Escape to the Movies: District 9

[Fearzone]

Saw it last night. 100% agree with the video.

Sometimes when critical reviews play up a movie I go in with high expectations which spoils the experience. Not this time.

I was sitting there as the credits roles wishing I could watch the sequel (District 92? District 10?) right there, right then--I was game for another 3 hours of movie.

 

[MovieBob]

Regarding Budgets

$200mil Transformer 2
$170 million GI Joe
$200 million Terminator Salvation
$150 million Star Trek

$30 Million District 9

Seriously a $30 million budget can do that, and you needed $150-$200mil for the other summer movies wtf is this shit?

It has some of the best special effects & acting ive seen this year for 1/5th the cost

I saw the movie it was awesome, also at the end Peter Jackson does a cameo as an MNU PMC and gets zaped by the supergun.

It's nearly impossible to find hard details on where all the money goes in a movie budget, but what little I could gather put Shia LaBeouf's salary at approximately $5 million for Transformers 2. Actor salaries alone don't account for the difference, but it leads me to believe there's a 'scaling' issue at work, where all those involved, from the director to the effects companies, demand higher pay for being 'established' or otherwise well-known.

Again, I haven't been able to find anything remotely like a credible source of information on budget specifics, so it's all speculation.

 

[OiXerxes]

I have seen it twice since it came out and completely agree with the video. Probably the best movie I've seen all year, although I was unable to see UP... I'm so glad that the Science fiction genre isn't getting butf*cked like it was in Star Trek and Terminator Salvation.

 

[D64nz]

To a degree you have to say Weta studios who did all the lord of the rings Spec effs, who have close ties with Peter Jackson may well be just that good. Thats pure speculation, but I have to say I was far more immeresed with District 9 than the Terminator movie. They looked like the dirty prawns they were, and I forgot that they arent even real the whole time I watched the movie. By real I mean is in either some guy in a bad comtume that old school movies did, or as in computer generated characters aka golem.

Oh and one thing that I haven't seen commented on, is the amazing yet sublte humour that features in it. Damned funny if your smart enough to pick out the jokes. Like it's damn clever if you see the ovbious metaphore in whats going on in the world both currently and for centeries.

Lets just say it's gonna be bad south africain accents all over the place for the next few months. And bad as in all us fans copying them.. badly

Don't yew wave yaw tenticales at me you far-ken prawn!

 

[D64nz]

As for th

Regarding Budgets

$200mil Transformer 2
$170 million GI Joe
$200 million Terminator Salvation
$150 million Star Trek

$30 Million District 9

Seriously a $30 million budget can do that, and you needed $150-$200mil for the other summer movies wtf is this shit?

It has some of the best special effects & acting ive seen this year for 1/5th the cost

I saw the movie it was awesome, also at the end Peter Jackson does a cameo as an MNU PMC and gets zaped by the supergun.

Consider this is the same guy that made his first movie Bad Taste in the weekends over two years and just with the help of a couple of mates and no budget. I was worried when I heard he was first doing the lord of the rings and happy to have so badly misjudged his ability.

To me he's up there with Edmund Hilary, Peter Snell, Peter Blake, and John Briton. All people that have a strong passion for something, and go out and just make it happen.

 

[Guitar Gamer]

alright, lets go see district 9
*grabs coat* I'll pay everybody come on, buy your own munchies though I have already made the mistake of not saying that once

 

[matt87_50]

this was a tough one for me to draw an opinion, honestly, i'd never had such a hard time deciding what I thought of a film.. had elements of black hawk down, some point of views like cloverfield...
I think my biggest problem was coming out of G.I joe the previous week, then going strait into this.

I think if you asked me if I thought it was a good film, I'd say it was a great film, best I can think of in recent memory.
But if you asked me if I liked or enjoyed it... I still don't really know... (and I'm a big sci-fi fan.. at least I think I am...)

 

[MB202]

About the Star Trek thing, you mentioned it was poorly written? No offense, but I didn't find the original series that much better. Everything was either corny or overacted.

 

[Grahav]

I will see.

Only this to tell

 

[MovieBob]

About the Star Trek thing, you mentioned it was poorly written? No offense, but I didn't find the original series that much better. Everything was either corny or overacted.

From where I sit, most works of art/entertainment need to be judged at least in part in regard to the "world" in which they first arrived. For example, it wouldn't really be fair to take "points" away from the painter of Egyptian heiroglyphs because he didn't use as varied a color-palette as a laser-printer can today.

Likewise, IMO the original "Trek" series needs to be judged against other genre-television (or television, period) of the time. In which case it stacks up remarkably well... only certain top-tier episodes of "Twilight Zone" come close or exceed in terms of intelligent-ideas and interesting philosophical/scientific concepts being hashed-out in a narrative form. Now, in hindsight, is the dialogue a bit "arch?" The characters broadly-drawn? Yes. Welcome to television, circa-1966.

