Looking for opinions on Neill Blomkamp

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Evonisia

Your sinner, in secret
Jun 24, 2013
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Yeah, basically thread title my beautiful people.

Though I already despise his attitude with making this new Alien film, chances are I will voluntarily see it when it comes out. Haven not seen any of his films (I know he did District 9 and Elysium, not sure what others he's done), I'd kinda like an impression on him before I delve into any of them. That way when the Alien film comes out I'll be all prepared to realise that the Xenomorph is a metaphor that will bring tears to my eye ducts, or that it's completely stupid and makes Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection look like cake glossed with icing to the haters.

I wonder whether the Xenomorph will be able to see in his film.

Captcha: Hit the sack. Will do, it is late after all.
 

PainInTheAssInternet

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Dec 30, 2011
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He has only two solid statements. The first is that he wants to make a movie connected to the first two Alien movies. This implied that he didn't want it to be connected to the latter two, which leads to the only other solid statement. He didn't mean that he would make a movie excluding the canon of the latter two.

I think he's a competent director. Keep in mind that Scott and Cameron were both practically amateurs when they made their respective entries. Alien was Scott's second film ever and Aliens was Cameron's fourth film he had been involved with in any capacity. Blomkamp has them both beaten considerably in terms of experience when contributing to this franchise. That being said, I think his style will amount to a more flashy Prometheus with visuals that aren't as compelling.

EDIT: After looking at Chappie's commercial, something occurs to me. He's the smarter version of Michael Bay. I also seem to remember MovieBob saying that not everyone would get the political subtext of District 9. I was mystified by this statement since the only way one could miss it is if they were completely ignorant of District 6. For crap's sake, he just flipped the number for his title. If it was called District 7, he would have named his movie District L.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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I don't have any. Blomkamp is an okay director. Elysium was an okay movie. Just another action flick dressed in sci-fi garb with a slapdash can't-we-all-get-along message. I think it's hilarious that the acting champion of the black/hispanic proletariat is fucking Matt Damon, but whatever. Edge of Tomorrow was more earnest about itself and considerably more fun.

I'd much rather have Blomkamp try his hand at an Alien movie over Ridley or Cameron though.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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Blomkamp's movies are very politically motivated, but I think that the political motivations that he holds and his directing style are actually pretty well suited to the Aliens franchise.

I mean, the Aliens movies are largely about how corporations shouldn't be trusted and are willing to put any number of people in peril for the sake of possible profit, and I can totally see Blomkamp taking that premise and running with it. His movies aren't exactly subtle but outside of Alien none of the Aliens movies are particularly subtle.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to a Blomkamp directed Aliens movie. I'm basically expecting the action level of Aliens but with a much greater anti-Weyland-Yutani plot-line and a much greater focus on corporate misdeeds. So, I guess thematically I'm expecting robocop with xenomorphs.
 

Tanis

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Aug 30, 2010
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I liked Aliens 3 AND Aliens 4, so the whole 'it's not cannon anymore' kind of irks me.
 

Fox12

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Jun 6, 2013
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I can't stand him, but I'll try to give a serious explanation as to why.

He's clearly very political, and he wants to make a statement with his films. District 9 was about apartheid, and Elysium was about socialized medicine and class divide. He wants to be an artist, that much is clear, but all of my problems boil down to this: he's an incredibly poor writer, and an uninspired (not bad) director. His characters tend to be rather one dimensional, and exist more as symbols of class warfare then as actual people. This would be okay if the plots of his films were solid, and if his use of metaphor was well done. Unfortunately he lacks all subtlety. For instance, there is a painfully bad scene in Elysium where the cartoonishly evil businessman says to dispose of the main character after a factory accident. He then turns his head and we literally see RICH tattooed on his neck. Further more his plots are filled with holes. Essentially, he's a discount James Cameron, since he lacks the technical skill and strength needed to make up for his weaknesses.

As for Alien? The series already had elements of class warfare and corporate intrigue, but it worked because of SUBTLETY, something Blomkamp lacks. The crew in the Nostromos was divided, but nobody was really right or wrong. Ripley and the scientists could be snoody educated assholes, but their skill sets were important, and they were able to create weapons and plans. Parker was greedy and somewhat lazy, but when push came to shove he was courageous and looked after the other crew members. He even dies trying to save poor Lambert. Neither side was really right or wrong. The characters were emotionally complex. They were people. Meanwhile, Weyland-Yutani was never seen. It was an ominous force of evil that was both very close and very far away. It's important that the company is only represented by the computer and the android, both of which see the crew as expendable. The crews fate was in the hands of a unknown galactic creature, a faceless corporation, and the emptiness of space.

