I sat glued to the screen for the whole movie. The action is non-stop, but it's the strength of the story that really makes it work. It's the best science fiction movie I've seen, certainly the best alien invasion movie. It's a mixture of shoot-em-up and intelligent thought-provoker (without being pretentious or taking itself too seriously), with early Peter Jackson (he executive produced) splatter movie elements and touches of laugh out loud humour along with some real poignancy.
It is pretty bleak, but mainly in its view of the cynical multinational who are the motivating force behind the story, and who semm to have taken over responsibility from legitimate government - it's set in a recognisable but indeterminate future, but one which is at least 20 - 30 years in the future, a time reminiscent of "Children of Men" and is on a par with that movie for it's worldview. I loved it.
(One rider that might be of interest for some: the f-word count is pretty high but most of it is delivered in such a distinct South African accent that it doesn't have the same negative impact it usually has for me.)
posted
I thought it was excellent too. Felt very 'real' to me, for all it was a movie about aliens landing (above) Johannesburg, South Africa, heh.
The protagonist especially felt very real. Y'all'll know what I mean when ya see it, I think.
I wouldn't say the action is non-stop, though. In fact, the first 20m or so of the film is jam-packed with exposition. This is a film where I'd suggest it's pretty important not to show up a few minutes late. The big surprise came in the second half of the movie, when it turned from a drama/thriller/suspense sort of deal to those things plus an action movie, with lots of action!
I won't say it's the best sci-fi movie I've ever seen, but it easily contends for the 'what might actually happen if aliens arrived on Earth' film I've ever seen, possibly being the best of those. For example, you're not going to find any Independence Day connecting a 1990s laptop to an alien computer network nonsense in this film!
It does take a very dim view of certain segments of human society, but to be fair to the film the way it does it is very plausible as well.
SPOILERS! . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
Among the questions it asks is this: what might happen if Blackwater were running security on a ghetto full of undesired aliens?
posted
Yeah, you're right Rakeesh, the action isn't non-stop, but it's so intense it just seems that way. The first, expository part of the movie is just as entertaining in its own way as the secon part.
Posts: 867 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
I just saw it and am now decompressing. EL and I just went to see it this evening and were both quite impressed. It really is a very intense story.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Yeah this is the guy who was originally lighted to do the Halo movie, and when that fell through, Peter Jackson felt the dude deserved another chance and gave him the opportunity to do this film instead.
In the artspay ichway evolvray arounday onspicuouscay etishizationfay ofay igh-hay echtay eaponaryway we can see the director efinitelyday iving-gay a latantbay inthay of owhay ellway ehay ouldway andhlehay a aloay oviemay (eryvay ellway).
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
They still want to work on the Halo movie from the last issue of IGN i read last week, so we still might see it happen in a few years.
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Harder to read than it is to hear. Not sure why you used it though, nothing spoilerish in there...
Posts: 867 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
I especially enjoyed the camera work, always jumping between hollywood, guerilla styles with the random in-place camera.
SPOILERS / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / To respond to Rakeesh, alien holocaust. He really should have left that stupid suit on auto pilot. / / / / / / / / / / / / END OF SPOILERS, AND THE HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY AND ITS NEVER COMING BACK It was really nice how no two aliens looked 100 percent the same. Movies have a hard enough time doing that with human extras let alone complex cg models.
Posts: 2302 | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
Loved this movie. One big question I have has to deal with the subtext of....
(Spoiler) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the conversation between the father and son praun about their home planet. I read into it that they couldn't return to their home planet for some other reason (destruction?) rather than that he lost the fluid. Anybody else think this? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
It's weird to see Spoilers in a thread that very clearly states No Spoilers.I appreciate them being clearly labeled but is still a bit frustrating since I want to read non spoiler comments but dont feel comfortable scanning ANY of the comments now. Oh, well.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I also liked the movie a great deal, but I think that a lot of the graphic blood/guts etc. was gratuitous. The impact of the story could have been made without all of the splatter, and to me, I would have enjoyed the movie more.
I suppose there is probably a demographic for it, however, and I'm not it.
Posts: 1099 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BandoCommando: I also liked the movie a great deal, but I think that a lot of the graphic blood/guts etc. was gratuitous. The impact of the story could have been made without all of the splatter, and to me, I would have enjoyed the movie more.
I suppose there is probably a demographic for it, however, and I'm not it.
District 9 was trying to original on all counts, including weaponry. Star Trek was the very to first to have deadly alien weapons that kill silently and cleanly, but all these years later its very boring when someone does a copy/paste so as to avoid showing what weapronry does. How in the world that one gun (the super messy one, trying to not divulge much info, but you know which one) did that to the target... but I want one.
Posts: 2302 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: otnay luentfay inay igpay atinlay?
I believe the correct translation is,
otnay uentflay inyay igpay atinlay?
