yeah, i think I’m going to see it this weekend and it seems to me that it wont be as good as I think it will. All of my friends are hyped to see it and I’m pretty sure they’ll like it even if it is actually bad because they like bad movies. But I’m sure I’ll get shit for saying something bad about it, but we’ll see.
>i thought this would be an intelligent, interesting genre shattering film.
Really? I’ve watched Neill Blomkamp’s original “Live in Joburg” short a bunch of times (his commercial spots, as well) and enjoyed it; and geeked on the efx in the District 9 trailer. But, really – I’d be shocked if Blomkamp could make a unique and interesting feature film from this material—doesn’t seem at all likely.
I really enjoyed the movie. Saw it the other night and got to meet Neill and Sharlto, really great guys. I thought it was smart, thrilling, original story(story structure wasn’t though) and a great multifaceted performance by first time actor Sharlto Copley. The aliens are extremely well done and the way he changes your view of them in less than 2 hours is something else. Sure it starts out as a smart movie and descends into action madness, but I kind of liked that. The movie transformed along with the main character. I also loved that there was no particular message rammed down your throat as well.
On the negative side, there are a lot of spots where it goes into a more conventional structure. I felt a lot of moments were rushed because of the style of the movie, though that could have been because the budget was only 30 million and they couldn’t dwell too much on scenes with special effects in them(most of the movie!). I have a feeling that if/when they do a sequel, it’ll be interesting to see it’s budget jump in a big way and still try to maintain that world created by Neill and his team.
Are the Alien Nation producers going to sue them? They should. Fckng rip offs.
I thought it was incredible – 4.5/5
Ya, I thought it was a great film. Of course, I kept thinking “HALO” during it, but still… (It evolved from that concept, I believe…)
PJ: you found " the story ultimately unsatisfying and far less intellectually interesting that expected"
Come on, are you serious? It’s a summer action flick with aliens and it wasn’t intellectually interesting enough? Unlike all the other intellectually interesting sci-fi blockbusters.
The aliens looked cool when they blew up. What more could you ask for.
The first half of District 9 was so good that the second half was, while well made, rather disappointing.
I saw District 9 last night, and my feelings are mixed. I thought it was going to be a better movie than it actually was.
The CGI was fantastic, and the aliens really did look real and life-like.
I guess I thought it was going to be less “generic.” I thought it was going to be more than just a typical summer action movie. More pathos, less action. A lot of the stuff on the screen I’ve seen before in movies like Iron Man and Transformers.
One of my biggest questions was, why didn’t the aliens fight back? Their weaponry in a lot of ways was far superior to that of the humans. I know in the film they mentioned that these particular prawns were the “workers,” that they have a bit of a hive-mind and cannot operate intelligently without upper command. Violence is one of the most base-like things. They lash out with their fists. Why not with their robots and suped-up weapons?
I’ve been spoiled by The Dark Knight so to me this is brilliant compared to anything else Hollywood has shitted out all year. While the film does eventually lose it’s sociopolitical backbone and reduce itself to a ‘chase flick’ the themes addressed are retained till the end. The rusted, tarnished rose at the end really sold me on closure for Sharlto Copley’s character, who gave a fantastic performance for a first timer in front of the lens. I think it’s good that a solid R-rated blockbuster ($30M, amazing) could express cultural divisions without boring the dumber audiences who are just there to see a mystery unfold and some crazy action moments. The splashing from the zapper still hasn’t left my head. It isn’t as original as everyone is highlighting it to be, but at the same time everything in the world is bundled so well that it feels fresh. We don’t know why they can’t go back and we may never know if Christopher will return three years later, but that doesn’t matter because the surge on the ground and the social parallels to our current world order make up for extraneous exposition. Also really dug that they brought in the God aspect through voodoo and gangstas feeding off the Prawns. There is this disgusting, raw quality which is only enhanced by the verite effect – the first film for the YouTube generation, IMO.
“the first film for the YouTube generation, IMO”
Actually, that would be Redacted. Not that I’m endorsing it.
“The first half of District 9 was so good that the second half was, while well made, rather disappointing.”
Saw it today, and I couldn’t agree more. Still a solid sci-fi though. Maybe a bit heavy-handed. 3 stars out of 5.
I sort of agree with PJ on this, although I had no expectations of this film so I can’t say I was disappointed. The trailer that was released a couple months ago completely underwhelmed me and I have to say that the only reason I saw this film was because the critical response has been so high. On the surface it looked like just another mindless summer blockbuster and now having seen it, I’m a little confused at why it’s been getting so many positive reviews. I was completely bored with this film and kept thinking, “When is this over so I can theater hop to Funny People?”
