What was so awesome about District 9?

[Rancid0ffspring]

Maybe because instead of a film about Halo, D9 was made... which would you prefer?

I consider D9 to be one of the best sci-fi films I've seen. I cared about the characters, the action was great (the armour suit anyone?) & as many people have said already its quite reflective of human beings being severe arseholes that treat anyone as a second class citizen given the chance (I have little faith in my fellow man)

Also it was little known & it crept in under the radar. I never heard of it till I saw it on Moviebobs review, although that said I ony heard about The Crazies last week

 

[teutonicman]

The main reason I really liked it was it made me feel for 3D images. The movie made me care about a bunch of 1's and 0's.

 

[Rancid0ffspring]

Wikus is wonderfully unlike the standard movie hero. Typically regular-joe-to-hero stories have a guy who's a bystander or a complicit-but-tangential participant immediately flip out and become a selfless moral paragon as soon as he witnesses an injustice being done to other people. "No," says District 9, "that's not how real people act." Wikus is mired in evil and he doesn't care. He's acting purely on selfishness and desperation for the bulk of the film. It takes Wikus nearly two hours on screen to discover the heroic impulse to altruism, and he only does it once he's been so broken down, feeling like he has nothing left in the world and only seconds away from death. Only then can he pry himself off the ground and stand up selflessly for others. That's fucking big, yo. That one moment (and everything building up to it to make it work) is some of the best character development I've ever seen in any movie. And it's a huge sacrifice because Wikus is giving up something that, for most people, is bigger than life: he's giving up his whole identity. Wikus finally discovers altruism through giving up on himself.

Wedded to that is a larger-scale dialogue about how all of us treat the distressed -- refugees, the homeless, starving "third-worlders", &c. Sure, we sympathize. But they're dirty and frightening and alien to us so we keep away from them and care about them on our own terms -- from a distance and only when it suits us, just like the academics and protesters in the film -- and ultimately our sympathy amounts to nothing because we refuse to engage. In the whole story, only Wikus can overcome that distance, and only because he has all comfort and security and identity stripped away from his own life.

Compared to the theme of other films, especially other sci-fi/action films, this is amazingly, singularly thoughtful.

-- Alex

This! You broke down Wikus perfectly. I thought he was a real twat most of the film & you are right, his actions were desperate but always self serving. Obviously though by the end of the film his actions were helping more than just himself.

 

[Weaver]

You really have to delve into the philosophy of it.
What does it mean to be human?
What are human rights?
Should "human rights" apply to all sentient beings?

From someone who has taken a university course titled "philosophy through science fiction" I found District 9 to be an incredible wealth of philosophical experiments, especially when pertaining to morality. It's also fun to examine it with a Lockean sense of the self when Wikus starts to turn into a prawn.

I don't really know how people who haven't read tomes of philosophy saw the movie, but that's the sort of things the movie made me think about.

 

[Lazarus Long]

despite my growing tiredness of epistolary films.

Films made up of documents/letters?

In a way. I don't know how correct my usage of the word is, but I'm talking about the found-footage, fake-documentary thing. Like Blair Witch, Cloverfield, and Diary of the Dead. Maybe a quarter of the film is meant to be camcorder footage.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Because the guns were awesome. And the dead Humab Baby/Prawn Mutant in a jar was fucking freaky.

 

[ad5x5]

It was a good movie because it took the time to build all the characters and motivations.

Look at how Wikus treats his 'friend' (the black subordinate when they first go to D9 to distribute eviction notices) - he doesn't give him a bullet proof vest and says "You'll be fine!" in a glib manner, yet he does the right thing in the end, risking his life to save Christopher and son.

It juxtapositions the best and worst of humanity

Worst:
"I want your arm."
"This body is worth millions, so we need to start harvesting organs now."

Best:
"I love you, Wikus. I don't believe those things they've been saying."
(Also self-sacrifice and friendship run deep)


I also think it works because it isn't set in the US. No offence to Americans but I get a bit fed up of seeing the same few cities recycled for sci-fi on earth (New York I'm looking at you). (On a seperate note I get very fed up of everything in Britain being set in London)

It works because it's an allegory (think that's the right word) for the plight of refugees from Zimbabwe to S. Africa.


It works because there's the right mix of comedy, serious themes, character building and action

Finally it works because the characters are believable 3-dimensional people, not generic cut-and-paste cardboard characters.

 

[derpascha]

I don't think District 9 was a bad film, but I do think it's overrated.

My main problems with it were the unlikeable main character, the incredibly dumb way it draws parallels between the Prawns and black people during the apartheid (a race of people who are dumb, lazy, prone to addiction, easily taken advantage of, unable to take care of themselves without strong leadership, etc. is more than a little racist when they're your movie's stand-ins for black Africans -- not to mention that most real blacks in the movie are a bunch of violent drug-dealing cannibals), and the schizophrenic split between 'intelligent' social commentary and a generic action movie

The action was good, the acting was good, and the story certainly had a lot of potential. It's a shame they had to muck it up with shoddy scriptwriting.

