eventually makes us really care about these extra-terrestrial CGI bugs, is what makes the movie for me.

um what? they're fucking aliens. how is finding them disgusting and annoying "racist" ffs? it only works if you go in with the idea that the aliens are "actually" refugees. but if you do that the entire plot/scenario and everything about it falls apart.

they *would* be humanoid oxygen-breathers wouldn't they? just felt really lame and 1950s to me.

accepting that they are "actually" aliens, a sequel in which they return and kill the fuck out of the eeeeevil sith ifricins will be possibly more entertaining fare.

even apart from the loony non-allegory, wth was the deal with baba alien being able to control the muthaship? why write such a bad, hole-filled story?

all that said, the director obviously has talent to burn and this was a well-made film. just not as good as cloverfield.

they *would* be humanoid oxygen-breathers wouldn't they? just felt really lame and 1950s to me.

movie doesn't exist if they died on landing in 1982

wth was the deal with baba alien being able to control the muthaship?

he just kicks in a rescue-retrieval program of some sort, he's not flying the whole thing by remote control

also clear enough throughout the entire story that the kid alien is good with technology. i mean, of all the plot holes....

little alien pepe

they *would* be humanoid oxygen-breathers wouldn't they? just felt really lame and 1950s to me.

movie doesn't exist if they died on landing in 1982

aight but why humanoid? we have to feel moral outrage about the way humans treat non-humans... but most of us eat non-humans.

wth was the deal with baba alien being able to control the muthaship?

he just kicks in a rescue-retrieval program of some sort, he's not flying the whole thing by remote control

― Young Scott Young (sic), Sunday, September 20, 2009 3:39 AM (18 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

k, but then what? the whole thing was that dude was saving enough black gunk to power it back up. evidently that wasn;t necessary. also he saved up just enough for the trip – plus enough to infect the human guy.

They go to MAD lengths to make the creatures as insecty/crustaceany as possible while still being bipedal, humanoid is a stretch. But they gotta be bipedal for humans to be trying the battlesuit out, and you gotta have just enough face (ie two eyes above a mouth) for audience recognition. It’s still an adventure movie, not Michael Moore’s The Mote In God’s Eye.

Christopher Johnson’s saving the gunk to FLY THE MOTHERSHIP ALL THE WAY HOME, not to make it move 200m southeast while otherwise retaining a 20-year geosynchronous orbit. Lil alien pepe only makes it do the latter by pressing the “taxi!” button. If a litre of nanobot gunk is enough to fly umpteen light years, then the 10ml that accidentally squirt in Murray’s face are pretty insignificant in the whole tally.

(In terms of volume, it’s nonsense that that quantity of nanogunk can power the ship while, presumably, self-replicating [a) nanobots, b) like you charge a car battery while driving it] but you can’t have it self-replicate enough to repair Murray’s arm. However, Christopher is obviously str8 bullshitting Murray about having medical equipment on the ship all along.)

I don't think that the gunk was to power the ship, just to get the command module up to the ship, or at least to jump-start the computers. Like I probably ranted about upthread, the collective of aliens kind of eventually evolved a new leader from the hivemind, so presumably Chris and his lil alien pepe weren't just gathering gunk for the past few decades and might have just figured this shit out within the past year or two.

i'm pretty sure at some point he says he's been working on it for decades.

but in any case the theoretical lengths people have to go to try to make the loopy story make some kind of deliberate sense mostly to me illustrates how poorly constructed the narrative is. just because the movie looks smart doesn't mean it is smart.

Science fiction, dudes. I loved it, and can't wait for it to come out on DVD.

Also, what's the significance of the alien being called Christopher Johnson? Wiki's giving me nothing.

Slave-owners historically gave slaves bland, anglicised names - often their own. (Hence, for example, the number of black people with Irish surnames.)

it's a reference to a south african philosopher famous for having a very pronounced exoskeleton

There is no significance, it's just an Ellis Island name.