The effects were fine but given the storyline, I expected something far more serious in theme and tone. I think the actual idea of aliens being stuck on earth and segregated is an interesting concept – unfortunately it was never flushed out into a compelling feature. Like PJ mentioned, the main character was completely unlikable and this was my biggest problem following the story. I didn’t care about ANYONE in this film and it almost felt like a procedural mixed with high octane action sequences. I think if they had focused the story on a multi-layered, compelling protaganist who we could grow to really root for, I would have been more involved. But instead, I got a weak stock character that I was supposed to care about but instead I just wanted him to die.
I’m completely unimpressed with Neil Blomkamp. If Peter Berg is the next Michael Bay, Neil Blombamp is the next Peter Berg.
I agree with PJ and especially with Fredo’s comment: If Peter Berg is the next Michael Bay, Neil Blombamp is the next Peter Berg. Nice.
I’m surprised at the great critical response this movie has received. Like most others here I found the main character completely unlikeable as well as unbelievable. He’s set up as a caricature but we’re still supposed to find him a compelling protagonist? The rest of the film felt like a videogame yet considering how hard it strives for realism the delight the film had in dismembering bodies and exploding soldiers made me feel pretty uncomfortable.
I also found the whole racial/alien allegory worryingly ambiguous….I haven’t read Armond White’s review yet but I can totally see his point that the film is in fact more racist than not……
Overall I thought it was a good sci-fi film. Not exactly what I was expecting but it was definetly a hell of a lot of fun to watch in theaters with surround sound blasting.
Was this film supposed to be a comedy?
I really did not want to see this film but decided to give it a chance (i became a little more interested after watching the short). i was mostly afraid of it being too preachy, because you could tell ,from the trailers, that there was going to be some sort of racial undercurrent bubbling throughout the film…surprisingly, it wasn’t as preachy as i anticipated.
I think the film was decent, it wasn’t mind blowing or emotionally shattering,still, it was pretty cool. i think that the story and idea are completely original, which is nice to see in newer film and the hand held camera gave it a more personal feel (i am a sucker for the hand held now). I disagree with the notion that the characters were unlikeable. i was surprised that i actually felt something for Christopher Johnson and his son, and i was rooting for them to succeed.
Although i enjoy high-brow film where i need to really think and pay attention, i think to fully appreciate film, if not life, you need to be able to let go. District 9 was a film that i had no expectations for and i just let myself get immersed in the story, no matter what it was going to be. i find it odd that some people are critiquing District 9 as if they were expecting it to be the next Citizen Kane or Seventh Seal. let movies be movies and don’t worry about what you are going to or not going to get out of the film cognitively.
Josef K., exactly how I felt
Like many here, I thought this was genuinely entertaining, albiet with caveats. The sociopolitical commentary wasn’t really interrogated too deeply, but it was still there… a study in how oppression and desperation can turn a civilized race (species) into criminals and undesirables. I also agree that the characters were, in fact, fairly likable… I was actually pretty interested in how Van De Merwe could vacillate between sympathetic underdog and callous racist. The devolution of the movie into an action flick seems sloppy in retrospect, but I have to admit, I didn’t care at all while I was watching. By the time Van De Merwe climbed into his mech, I was ready to see some ass-kicking.
The complaints about plot-holes are valid. Christopher was pretty unrealistic… a deus ex machina enlightened intellectual in a community obviously ruined by squalor. I’m not entirely sure why he was so clandestine about his efforts to collect “fluid,” and why the rest of the Prawn community wasn’t right there with him, looking for subversive methods of escaping to the mothership. He seemed to be the only one with any real agency.
Still, I enjoyed it.
CHRISTINE: I wondered why the aliens didn’t fight back for a while, but then I realized that they have the same problem as any oppressed minority: they’re ultimately outmanned and outgunned, and since their ship is disabled, they have nowhere to escape to. They can’t fight the whole human race, so assimilation is their only option.
The trailer was almost nothing like the story. It should have followed through on the mockumentary aspect; delving into the mystery as to why they are here, who they are and a broader understanding of what the public think, instead of just using it as an arc to start the film.
they could have gona many different directions with the narrative. Thats what makes the film so unique. I happen to like what they did with it but i can see why some people didnt. You cant please everyone.
dp
By the second half of the movie it started using the most hackneyed suspense devices, that’s the part that ruined it for me. My, what a coincidence that they come to the alien’s shack just as he has finished preparing the fuel to get to the mothership. and on and on, so ridiculous.
I agree with K. The film needed to explore its set up a lot more. As it is, it’s half formed and worringly ambiguous. The first act is set up as this satire with aliens representing stereotypes of blacks but then the rest of film ditches this idea for its video game action. That wouldn’t be a problem so much except the film presents us with these racist stereotypes but then stops short of interrogating them. The effect is that it actually ends up confirming them! What annoys me most though is that critics had no problem criticising the genuinely radical Bruno for its ‘gay face’ but District 9’s aliens got a free pass because it’s high brow sci fi entertainment….