Fair enough if you disliked the guy, but the movie isn't trying to get you on his side. He *is* an unlikeable selfish asshole right up until the very last moments, as AlexP said quite eloquently already.

Also, your crafting a stereotype of the prawns based on a limited view of what they're like. I'm in no way saying you're a rascist, just that perhaps your jumping too quickly to assign the old "Blacks are lazy etc" sterotype to them. They're an oppressed minority in the movie. That's all they need to be to show you how terrible it is that they're treated in the manner that they are.

The Nigerian gangs in the movie are definately violent, but that's got a lot to do with the fact that gangs are violent. There are other black characters who are just other regular joes. Not too mention that one of the most selfish, crass and callous characters is Wikkus himself

EDIT: I forgot your final point, but come to think of it, I have no idea what you mean. The story is woven together quite well, I think.

 

[turbo4400]

good plot, extremely original and amazing guns

 

[Outright Villainy]

Giant snip

This is a great summary of wikus, he's such an unlikely hero because he's such a realistic human being: inherently flawed. While not without redemption there's no denying he's a bit of an asshole for a lot of the film; again this is what made it all the more convincing when he did start acting more selflessly. For the first 20 minutes I didn't even think wikus would survive and was waiting for the flawless boring protagonist to show up. When he didn't I was amazed at the balls of the director to go with such a realistic approach, and it was all the better for it.

 

[TheGreatCoolEnergy]

Seriously it was an alright film, but it was nowhere near as good as some other films I've seen (Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Taken). Now I'm no troll, and I respect others opinions, but I just don't get it. Please explain what you liked about the movie .

Lets see:

-Good plot
-Interesting technology
-Well developed characters
-Good use of medium(lighting, sound, camera angles, that fun stuff)
-Touched on real world issues
-Gritty in a way
-Well done special effects
-Cheaply made (D-9: 25 million, Iron Man: 140 million)
-Believable villains

On top of that, the story actually pulled me in. I found that I actually cared what happened to Christopher Johansen, Wikus, and the Prawn as a group.

Opposite of that was Iron Man. Although a special effects master piece, it was hard to get into. The characters were over sized and shallow, the plot wasn't very good, just stuff like that.

In short, District 9 was good, Iron Man/Hulk/ect was medicore.

 

[Hazy]

it made an ultra-violent action movie with a great plot and excellent acting on a budget of 25 million $

First post = Ninja.

Not to mention it had some actual meaning behind it, on top of being an ultra-violent action movie with a great plot and excellent acting, created on a shoe-string budget.

 

[TheGreatCoolEnergy]

Wikus is wonderfully unlike the standard movie hero. Typically regular-joe-to-hero stories have a guy who's a bystander or a complicit-but-tangential participant immediately flip out and become a selfless moral paragon as soon as he witnesses an injustice being done to other people. "No," says District 9, "that's not how real people act." Wikus is mired in evil and he doesn't care. He's acting purely on selfishness and desperation for the bulk of the film. It takes Wikus nearly two hours on screen to discover the heroic impulse to altruism, and he only does it once he's been so broken down, feeling like he has nothing left in the world and only seconds away from death. Only then can he pry himself off the ground and stand up selflessly for others. That's fucking big, yo. That one moment (and everything building up to it to make it work) is some of the best character development I've ever seen in any movie. And it's a huge sacrifice because Wikus is giving up something that, for most people, is bigger than life: he's giving up his whole identity. Wikus finally discovers altruism through giving up on himself.

Wedded to that is a larger-scale dialogue about how all of us treat the distressed -- refugees, the homeless, starving "third-worlders", &c. Sure, we sympathize. But they're dirty and frightening and alien to us so we keep away from them and care about them on our own terms -- from a distance and only when it suits us, just like the academics and protesters in the film -- and ultimately our sympathy amounts to nothing because we refuse to engage. In the whole story, only Wikus can overcome that distance, and only because he has all comfort and security and identity stripped away from his own life.

Compared to the theme of other films, especially other sci-fi/action films, this is amazingly, singularly thoughtful.

-- Alex

Bravo good sir. You get a cookie or something.

 

[Lamppenkeyboard]

I can't really say what I loved so much, most of the guns and such have been done in some form of media. I really would just say that we have different tastes in movies. I liked Taken and Iron Man, but I absolutely hated the Hulk movie.

Oh, but I did love how Wikus said fuck every ten seconds.

 

[TheRundownRabbit]

I like how it portrayed one of the most likely ways we would treat aliens if they came to this planet, and it would be kinda realistic

 

[SonicKoala]

What was so awesome about it?

Nothing at all. Initially, I was rather hostile towards it, and my anger towards the movie has cooled down over time, but I still found the story to be pretty stupid, the acting was underwhelming (and the main character was particularly unlikeable). I suppose the "social commentary" presented by the film was interesting, but other than that, I didn't care for the movie.