The 2009 movie, by contrast, comes off pretty poorly (again, IMO) versus many of it's contemporaries - i.e. other big-scale scifi blockbusters. It's far, FAR below District 9, Dark Knight, Watchmen, Iron Man, the first-two Spider-Mans, Serenity, the first Matrix... hell, it's not even as good as Fifth Element or Event Horizon. It's not even as good at it's own genre as Starship Troopers... and that was a PARODY

 

[Seamus8]

Perfectly put. Although I will say I hate Event Horizon with a vengence! Not because it was bad but because I saw that when it first came to video at 4 am. Insomnia makes some input senses go crazy.

Starship Troopers was a parody? I mean there was alot of tongue-in-cheek in it but I see it as more of a social critique than a parody. When I hear parody I think Galaxy Quest or something. Then again my opinion is usually voided when I tell people I hated the first matrix for being a slightly better executed Dark City ripoff.

S'why they pay you the _____ bucks.

 

[715]

Hey the writing in Star Terk XI was far better than Voyger (7 seasons) and Enterprise(5) and the last two Star Terk movies.

And really you think it's worst than Starship Troopers? 9 got rip of the the crap that was making Star Trek bad, the Prime Directive (I don't have to say why), the Vulcans being total dicks and no one saying anything about it, Voyger, taking cool villains and making them pussies, while at the same time did a good job getting the feel, it wasn't there but since it takes place years befor TOS that can be forgiven.

And Event Horizon is the best movie you listed there.

 

[dubious_wolf]

holy crap im blown off my feet. I got that this was some sociopolitical dialogue... but I expected condemning propaganda style commentary...
(all we are saaaaayiiiiing, is give peace a chaaaaaaance!) The kind of stuff that falls flat on its face because no one wants to hear how mean and horrible they are to third world countries... but this gives me a more positive outlook... thanks movie bob!
(I still can't for the life of me figure out what everyone has against Halo's story i thought it was pretty good... especially when they decided to present the second game from 2 points of view, it gave the story the classic foil style story telling feel.)

 

[0megaZer0]

and so the pron's plan to takes over the world begins...

with this movie that has garnered all you mindless drones to sympathize with the aliens, whenever an interstellar race of aliens does pop in for a visit, all of you mindless idiots, fueled on by the compassion for interstellar life by this film will waltz right up to the mothership "it's ok! we'll let you go home if you want to, we just want to be friends!!" right before the alien menace blows you, all of your idiot friends and of course movie-Bob to Narnia.

and just for the hell of it, you'll all be horrifically and gorrily turned into disgusting bug creatures in the process. see ya next time.

 

[Crazygit]

LIES! This is not the best movie of summer 2009 go see the Hurt Locker before making silly statements!

 

[Cavouku]

and so the pron's plan to takes over the world begins...

with this movie that has garnered all you mindless drones to sympathize with the aliens, whenever an interstellar race of aliens does pop in for a visit, all of you mindless idiots, fueled on by the compassion for interstellar life by this film will waltz right up to the mothership "it's ok! we'll let you go home if you want to, we just want to be friends!!" right before the alien menace blows you, all of your idiot friends and of course movie-Bob to Narnia.

and just for the hell of it, you'll all be horrifically and gorrily turned into disgusting bug creatures in the process, see ya next time.

...I'm not sure what you just said, could you try summarizing that in a "like it/don't like it" phrase?

You're worried this will make us sympathetic towards "alien" tyrants or something? I've always wondered; even if there is life on other planets, who's to say they're smarter than us? Earth is fairly old, universe wise, and humans've been around for a few million years.

Nothing wrong with a little understanding of an enemy anyways. Gotta' see it from someone else's point of view. Besides, trust me, the people in charge are gonna' blow the shit out of anything that walks into its airspace uninvited anyways, people don't get a say.

But because that was so silly a comment, I'll assume you were joking

 

[DrScoobs]

us brits cant see it yet and it is coming right at the end of the summer holidays. surprisingly this movie is a 15+ so i will be able to see it (thank god). i will be pre-ordering my tickets soon

 

[superbleeder12]

Amazing movie, already seen it 2x. I'm going to keep an eye out for Neil Blomkamp's work in the future. Also, any movie that has Sharlto Copley starring (which probably won't happen, because copley was a CG animator friend of Blomkamp that helped him early in his career, so blomkamp helped him out by making him the star)

 

[Unit Alpha]

District 9 was a great movie, no questions asked. And to think they did it with only 30 mil...

 

[ShadowKatt]

I saw it, and I loved it. I loved it so much, I wanted to marry it and have a bunch of smaller movies with it. However, I went to see it with three other people, two of which fell asleep halfway through and one that just sat and texted the whole time. I was the only one that enjoyed it. I think this movie is going to become a cult classic if anything. Not enough people are going to like it for the reasons mentioned in the video, just that small niche who will be utterly devoted to a good movie.