If you have a second letter L word like "fluent" or "blew" or "clue" you take the L along with the first letter and do the rest as normal. "uentflay" "ewblay" and "ueclay"
I was taught that vowel first words had a "yay" sound instead of an "A" as that helps differentiate between vowel words and consonants.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I saw this today with the boys in my family. We also seemed to enjoy it but none of us were singing it's praising or discussing our favorite scenes like we would with most movies.
I appreciate what they were trying to do from the film style to the atypical action hero and the political and social content. But while all the pieces for sheer awesomeness were there, the execution wasn't. It felt cheap and campy and the subtext wasn't anything particularly deep or thought provoking.
It was okay but I have no desire to sit through it and the disgusting gore ever again.
posted
You have to have an awareness of Peter Jackson's first movies (Bad Taste; Meet the Feebles; Braindead) to get the splatter stuff and the black humour.
Posts: 867 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
I didn't have a problem with the blood or the dark humor. I just didn't think it was sci-fi in the classic sense. This was a surprisingly emotional action movie about what would happen to one dude if. It's not a question of what would happen to humanity or society if.
Let's face it, most of humanity is entirely unaffected by District 9. There's a handful who choose to be there and one guy who got stuck. That's it.
Though I have to admit, I loved the irony of the black South Africans celebrating that the aliens are being kept away from everyone else. That amused me.
I'm also not a big fan of the modern, ambiguous ending. I know, it's a valid stylistic choice, it's just not my favorite. I would have preferred an epilog.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
The director has said, flat-out, that he would love to revisit the District 9 universe if the movie does well. And considering that it's more than made back its production budget in its first weekend alone, I suspect the chances of seeing "District 10" are pretty damn good.
That's another great thing about this movie. It creates such a rich world, yet focuses so closely on one tiny aspect of it, that it's almost stupidly easy to start imagining all sorts of different directions the sequel could go.
*SPOILERS BELOW*
* * * *
Regardless of whether a sequel is eventually made, I thought the ending was perfect - giving neither complete closure, nor a comic book movie-style cliffhanger ending. It wraps up exactly what it needs to in order to provide the audience with emotional closure. You don't need to see Christopher come back with the Prawn Armada to understand that his mission was a success. And that brief glimpse of Wikus after his transformation was complete summed up everything about his character's journey, both physical and mental, without resorting to a montage, or a slow-mo reunion, or any other narrative tricks a "typical" movie might have used.
posted
Tarrsk: Could you put in some spoiler warnings? Even though the thread that says (No Spoilers) I get that people want to talk about the details, and it's obnoxious to stop and put them in, but please oblige me.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:I just didn't think it was sci-fi in the classic sense.
This is why it's one of my favorite sci-fi movies. I am beginning to have hope that filmmakers are figuring out that speculative fiction can be used to tell more than one kind of story.
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quote:I just didn't think it was sci-fi in the classic sense.
This is why it's one of my favorite sci-fi movies. I am beginning to have hope that filmmakers are figuring out that speculative fiction can be used to tell more than one kind of story.
Paging Harry Turtledove...James Cameron on line one.
posted
Tom's feelings are exactly mine. To me it's the best sort of science fiction, the sort I want to READ, as opposed to the Star Wars type space opera and the gungho rubbish of Independence Day.
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posted
I've edited the post title to indicate that there ARE spoilers, as people are getting upset that something that says there aren't spoilers actually has them. Hope that makes it easier.
Posts: 867 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
There's at least one other person in the thread who didn't like it. You're not alone.
I'm not looking forward, however, to "District 10". With a bigger budget, there's a good chance they'll go more "Hollywood", and that increases the chances that it will suck.
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
I hope they don't do a sequel. The main reason I liked this movie is that it felt new and fresh to me.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Launchywiggin: There's at least one other person in the thread who didn't like it. You're not alone.
I'm not looking forward, however, to "District 10". With a bigger budget, there's a good chance they'll go more "Hollywood", and that increases the chances that it will suck.
Blomkamp has stated that, if he were to make a sequel, he would want to remain within the same $30-45 million range for the budget, precisely because he likes the freedom (read: absence of studio interference) a smaller budget allows. I think, insofar as we can predict these things 2+ years ahead of time, the putative sequel is in good hands. Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
Saw this the other night with my family. My brother and his fiancee walked out about fifteen minutes in. She didn't realize it was going to be "messy" and didn't want to have nightmares, so off they went. My dad, best friend and I stayed and greatly enjoyed it. I think as far as pacing goes it sort of hung in the air a bit for the first half. I wasn't really sure what the plot was, and that's because as far as the overall movie went, it didn't really have one until about halfway through. I thought it was going to be about them moving the aliens to District 10, but that ends up barely being a sub-plot to the main points.
But all that exposition was necessary to really allow us to fully grasp what's really going on. The "main" story of trying to get Christopher to the ship so he could go home was good, and there were maybe a half dozen points where I either thought Christopher was going to die or that he was going to fail, which impresses me, because outside of Joss Whedon (who I generally ASSUME will kill the most beloved character), I usually assume that no matter what, something will intervene to make sure the good guys win. But here, with so many flawed and unpredictable characters, I really had no idea what was going to happen. That alone earns the movie some major points.