Blomkamp will CERTAINLY bring his political baggage into this film, but do you think he'll treat it as subtly as the first film did? Of course not. Weyland-Yutani will probably be bumbling idiots who get blown up by a rocket launcher, while the Alien will have wearing a Westboro Baptist Church T-shirt, and will only target the homosexual members of the group. Gone will be the careful attention to detail that existed in the past. Essentially, we're going to get a preachier, less exciting version of Aliens. It won't be as bad as some of the later Alien films, but it will still be very very poor.
 

HardkorSB

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I personally don't like his movies.
I like some of the action, the art design and the special effects but that's about it (he is a more experienced art designer/3D animator than a director after all).
The writing in his movies isn't very good (lots of distracting plot holes, blunt metaphors, lack of logic and sense), some really good actors give really bad performances (e.g. Jodie Foster) and the shaky cam is really annoying even by shaky cam movie standards (especially in Elysium).
District 9 was at least mildly entertaining but Elysium was a chore to sit through (I did laugh at a scene where a grenade blew a guy's face off though :)
His movies are also very joyless.

I've got no problem with him doing the art design and helping out with the CGI on something but writing and directing are definitely not his strengths.
 

faefrost

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Jun 2, 2010
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I'm not a huge fan of his stuff. It feels like whatever he puts to film is his overbearing political spin mixed liberally with images and settings lifted wholesale from other movies and anime he enjoyed growing up., it's hard to see Elysium and not see the echoes of Battle Angel Alita in its world and environment. Alita would have been a vast improvement over Matt Damon. Chappie looks like he rewrote Short Circuit to be edgy and dark, then swiped character design from Patlabor and Appleseed. District 9 is interesting but way way too heavy handed in its messaging.

He has a good visual style for an Alien movie. I'm just fearful of the script and dialog. Ridley Scott delivered the greatest horror movie ever, where the hidden and unnerving subtext was being stalked by an Alien rape monster. Of violation and fear and desperation in isolation. Every thing in Alien was carefully crafted to set your nerves jangling with subtle fear queues of looming violation. Whereas with Blomkamp? We're gonna get some sort of unsubtle Alien based Occupy Wall Street.
 

Ambient_Malice

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He is a talented filmmaker who fails, perhaps deliberately, to not smear his ideology all over his art. Gavin Hood demonstrated similar tendencies with his movies. (And he is also South African.) This isn't a problem ordinarily unless he starts injecting his politics into every single story regardless of whether it serves the story. Blomkamp feels the burning urge to inject his politics into everything he touches.
 

Fiz_The_Toaster

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I haven't seen Elysium, but I plan on it just to say I saw it. And to see what the big damn deal about it is since I know people were all in a tizzy about it when it came out.

I really enjoyed District 9 though. I mean, yeah, it had a lot of politics in it, but that doesn't mean it wasn't an enjoyable film. I'm hoping he does a sequel since I think the story of the first movie can be expanded upon given what happened.

I know when I saw it with a bunch of my friends we've dubbed the movie, "The Tales of Jiminy Cricket and Christopher Prawn". We're horrible people. :D

So, I'm pretty positive about the Aliens movie that he has in the works. Should be awesome.
 

Casual Shinji

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I've only seen District 9, and while it had some good stuff in it... I don't know, there was a blunt force at work when it came to the story and characters that really annoyed me. The entire political side of it wasn't so much an allegory for apartheid as it was just switching out black people for space bugs. It's like he feels the need to share his political stance by way a freaking dump truck.

Elysium and Chappie just seemed like more of the same, so I never even bothered with them and likely never will.

And seeing as the Alien movies have always been about an evil corperation wanting to weaponize a force of nature and not caring who they have to kill in order to do so... Yeah, Blomkamp is gonna have a field day with this. Remember how even Cameron couldn't stop himself from throwing in that little line about how humans are worse than the Alien cuz GREED? Ugh.
 

Aerith

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District 9: Average movie with a below average ending. One viewing is enough to last me a lifetime, tbh.
Elysium: ... Eh. Same deal as District 9, but a slightly better ending and I'd at least watch this movie again if it came out on TV.

Blomkamp has a lot of promise, but he needs to chill out for a while and focus on smaller project to really hit his stride.
 