I don't think that the gunk was to power the ship,

nah he specifically says he needs it to get to their homeworld, hence why he can't spare any to heal Wikus

just because the movie looks smart doesn't mean it is smart.

it's an action movie.

ha ha ha, xpost obv

Ah; I figured it was a blandly humanised name handed out to him by the human authorities in a derisory manner - but people mentioned it as if it had a bit more significance than just that and I wondered if it was an actual person's name.

on that tip though, apparently Wikus Van Der Merwe is a hugely generic South African name

They go to MAD lengths to make the creatures as insecty/crustaceany as possible while still being bipedal, humanoid is a stretch. But they gotta be bipedal for humans to be trying the battlesuit out, and you gotta have just enough face (ie two eyes above a mouth) for audience recognition. It’s still an adventure movie, not Michael Moore’s The Mote In God’s Eye.

if it were an adventure movie, ok, but it's being touted as an important or intelligent allegory about migration/refugees/apartheid, and it just doesn't make sense as one of those. if it's "about" migration then the characterization of the nigerians undercuts that, and in any case the aliens *want to go home*. it had potential but nah.

I'm not sure it's being touted as an important or intelligent allegory about migration/refugees/apartheid by the makers so much as some of the fans.

no, because it does try to make obvious parallels between the encampment planned for the aliens and the apartheid-era ghettos. so when the humans are trying to move the aliens out of district 9, we're clearly meant to disapprove, which only makes sense if we anthropomorphize the aliens, who are, as has been said, rendered more human than the cannibal nigerians.

aw c'mon you can't seriously be defending cannibal nigerians.

the deadliest senders of spam

it's an action movie.

which is fine. and if no one was treating it differently than independence day or transformers, then there'd be no arguments about its allegorical significance or narrative coherence.

well, i'm treating it better than transformers because it's much better than transformers. does that count?

well yeah but it's being called the best sci-fi film in years [via little white lies]. the gunk in this was just as stoopid a plot device as the 'allspark' in transformers.

yep, it was.

what sci fi movies do you like?

this was a well-made film. just not as good as cloverfield.

― history mayne, Saturday, September 19, 2009 6:56 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

cloverfield was pretty zzzzzzzzzzz after the first viewing

i don't really watch films twice tbqh.

lol i just searched ilx for _the hurt locker_ and there was no thread on it. it's not sci-fi, but j/s, that film is way better, for examp.

kathryn bigelow

cloverfield was basically ok but i felt no empathy with the dinosaur/alien/metaphor for environmental issues

it wasn't a metaphor. to paraphrase kingsley amis it was about being scared of a bloody great monster.

this movie came out like a month ago, shouldn't you be having inane arguments about jennifer's body by now?

yeah that was a rubbish point. i had a heavy lunch.

(xp)

this movie came out like a month ago, shouldn't you be having inane arguments about jennifer's body by now?

― congratulations (n/a), Monday, September 21, 2009 3:37 PM (39 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

a++ post, what a fucking hero.

who is history mayne

Dom.

Guys, we need our macguffin to be very plausible and accurate here, I think is what people are getting at.

um what? they're fucking aliens. how is finding them disgusting and annoying "racist" ffs?

Well, I was thinking of them as intelligent beings who would ideally be treated equally. Perhaps there's a better term.

i think the movie is interesting to the extent it is NOT an allegory. no, it's not 'really about' apartheid nor about post-apartheid. the aliens are not ZA's black population, nor are they its incoming refugee/criminal population. those things are there as themselves!

refugee/criminal population

^^ this term meant very provisionally btw, granting that argument is ahem problematic.

Just saw this. Excellent, certainly the best SF movie I've seen since Children of Men. Contrary to some above, the first fifteen minutes or so are the weakest part of the movie -- parallels with social studies class too thickly brushed upon the screen. Once the faux-doc is mostly gone, it's a very good action movie without much slack.

I think the movie is quite intelligent but not because it draws parallels with apartheid; it wouldn't actually take much intelligence to do that, and I don't think the movie is really set up to draw those parallels. Nobody in this movie is the good guy, right? Van der Merwe is content to leave C Johnson to get killed by the commando. C Johnson is happy to tell van der Merwe he can be de-prawned if it'll get his fuel back. And surely the closing scene of the prawns ripping up and eating the commando is meant to explain exactly what kind of "help" C Johnson intends to bring back from the home planet, and what things are going to look like when the prawns have the upper hand; so that the one time van der Merwe appears to be, at last, doing good, he's actually bringing down destruction on the planet. Which kind of kills any parallel with apartheid and the way it ended.