I take a more indepth look at the racist subtext of the film here: http://daveguzman.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-district-9-racist.html
Second half settled into standard screenplay structure. Plug in solution to a problem. Quest to find liquid. Spaceship can leave..etc. Cool concept. I was hoping it would be a little more experimental in a narrative sense. As a teacher of screenwriting…I could see the plot points being checked off…as it went along.
reposting from my contribution to the “Exploring District 9” thread which seems to have hit “dead-thread” compared to this one:
“I went in knowing next to nothing and though I was surprised at the course the movie took, I found myself simultaneously stressed and numbed by the stylized violence (the bodily kind and the editing/camera kind). I thought the documentary style seemed more an excuse to cover up insufficient preplanning at the script stage, but despite not enjoying it overall, ultimately, I was amazed at the few moments when I found myself emotionally engaged with characters I’d never expected to be (numerous prawn victims including Johnson and the sympathetically chameleonic Wikus who is by turns a lovable goof, a loathsome goof, a nasty racist, a petty bureaucrat, a selfish victim of circumstance, a selfless hero, and a clown mortified for our entertainment).
Unusual movie. I was too confused by the film’s shifts and not sold on their own success to ever take its obvious race-relations allegories seriously."
I also was thinking more yesterday about the doc style as an excuse to cover up sloppy storytelling, and how odd that is considering ever shot that was settled on would have had to have been fairly well thought out in advance in order just to incorporate CGI, so it can’t have been conceived as haphazardly as I originally presumed….yet it still feels flat in that way. Odd.
I always recommend going into a film with an open mind rather than with expectations.
All too often a major film comes along with baggage attached to it that has nothing to do with what the filmmaker intended.
The press, the media and the marketing campaigns frequently take a movie way beyond its expectations.
Think about if you made a film that three months ago no one had heard of and some major critic came along and said it is the best film of the year. And then the marketing campaign uses the critic’s quote to promote your film.
Suddenly as a filmmaker you are, in some ways, saddled with this hype that you have nothing to do with and you didn’t necessarily ask for.
I mean, you want people to like your film but you don’t want them to kill it with too much praise. [Although the money payoff may make it all worth it in the end…]
But I say, try to judge a film on its own merits not on the merits set by the press or the critics or the buzz or your friends.
I’ll give an example: I was at a festival a few years ago to see a relatively rare film made in the 80’s. The film was introduced by a big name critic who made the cardinal sin of telling the audience that this film was THE best film of the past 20 years. Right there he essentially killed the film for many of the viewers. How could the film live up to that hype? It couldn’t. And, judging by some of the comments afterwards, it didn’t.
[I won’t name the film for that very reason – although it is a great one].
This movie was amazing, I thought it was very unique and original. Also had a message of universal brotherhood, if you could look past the different/maybe weird and unique style of the movie.
I remember Richard Schickel talking about Stanley Kubrick and saying something along the lines that critics were often looking for things that weren’t within the frame. Meaning, I guess, that too often we look at what we wish a film is as opposed to what it actually is.
Now District 9 is no Kubrick film, that’s for certain. But I think this is a case where the critical acclaim that was heaped on it came about due to it being pretty smart……for a summer film. This is not a perfect flick by any means, but it does exactly what it sets out to do; it entertains a summer crowd and also contains some interesting allegorical ideas. I thought the main characters were fascinating, particularly Wikus, who I’m not sure was ever intended to be a hero.
To me, the entire film is about empathy, and our ever shrinking supply of it. Wikus is forced through his trials to attain empathy, and it’s more believable to me that occasionally (as when he betrays Christopher to attempt to fly the ship) his selfishness outweighs his newfound sense of empathy.
Is it the masterpiece it was feted as? No, but it’s not really trying to be. It’s a Twilight Zone episode, or an old 50s sci-fi comic with “a message”. But it’s light years better than dreck like Transformers and GI Joe, and for that, I think it deserves a lot of its acclaim.
Pierre-Joseph
From the buzz i heard (sometimes hard not to be swept up by viral hype, especially when the trailer was genuinely intriguing) – i thought this would be an intelligent, interesting genre shattering film. It was not truly awful but failed on so many levels, it did not pique my interest and failed to enthrall. Some special effects were quite amazing but I found the story ultimately unsatisfying and far less intellectually interesting that expected. The unsympathetic main character aside, I did like the alien (Jack?) and his son however the film offered nothing new to me as a film goer, with many pedestrian performances – a definite case of "non-professional actors or at the most B acting glaringly obvious . I found myself unengaged when i really wanted to be absorbed (as per any film going experience) – at least when a film does transport you into its world you can ignore any obvious failed logic issues. When plot holes and obvious faults in the diegesis can be overcome if the world of the film is made to feel authentic ie) bad performances can be ignored etc unfortunately I was left waiting for this predictable film to conclude for at least the last 45 minutes. The potential to make an original and thought provoking sci-fi film full of political comment etc was there but did not come to fruition. A friend of a friend had expectations so high he had a hope for some kind of new “2001” – oh well its good to see a disappointing film now and again… makes those good ones we see ever more so.