Cowabungaa

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I'm a pretty big fan if only for his film's aesthetics. I like the more grounded nature of it all, the gritty nastyness of Blomkamp's sci-fi. He's pretty much the only real cyberpunk director these days (not that Alien is cyberpunk). On that front I think he's a very good fit for Aliens.

Subtle he is indeed not, something I personally have zero problems with. Whether that'll fit with the Alien franchise remains to be seen, but I'm more hopeful than after first finding out JJ Abrams was going to make the new Star Wars (something I'm becoming more cool with, FYI). I don't mind his politics either, seeing as I'm a pretty leftist bastard already.

But who knows, maybe he'll become more refined. Artistic development and all that.
 

happyninja42

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I haven't seen Elysium, but I saw District 9. It was ok. I found the main character fairly unredeemable, considering he was calmly burning the eggs of the aliens, while talking to the camera, like it was some kind of pest control. And he never really did anything to make me actually root for him. He was just a bigoted human asshole, who suddenly got stuck in a bad situation, and found himself on the opposite side of his own culture's prejudice and hate.

I actually liked the ending though, and found the sort of tragic end of it fairly fitting.

As for him doing Alien, *shrugs* meh. I'm not a rabid fan of the Alien franchise, but I enjoy it. I didn't bother seeing Prometheus, and never will. The fact that the director of D9 and Elysium is doing it has no real impact on me one way or another. I'll do what I always do with these type films, I'll wait until the movie reviews of the online critics that I value come out, and if they say it was a decent flick, I might go see it. I don't bother with movie nights very much.
 

Zhukov

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Dec 29, 2009
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District 9 was fantastic.

Elysium was... decidedly not fantastic.

I remain vaguely interested in his Aliens-related efforts.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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HardkorSB said:
District 9 was at least mildly entertaining but Elysium was a chore to sit through (I did laugh at a scene where a grenade blew a guy's face off though :)
And yet that somehow didn't kill him! What the hell!
 

Darth Rosenberg

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A Blomkamp Alien film coming relatively soon after Alien Isolation are the best things that could happen to the IP.

...if, arguably, things couldn't really get much worse, to be fair, as the xenomorph's reputation had long since been vandalised by awful films (of which I don't count Alien 3, btw).

My points of reference for Blomkamp are District 9 - which was remarkably inventive, had some great action, and a surprisingly touching personal throughline - and Halo Landfall, which was entirely badass. As for his politics? I think it's slightly absurd for people to criticise a director for including social elements they care about in their art. Not seen Elysium yet, but I thought District 9 was quite canny with its social commentary (social commentary which needs to be in more mainstream films, frankly).

He also seems like a very honest bloke, admitting where he could've improved on previous films. Very few directors are that blunt.

Looking forward to seeing Chappie, too. Sigourney Weaver features in that, and I get the impression she and he would have a good rapport going into the Alien film, which should hopefully bode well.
 

K12

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Dec 28, 2012
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Big fan personally. Harsh and aggressive political message in the first half which gives the crazy over-the-top sci-fi action violence in the second half some real weight to it. District 9 is better than Elysium but they're bother really good.

People criticise him a lot for not being subtle with the political messages in his films but I don't think that really makes sense as a criticism when you're dealing with something like Apartheid. Do we really need to be indirectly suggesting that Apartheid was a bad thing, seriously?

It's perhaps fairer with Elysium as it deals with less clear-cut issues and some people may think that, as an allegory, it's too extreme to have any real weight to it. I disagree though I do think that Elysium is a poorer film because it doesn't do enough world building before storming ahead with the action. It also doesn't have a protagonist as unique or engaging as Wikus Van De Merwe.

I think a lot of people don't like action films to be "about something" in a way that can't be ignored but that has never bothered me in the slightest (as long as the intended message has some validity to it).
 

Galletea

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Sep 27, 2008
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I like his films...well so far anyway, not that 2 films is a great indication of how his career will continue, but so far I like his mix of clear political messages, sci-fi and decent characters.It brings something a little different to a world of over-polished action films and super shiny visions of the future with sarcastic superheroes. I haven't been annoyed by over shaky cameras and explosions at weird angles or anything, so his direction is better than a few directors already.

I expect his Alien film to be good, as I've found when dealing with people and emotions he seems to manage pretty well and when you're dealing with an anorexic penis head monster it is really the people and their reactions that drive the story, if you don't care about them then the film has failed.
The difficulty will be if they succumb to fan pressure and put too much of the xenomorph in it, which could make a decent film a pointless exercise in excessive cgi.