Written that way it sounds like cheap nihilism but I found it authentically interesting to watch, and found most of the time that I didn't really know where it was going.

Agree that it's not any kind of specific, pointed allegory for apartheid, but I don't think it sets out to be. Apartheid's in there, of course, but the film is more concerned with the relationship between xenophobia, dehumanization (i no) and fascism in a general sense. I'd say that it presents itself as a non-specific allegory for man's historical and ongoing inhumanity to man, accepting comparison to any number of historical events and eras without directly corresponding to any one thing. Apartheid, internment/death camps of various sorts, oppression of native peoples, etc...

And I sort of disagree with eephus. I think that C Johnson IS consistently presented as a decent "man", a good guy. It's only the sight of a torture/slaughterhouse dedicated to the destruction of his friends that pushes him towards any sort of violent action. And I think it's absurd to expect much compassion from him for VdM, given the situation. Remember the "abortion"? While CJ didn't see that particular incident (iirc), we get the impression that it's something that happens with some regularity, and that VdM has done it many times.

Still found it massively disappointing, even if it wasn't "bad".

This has been beat to death upthread, but history mane OTM about the Nigerians. Portrayal of these guys as drooling, degenerate, voodoo-crazed CANNIBAL maniacs seriously undercut what seemed to be the intended message. Not enough to entirely wreck the flick for me, but more than enough to raise an eyebrow. Or two.

Also:

With the exception of two adult aliens and one child, they were depicted without exception as a single one-note archetype. [... ] In the film we saw, other than the three "smart" aliens, zero out of two million had formed any kind of community (or plan to escape); zero out of two million had negotiated a different relationship with humans than the standard one...

― sean gramophone

This is a fair complaint, and I was kinda bugged by it, too -- at least at first. But I eventually came to the conclusion that the aliens' whole existence was a sort of minstrel show. They were putting on an act for their overseers, in order to defuse suspicion, fear and hostility, and also to delay the inevitable appropriation and exploitation of their technology. They were doing this in order to buy time to gather fuel for their escape, and also to ensure that they had something to escape in when the time came. Everything else was for show. Don't think that the movie is entirely clear on this point (plot was generally fulla holes), but I suspect that this is/was the general idea.

thought this ws as good as or slightly better thn traffic

Yeah, I liked it to. Someone up thread called it the best sci-fi flick since Children of Men, and that's exactly my take on it. Somewhat similar flicks, too. Combat/action/suspense oriented, but also allegorical and vaguely political. Both present gritty, in-the-moment, worm's-eye-views of much larger situations that only slowly become clear as the viewpoint characters travel through them.

TOOOOOOOO, I liked it too. Dammit.

it was rubbish because i disagree with the actions of that one character that time.

So I found it pretty entertaining, but I think the movie's basically a big mess (for the reasons stated above re: non-main alien actions being completely inscrutable and Nigerians being so grotesquely drawn.) The best sci-fi acts as a funhouse mirror to our own world. Other than dire warning about the military industrial complex it's hard to know what to make of anything else this movie is on about.

They were putting on an act for their overseers, in order to defuse suspicion, fear and hostility, and also to delay the inevitable appropriation and exploitation of their technology. They were putting on an act for their overseers, in order to defuse suspicion, fear and hostility

Seeing as how the movie started with them being slaughtered to gain access to their technology and shuttled off to quarantine due to suspicion, fear and hostility, seems like this "minstrel show" of rutting, theft and wanton violence was a really bad idea.

there's nothing in the movie that legitimates that reading.

