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Denise and I went to see District 9 last night. It's better than many of the SF movies out there, but falls far short of being excellent. I'd give it 6 out of 10 stars.
Once again, it was one of the movies where I saw fantastic potential in the concept. The first 15 minutes of the film were engrossing. I love SpecFic books that deal with social, cultural, and/or political conflict, and this film seemed to be set up to show that in abundance: South Africa has a million+ alien refugees show up on their doorstep, so they have to take care of them by putting them in a compound; then -- as the story opens -- we learn that they need to move them to another, larger compound further away. You have a bumbling human bureaucracy in charge of them. You have an alien race that really looks different, whose very appearance most people would find horrific. You have groups of humans who are exploiting them for profit. Ah, the potential for lovely dramatic conflict...
Except then the film goes south. Really far south. We never truly see the aliens' culture, their society, their mores, their quirks. We never see alien-ness in them; they're depicted as stereotypical poor people. We don't see their culture, their values, their beliefs, the way of life they've lost, the way they structure their families or rear their young or... well, anything about them. All we know is that the look weird and they like cat food.
Rather than an engrossing examination of how we treat the Other (and by thematic extension, people in our own culture that we consider Other), the film devolves into a stereotypical monster flick as the main character (without any explanation of why a fuel source would cause this reaction) begins to transmute into one of the aliens, uncovers what seems to be a rather stupid conspiracy to learn how to use the aliens' weaponry, and the whole thing becomes an sf version of Die Hard, with a running gun battle dominating the last half-hour of the film. What could have been a lovely, insightful, and gritty drama turns into an action-adventure bloodbath. All the potential of a poignant storyline is wasted.
That's a shame.
District 9 was an OK film, but nothing more. It's just another blood-and-popcorn movie. And because it could have been so much more, I found it to be a vast disappointment.
Once again, it was one of the movies where I saw fantastic potential in the concept. The first 15 minutes of the film were engrossing. I love SpecFic books that deal with social, cultural, and/or political conflict, and this film seemed to be set up to show that in abundance: South Africa has a million+ alien refugees show up on their doorstep, so they have to take care of them by putting them in a compound; then -- as the story opens -- we learn that they need to move them to another, larger compound further away. You have a bumbling human bureaucracy in charge of them. You have an alien race that really looks different, whose very appearance most people would find horrific. You have groups of humans who are exploiting them for profit. Ah, the potential for lovely dramatic conflict...
Except then the film goes south. Really far south. We never truly see the aliens' culture, their society, their mores, their quirks. We never see alien-ness in them; they're depicted as stereotypical poor people. We don't see their culture, their values, their beliefs, the way of life they've lost, the way they structure their families or rear their young or... well, anything about them. All we know is that the look weird and they like cat food.
Rather than an engrossing examination of how we treat the Other (and by thematic extension, people in our own culture that we consider Other), the film devolves into a stereotypical monster flick as the main character (without any explanation of why a fuel source would cause this reaction) begins to transmute into one of the aliens, uncovers what seems to be a rather stupid conspiracy to learn how to use the aliens' weaponry, and the whole thing becomes an sf version of Die Hard, with a running gun battle dominating the last half-hour of the film. What could have been a lovely, insightful, and gritty drama turns into an action-adventure bloodbath. All the potential of a poignant storyline is wasted.
That's a shame.
District 9 was an OK film, but nothing more. It's just another blood-and-popcorn movie. And because it could have been so much more, I found it to be a vast disappointment.
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Si!
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Re: Si!
But it's not science fiction. As was often done with S.F. back in the '40s it was an allegory.
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Re: Si!
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Re: Si!