It appears that quite a few of you are making assertions like "District 9 had way better acting and characters," even though you have not seen the film. For that, I genuinely thank you for the laughter.
Some of the criticism is justified, but really only by people who've seen it. The colonel, for example, starts out as a pretty damned interesting character in the first half of the movie and by the end he's pretty much become a bad guy cliche. Ditto for Giovanni Ribisi's corporate douchebag, but both are very well acted/directed throughout. Sam Rockwell is an up-and-coming actor for a reason: he's pretty damned good, and he's got lots of potential. His character is something of a grunt everyman but once you peel back the layers he's got a lot of personality. Sigourney Weaver, directed by Cameron. How do YOU think she did? She friggin' rocked. And Zoe Saldana was fantastic. Even the minor characters were well played, for the most part.
And for everyone pointing out that this is a story that to some degree has been told before, let's look at some other stories. Star Wars, for example. Would any member of the class like to tell me why the Star Wars films did so well? Thank you, Johnny, that's right. George Lucas built the entirety of the Star Wars saga around archetypes, such as the story Beowulf (guess who's Grendel?), Biblical imagery, and Flash Gordon serials, the lattermost of which provided the inspiration for the scrolling introduction to each movie.
District 9 was brilliant, I couldn't agree more. It was also a simple tale of racism and refugees transposed into a scifi world with aliens.
Probably 90% or greater of movies, novels and television shows are based either on some gimmick or on a pre-existing story. I don't see why this movie should be trashed by people who have not seen it because it translated Pocahontas into sci-fi.
Oh, and what the Hell happened to James Horner? The soundtrack sounded like Hans Zimmer!
