District 9 Review

So I just got back from seeing District 9, the newest film from Neill Blomkamp and Peter Jackson. It was a science-fiction allegory for the Apartheid era, substituting aliens for blacks; a high-minded thought experiment about the nature of man's inhumanity towards man, the overwhelming allure of power and greed, and a commentary on society's eagerness to embrace hatred over understanding...

...well, not really.

Oh sure, it sort of starts out that way. The film begins by explaining that an alien spaceship landed over Johannesburg, South Africa in 1982. I want you to think about this for a second: aliens land over Johannesburg in the 80's. Why on earth would they do that? Even assuming (reasonably) that the aliens would have no prior information regarding the Apartheid regime, why would they position their giant spaceship over a major city? Why wouldn't they find someplace that's in the middle of nowhere?

Already we see one of the film's major flaws: the premise itself. While the concept of doing a movie on racism involving aliens can be pretty effective, the whole thing falls apart piece by piece as you watch the film. The film shows us how the aliens (numbering somewhere in the neighborhood of two million) are relocated from their spaceship into a temporary camp, which eventually becomes the eponymous District 9, essentially an alien ghetto. This raises a good question: how can beings who are so advanced that they possess spacecraft capable of intergalactic travel be successfully persecuted by humans with 1980's levels of technology? Furthermore, the movie specifically informs us that the aliens possess incredibly advanced weapons which cannot be used by humans, due to their technology requiring alien DNA to activate. Why was there no resistance from the aliens when we moved them into the alien slum? The aliens are a little naive, sure, but their reactions throughout the movie suggest that they highly dislike their mistreatment at the hands of humanity and are willing to resist. I'm not saying they should have annihilated us all, but at least they could have responded to our relocation efforts with a simple "uh, no thank you."

You'll notice I haven't really touched on the story of the film yet, but that's because the story is a little...scarce. Part of this has to do with the style of the film, but I'll get to that in a bit. Our main character is Vikus van der Merwe, played by Sharlto Copley (try saying either of those names three times fast), who is an employee of Multi-National United, or MNU for short, a para-military corporation who deals directly with the aliens and has been trying to exploit alien technology for their own weapons programs. Vikus is selected to oversee a large-scale operation to move the aliens from District 9 into District 10, which appears to be a work camp of some sort. During this operation, Vikus is accidentally exposed to a mysterious alien "fluid," which had been collected by alien residents of District 9 so that they might return to their mothership and escape Earth. Vikus soon finds that the "fluid" has initiated a transformation in his own body, turning him into some sort of alien-human hybrid. MNU soon finds that Vikus can now use alien weaponry, and hopes to dissect him and reverse-engineer his DNA for their own purposes. Vikus escapes and hides out in District 9, hunted by those he once served.

Sounds like an exciting film, doesn't it? Only...here's where it gets a bit stupid on us. Vikus finds the alien who created the "fluid," who explains that it was intended to get him back to the mothership. They strike up a bargain: Vikus helps the alien recover the fluid canister, and the alien will reverse the changes to Vikus's DNA.

And the rest of the movie is pretty much this:
"BAM! BOOM! POW! RATATATATATA! EAAAAGH- BOOOOOM! COME ON! COME ON! MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!!! BOOOOOOM!"

Yeah. The second half of the film is pretty much one big firefight. No introspection, no awe-inspiring revelation about racism or humanity, not even much of a story, really. Just lots of guns, explosions, lasers, special effects and a mech. Yeah, remember that from the trailers? We get to see it blow some Nigerian dudes up. How riveting. Truly, this is a film for the ages!

Part of my frustration stems from the shift in filming style. The first half of the movie is shot mostly like a documentary, using a in-scene footage coupled with recorded interviews and archival news footage to add a sense of depth and realism to the story. Vikus even talks to the camerman at several points. However, as the film progresses, this documentary style is used less and less as the film slips into a more conventional style (although I notice that the 2000's-era trademark "shaky-cam" seems to persist throughout the whole thing). By the second half, that is to say the giant firefight, the film seems to have stopped and said: "Well, I think we've stretched this documentary thing as long as we can. Let's have some guns and explosions, and oh, what about some kind of electric laser thing that makes people explode into little chunky bits? That would kick ass!" And yes, there is an electric laser thing that makes people explode into little chunky bits. And no, it doesn't quite kick as much ass as you might think. You can just feel the social commentary leap out at you, can't you?

But perhaps what annoyed me most of all was the ending, so avert your eyes if you care about that sort of thing. Vikus gets inside the mech-suit and fends off the MNU troopers and the Nigerian dudes whilst the alien and his son activate the tractor beam on the mothership and get back inside. Then they just sort of leave. So, what, the alien's not going to use that tractor beam to, oh, say, pick up a few of the other aliens stuck in District 9? What the hell?! This guy was supposed to be the sympathetic one to contrast to Vikus's selfish desire to see himself human again. Vikus abandoned his selfish wish to risk his life to protect the alien, and now the alien is basically like: "Well, at least I'm back on the gigantic mothership. Sorry guys, I have to go, sucks to be you, bye!" Ugh. And you know what happens after that? Nothing, really. There's this short epilogue saying that the aliens got moved into District 10, and Vikus is fully alien now. So...nothing got solved really. Yup. Now don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting a happy ending, but I was at least expecting something to get accomplished! This movie basically takes its entire ending to say: "Yeah, thanks for your ten bucks, but that's all you're going to get out of me. You want a real ending? Watch 'Return of the King,' it has like eight. See ya!"

Seriously. The story is pretty much unresolved, nothing was accomplished, and the audience didn't take away any message other than "RACISM=BAD," and I didn't need a movie about bug-aliens who eat cat food in order to get that (by the way, the aliens eat cat food. Yeah, I know, I just rolled with it.). Oh sure, the special effects are amazing, but that's really all the movie has to offer us, and I could get a more developed plotline from "Tron."

It's really disapppointing, because I was looking forward to this movie. I thought it would be a science-fiction examination of basic human flaws and a morality tale about the nature of irrational hatred. All it gave me was a very rational hatred of the filmmakers, who had a great idea but then abandoned it about halfway through in order to give us some slow-motion explosions and eletric laser guns that make people explode into little chunky bits. Whoopee.

Did I mention that the film rips off other films, too? Oh, it sure does. When Vikus is first being affected by the transformation, his nose starts leaking this weird black stuff like he's infected with the Black Oil Virus, he peels off his fingernails, (my God, the aliens are turning him into Jeff Goldblum!) one of the aliens sort of looks like E.T., the spaceship is sort of like if the U.F.O. from Independence Day was built by the Combine, and the display inside the cockpit of the mech-suit looks as though it was designed by a certain Mr. Stark, if you catch my drift.

Frankly, I haven't been this disappointed in a film since Matthew Broderick was being chased around in a taxicab by some abomination pretending to be Godzilla. District 9 is perhaps 2009's biggest letdown, and I can't in all good conscience recommend this film. I just can't. Mr. Jackson, you're terrific, but I guess you can't win them all. Live long and prosper, everybody.