(contenderizer's)

i mean, are the cannibal-nigerians also putting on an act?

yes, they were all actors

I'd say "almost nothing". I thought that the Christopher Johnson character was intended to show us what the aliens were really like, beneath the pretense. But I agree that that read doesn't entirely hang together, and isn't well-supported by the film. After all, CJ was presented as smarter and more "human" than his fellows from the get-go. I suppose one might just as reasonably assume that the rest of them really ARE simpleminded drones fit only for cat food squabbling. That's not, however, the impression I got. The film's problem (if it is one) is that it's much more concerned with immersing you in the experience than in making any real, clear sense of it. As a result, the parts are all independently interesting, but they tend to disagree with one another. Could say the same thing about Inglourious Basterds, but I thought that film made a virtue of the dissonance.

came to the conclusion that the aliens' whole existence was a sort of minstrel show. They were putting on an act for their overseers, in order to defuse suspicion, fear and hostility, and also to delay the inevitable appropriation and exploitation of their technology. They were doing this in order to buy time to gather fuel for their escape, and also to ensure that they had something to escape in when the time came. Everything else was for show. Don't think that the movie is entirely clear on this point (plot was generally fulla holes), but I suspect that this is/was the general idea.

nah they're drones and without activity their hivemind devolves into pointless and destrcutive behaviour

c. johnson is maybe a step up, like an engineer class or something, and it had taken him 20 years to school himself into BRANE class and do something productive. (get the feeling he's been collecting the black gunk for no conscious reason for 10 years, then gradually getting smarter and more directed about it.)

PS that everyone thinks different things about the prawns' attitude and motivation is somethng GOOD about this film, not a failing

PS that everyone thinks different things about the prawns' attitude and motivation is somethng GOOD about this film, not a failing

― New Wavves

Fair point, though your theory regarding CJ's intellectual evolution is at least as assumptive as my take on the aliens' behavior overall. The fact that we don't really know isn't a failing. The film's slapdash plotting is (VdM and CJ breaking into and out of the death lab, f'rinstance).

Saying this as a fan. Loved the movie, but it had its faults.

if i had a superweaponhand i'd trash my enemy corporation's nearest office too, just sayin

Finally saw this - enjoyed it heaps. Not much to add except that for a $30 million film Weta and Image Engine absolutely knocked it out of the park in terms of fx, it looked fucking amazing.

He's only made one film, but it looks like Hollywood is already looking for the next Neill Blomkamp.
Apparently it's this guy: Fede Alvaraz. Not South African, but South American, and he's made a short sci-fi film in similar verite style to Blomkamp's 'Alive in Joburg'.

'Panic Attack!' isn't a patch on 'Joburg' imo, but Alvarez has already being mentored by Sam Rami (a la Peter Jackson with Blomkamp) on the strength of this vid, and is already on his way to making his first full $30mil feature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dadPWhEhVk

pretty cool i guess, but no where near as good as joburg

Saw this last night. Pretty damn awesome. The one thing that bugged me was the main bald arrogant military dude they kept showing being an abusive asshole to everyone and yet surviving the crazy mech and all the prawns and stuff until the very end. I guess that was a payoff seeing him eaten alive but still the way they kept delaying it felt a little forced.

Good movie though. Amazing visual effects.

i don't really watch films twice tbqh.

lol i just searched ilx for _the hurt locker_ and there was no thread on it. it's not sci-fi, but j/s, that film is way better, for examp.

― history mayne, Monday, 21 September 2009 14:24 (3 months ago)

Ha -- I just made this same comparison the kathryn bigelow thread but in favor of District 9!

By the way, I still like this movie but not as much as I did when I first posted to this thread; I do have to concede that the egregious plot holes weaken it in retrospect.

Bump.

Finally watched this for a second time, first time on DVD, last night, and, despite evil cold, thoroughly enjoyed it once again. Sure there are plot holes (how do they get to the MNU building) but I can forgive them for the set design and FX, the ideas on show, and Copley's performance - Wikus is the most appealing anti-hero.

Think I'll watch this with commentary today.

Wikus isn't really that appealing, though, is he?

Anyone who's shown laughing while babies burn within the first 10 minutes of a movie is always going to have a hard time redeeming himself, and Wikus never seemed to me to get there. He's a snivelling coward motivated entirely by self-interest - Christopher's escape to liberate the prawns is only a happy by-product of Wikus' desperation.

Having said that, Copley's performance is fantastic and entirely believable, and I really liked District 9.

Unlike you though, Nick, I felt the film's strength was in having the courage to make Wikus such an unappealing character instead of a boilerplate "good man in a bad situation".