And as fun as the last half was from the point of view of someone who likes the occasional shoot em up CGI orgy of explosions, really it was about Wikus' character growth, from easily reviled casual baby killing bigot to a man willing to sacrifice his life in order to protect that which he only days prior hadn't even hesitated ordering the death of. And I believed it. From the moment he was in the shooting range and they put the alien in front of him and he protested, and when he saw the testing facility, and was about to have the same thing happen to him...the transformation was very fluid, believable, and impressive to watch, and that's where I think the bulk of the greatness of the movie lies.
Yes I'm interested to see what happens in District 10. Does Christopher come back and liberate his people, and does he help Wikus just like he promised? (He was pretty believable) And do we find out exactly what happened to begin with? There are enough unanswered questions to fill in a second movie and have it be impressive on its own. Expectations will be exceedingly high for a sequel though, but that's the natural consequence of having a surprise hit.
I think some of the complaints against it are valid, though I think Ebert missed the point by dismissing the third act as an explosion fest. The point, for me anyway, was how far Wikus was willing to go to save Christopher and his son. The fact that we got some visually explosive eye candy out of it was maybe catering to a certain demographic (of which Ebert is not a part of), but I don't think the point is lost. SOME stuff didn't make a great deal of sense, but a good enough movie drags you along without too much protesting against suspension of disbelief, and this one succeeded for me there.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I really liked this movie. And I usually hate science fiction movies.
Wikus was a really good character. I love (from the post movie perspective) that I pitied him at first, hated him within 15 minutes, and that I hated him almost to the end. Almost.
And Lyrhawn, I totally agree with you about the suspense - it was VERY effectively maintained. That this was done almost entirely without the typical Hollywood arbitrary withholding of POV-known information really impresses me.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I thought the movie was fantastic. I do wish that movies would move away from the jiggly camera/ motion-sickness-inducing film style that seems so popular nowadays. I would have walked out if the movie hadn't been so good. As it was, I felt fairly ill after the movie.
quote:the conversation between the father and son praun about their home planet. I read into it that they couldn't return to their home planet for some other reason (destruction?) rather than that he lost the fluid. Anybody else think this?
At first, I was reading too much in to it. But I think the rest of the context of the movie made it clear that he was referring to just the lost fluid.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Yeah I'm not always a fan of shaky cam, but this wasn't nearly as bad as Cloverfield/Blair Witch type stuff. Not NEARLY.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I dont mind the shakey cam, it adds variety and a bit of a personal feel when done right, (used regularly in The Shield.) In the case of Cloverfield and Quarintine it was interesting how the fpc was used to hide certain images and really confuse the viewers, hopefully making them all the more interested in whats going on. One thing is for certain though, shakey cam cancels out my pet peeve in movies, foreshadowing, I dont want to watch over Freddies shoulder while he stalks up on his prey! I'd rather be as surprised as the victim.
Posts: 2302 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: I dont mind the shakey cam, it adds variety and a bit of a personal feel when done right, (used regularly in The Shield.) In the case of Cloverfield and Quarintine it was interesting how the fpc was used to hide certain images and really confuse the viewers, hopefully making them all the more interested in whats going on. One thing is for certain though, shakey cam cancels out my pet peeve in movies, foreshadowing, I dont want to watch over Freddies shoulder while he stalks up on his prey! I'd rather be as surprised as the victim.
The line you have to be careful of though, is that the shaking isn't so jarring that you're either confused or disoriented. Cloverfield crossed that line for a LOT of people. I was on the cusp. I would have enjoyed it better with less of that.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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The main character wasnt super easy to sympathize with and I dont recall laughing at anything, and it didnt make senes for him to go down there in the first place. Some things felt predicatable too.
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
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posted
Yeah, it doesn't make sense for the director of a massive project to be doing the grunt work...except. If the director wants and likes publicity and wants to stage a dramatic photo op. Then it makes sense. Although that doesn't translate to "good idea."
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Oh. To District 9 in the first place. Yeah, that was kind of dumb, but it was a minor detail overall. Disbelief easily suspended there.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
You don't pick a director so close to the commencement of an operation like that. He was more of a coordinating team lead, the sort who is on the ground.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
It helps that Wikus is consistently making bad decisions - he's not that smart. For instance, when he -
Spoiler!
- decides to try to fly the shuttle by himself. I nearly starting banging my head on the seat in front of me. (But in response to the character, not the movie itself.)
Wikus trying to fly the shuttle was the biggest issue I had with the movie. Not because he was able to fly the shuttle, it's that he wanted to. I kept thinking that sure, he might make it to the mothership... Then what? What did he think he'd accomplish by himself?
The other little problem I had was how proficient he was in the mech-suit. A piece of equipment that advanced is completely intuitive? My suspension of disbelief failed there as well.
[/Spoiler]
Other than those small complaints, I thought the movie was fantastic. And really, those were small complaints when compared to the overall quality of the rest of the movie.
Posts: 1831 | Registered: Jan 2003
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