I went to a free screening of District 9 tonight. The first trailer had so much promise. An alien ship arrives on earth and seems to be stuck over Johannesburg. Many aliens have come down to the surface and now live in a walled off shanty town. The trailer shows an alien being interrogated and asked how his weapons work. See all the real world parallels this brings up? Fiction used to explore reality? Forget it. The movie doesn't really do anything with it.
There's no explanation for how the humans and aliens understand each other's language. It begins with humans walking around the district handing out eviction notices and expecting the aliens to sign them. Seriously. All the humans are sadists or idiots or usually both. You don't want to root for any of them. The aliens all seem to be worker drones, so they're dumb too and this is why no one is repairing the ship (though you'd expect workers to... never mind).
The film unfolds as a documentary, with cuts between interviews with people and events of the story. But it's not consistent, at times it's showing events not in the documentary even though it's still using the same shaky handheld camera. And some events in the documentary are filmed from too many camera angles. Even though there are 1.8 million aliens in it, this is the least crowded shanty town ever. The characters often make very stupid decisions and the film definitely glorifies the violence as they find more and more ways to make bodies go splatter. Air support shows up in force in one scene and doesn't show up at all in another. No reason given.
There is a plot, but I won't describe it. I suspect it's far more sensible than that of Transformers 2, but I was mostly disappointed in how it developed and what they were ignoring. The real problem is we don't find out enough about the aliens or even how humans reacted to their arrival. There could be a sequel but I doubt it. They had a great premise and obvious parallels to apartheid; but wasted it telling a story only slightly better than Cloverfield's and not having anything more to say about apartheid. As an action movie, it's pretty good, and the special effects are very good; but rewatch that trailer, is it an action movie? Which film would rather see?
*Spoilers*
Ok, I'm completely shocked that Rotten Tomatoes is showing 10 out of 10 favorable reviews for this film. I really wanted to find out more about the aliens and how their arrival changed earth rather than all this Fly-like stuff happening to Wikus. Some of the things that bothered me:
If you're sprayed in the face by alien goo and start feeling ill, you go to a doctor. If you see someone sprayed in the face by alien goo and watch him start getting ill, you suggest to him that he goes to a doctor.
Why did the ship come in the first place? What happened to it? Why did they let the aliens off the ship in the first place? Couldn't the smart aliens have hidden on board? If they were looking through the alien technology to find the fluid, wouldn't there be a ton of it on the ship? Why didn't the smarter aliens ever talk with the humans? Were there more smart aliens? What happened to them? Just what is their relationship to the worker drones?
MNU reminded me of Haliburton but even I think Dick Cheney has more heart than these people. And really, if you have the first specimen with a trait you're interested in, you don't dissect (or vivisect) him immediately. Especially if he's married to your daughter.
If you've setup a shanty town for the aliens and are going to move it and obviously don't care much about their lives, you do not come up with a process that requires getting 1.8 million alien signatures by walking around the town. Instead you bring in buses and say they'll take you to a place with lots of cat food and watch them get on board.
If you have a secret ship hidden underground, why not put your secret lab and stash of fluid in it, rather than in a shanty without a lockable door?
Doesn't everyone know you can be tracked by using your cellphone? Hell, you can be tracked by just having your cellphone, even if it's off (you have to physically remove the battery).
I've seen a few reviews praising the arc that Wikus goes through, starting out as an ass and then feeling so much for him in the final scene. That's not an arc and I don't think he changed too much. First he starts off treating the prawns as dumb sub-humans. A fine parallel to apartheid, but of course in this case it's actually true, the prawns aren't human and are dumb. They are at least sentient and Wikus doesn't seem sensitive to that at all. So then his transformation begins and he starts to panic. There's not character change there, just a new situation to deal with. When he finds Christopher he's surprised he's intelligent and that changes his view of the prawns, but then it should, it's a different kind of prawn. But even still, he's all about his own self-interest and that doesn't change until the very end when all seems lost and he kills many soldiers so Christopher can get away. How cliche is that? Even Christopher saying I will return in 3 years reminded me of Daniel Day Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans, except in that film he did. At the end Wikus turns into a prawn and misses his wife. Awww. I bet a lot of the other people who died in this film had families they loved and miss, but the film doesn't even make an attempt to address that. And given Wikus' initial behavior and how quickly her father gets her to turn against Wikus, how strong do you think that relationship was to begin with? The film didn't do enough to make me care about him.
You have enough fluid for interstellar travel and hand weapons more powerful than anything else on earth. Are there any ships weapons to use before you leave? It's a city-sized ship with 1 million passengers on it, most all of whom are worker drones, wouldn't you expect to need more than two people to pilot it? And really, the humans don't want the drones around, couldn't you at least consider taking them with you? Wouldn't it be an interesting story if the human civilians wanted them to go but MNU wanted them to stay for the weapons? What would they have to negotiate with MNU to let them all go? Maybe leave weapons and hints to develop the tech to use them and what effect would that ultimately have on earth?
No comments:
Post a Comment