Appealing to watch, rather than appealing in terms of character traits; he's so desperately out of depth in every area of his life that I am compelled to feel a little sorry for him.

Wikus is a weak man in an awful situation who eventually, whether by dint of an emotional maturation or by physiological (& presumably psychological / mental) change, does something selfless. It may be the alien part taking over his personality and survival instinct (survival of species outweighing survival of self), or it may be that he does grow a pair and a conscience.

totally agree with nick here, it's a much better character arc than most sci-fi movies i've seen lately

Interesting deleted scene; interview with MNU chief exec who says "it's not their ship, we know because we've taken the aliens onto the ship to help us and they don't understand it, they don't understand the technology; they are either slaves or pirates. When they arrived here, remember, they were destitute."

i've been on a ferry lots of times, but i couldn't drive a ferry- thta would be the first reading i'd make of that. MNU execs just being dense/happy to assume the aliens are stupid?

Possibly deliberate obfuscation to avert guilt.

Blomkamp saying it wasn't meant to be explicitly political, though reresentative of xenophobia in general and vaguely towards Zimbabweans; during shooting there was a spate of South African-on-Zimbabwean murders in Jberg, and he apologises for it seeming a clumsy comment on that.

Wikus meant to be anal bureaucrat and "passive racist".

yeah, and that's how i'd read wikus' attitude at the start of the film too- deliberately playing up his 'no big deal' attitude towards popping th eegg shack, for instance- just a decent shorthand way of underlining how the aliens are viewed by humans.

xp

Also he clearly just fucking loves putting aliens onscreen.

Meant to convey horrific, polluted, dirty reality of living in an S African township; asbestos everywhere.

"Bad Star Wars" he keeps saying. REALLY loves visualising aliens and Nigerians with alie weapons.

Real cow in the egg shack.

One art director's job was just to find animal corpses they could use.

Just explicitly stated that the aliens are a drone society like a termite hive.

They have a queen, generals, philosophers, etc, and workers.

Their queen is dead; decision over heirarchy of society informed insect-like design. Human-like face chosen for empathy.

"you can see it's sentient but you wouldn't wanna sit next to one on the bus"

Loves the question of whether Wikus' change also affects his brain.

Nigerian gangsters are meant to be satirical and OTT; played by S Africans and a Malawian. Blomkamp apologises to anyone who feels offended.

Fell asleep for most of the rest; damn cold.

Wikus is a weak man in an awful situation who eventually, whether by dint of an emotional maturation or by physiological (& presumably psychological / mental) change, does something selfless. It may be the alien part taking over his personality and survival instinct (survival of species outweighing survival of self), or it may be that he does grow a pair and a conscience.

Blomkamp says he hopes people pick up on this question; yay me, yay him.

At one point talking about the battlesuit he mentions Battletech = ubergeek.

I thought this was very entertaining and not too heavy-handed for sci-fi.

I HAVE FINALLY SEEN THIS FILM.

On the Wikus character transformation thing - it seems to me like he is set up to be a fairly decent sort from the word go, even if he is unreflexively doing a bad job. We do see him early on telling the soldiers not to start shooting, say, and even before he has converted that much we see him being very loth to shoot oen of the living aliens.

I was also wondering whether he is that much of a weak person form the get go... his willingness to go along with the MNU programme seemed to be as much to do with not really thinking about things too much rather than being a weak "just following orders" kind of guy. It struck me that he might also have been a creepily ambitious salaryman - working away like billyo in the office, shacking up with the boss's daughter, keenly trying to get ahead. OK so he comes across like a bit of a doofus nerd, but maybe that's what you need to be like to succeed in officeland (cf my career).

ho ho, my typos make me look like I am slipping into a faux afrikans accent.

i couldn't stop doing faux afrikaans iccents after watching this. it took days to wear off.

Fock!

"Da machines aw spreengeeng intu laf"

(they don't actually say that in District 9, but it's a "Play it again, Sam"/"Elementary my dear Watson" moment for me)

imagine the accent fun we could be having if the spaceship had gone to Birmingham rather than Johannesburg!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skizz

^^^ based in Birmingham

You're right. There's a huge market for alien-based films set in LOL accent places.

"From the director of District 9"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1823672/