The aliens only attack the humans when they've been provoked. Honestly, you can't help but think that they completely deserve it. And actually, it's the humans that are eating the aliens xD
Anyway, I finally saw the movie. I loved it. =o
At the beginning, where they show what they do to the aliens, and what they do to Main Character Whose Name I Cannot Remember after he goes to the hospital... I quite honestly thought I was going to be sick. The movie wasn't really bloody-gory-gross, that just seems like what we'd genuinely do. Which, to me, is completely disgusting.
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Of course, killing Main Character seemed like it'd be incredibly stupid from a research perspective... I'd think they'd just want to biopsy the hell out of him as he transformed... but I can see the need for plot. Anyway, moving on.
One thing I didn't understand:
It's fairly clear they didn't want to be here, so was it just a coincidence that their ship broke down when it was over Earth? Did they think it'd perhaps be a planet that could help them fix their ship and then they changed their minds? Why did they end up here?
I still wondered why they ended up here. Mind you, these guys were packed with some nice weapons, and army-worthy stuff like that uber-suite-of-doom. I'm curious about their home world. Can't wait for a sequel.
For witch craft what the ..... is that all about the poor aliens all the wanted was help and humans just have to eat them for stupid witch craft aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!... . got that outta my system
They wouldn't eat all of them or hunt to eat them specifically. It's more like one or two, but yea, they did a lot of bad stuff to them when the aliens really needed help.
I've also been wondering why they ended up there in the first place. Like, they mentioned that part falling off....
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Was that the little ship that Christopher had? And the humans just assumed that it was important for them to get where they needed to go?
It certainly doesn't seem like they meant to come, since they were all starving on the ship. I suppose something happened to the ship and they just didn't know what to do.
And I agree with you Fabby. I couldn't figure out how killing him would be much help. I would have been in favor or cloning him if they wanted people that could wield the guns.
Ugh, the humans eating the aliens. Though, I suppose that's better than the human prostitutes for the aliens. I just kinda cringed and went "how?" Especially since a video on www.mnuspreadslies.com said that they're basically both genders.
It was the ship that Christopher used. When it first fell off and the humans noted it in the beginning, they went out to search for the piece but didn't find it to their dismay. They mention it briefly. I actually didn't notice that they searched for it until I saw it the second time.
Dx OMG The prostitution....Just...why ! ? *also cringes*
I figured that's what it must have been. And the humans are just like "Oh well they must have ejected a vital piece of equipment so they wouldn't have to leave"
I saw District 9 this past week, and I thought it was amazing. <3 Definitely not a typical alien movie. I absolutely loved the concept, and the documentary style at the beginning was rather neat.
After reading that review I noticed the comments of many people who were attacking the reviewer for being too intellectual and historical in his review of a fun science fiction movie...and so I wrote my own review that you can find below.
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After reading many of the comments which complain about this review as being to "racially focused" or to "intellectual" I feel I must offer my own review which is negative towards the movie for more accessible and non political reasons. After all as many have stated, it's only a silly summer afternoon Scifi movie.
I found that the movie was severely lacking in plot. Don't believe me? Then it's time for some examples.
#1 Why couldn't the aliens leave earth from the beginning?
So basically the ship can't leave because it's missing a piece which is a shuttle, and also the control center of the ship. Without which it can't move but has the power to remain hanging there.
Once this shuttle was back in place however the ship managed to get away just fine. So a race that has the ability to travel through space chooses to do so in a ship that has a removable control center. They then decide to come to earth for no decipherable reason, since the ship seemed to work fine, and after stopping over earth the one tiny pod that controls the whole thing crashes to earth unharmed, again for no reason, and the one Alien (christopher Johnson) hence referred to as a "prawn" who can control it and who is ferrying all the other moron prawns around spends the next 20 years getting enough black alien goo to power it and make it back up to the ship.
Not only is this ridiculous because all the humans seemed to want was to get them to go home so why didn't chris say "hey i can fix it" in the beginning and also in the beginning an etymologist says that there were no leaders left among the prawns, which was obviously wrong (ex: christopher Johnson) which they supposedly could have found out by asking.
It's just bad story telling. Even if you can stretch your belief enough to make a guess that Christopher Johnson was the commander using his ship key to move a big mother-ship/freight car of alien worker drones around there is still no reason for him to come to earth, remove the shuttle from the ship ect. It's like when you watch a movie and say to yourself "if they had only remembered to lock the door the killer couldn't have gotten in ect. but then I guess there'd be no movie" except in this film anything that even hints at a plot is only there as a decoy to get the aliens into the slums without offering any good or plausible reasoning as to why they are there.
#2 black goo is in their technology and can run the ship.
Did you see how much frickin black goo came out of that mech? The mech which the prawns sold to the Nigerians and therefore had in their personal possession? I bet they could have gotten that shuttle to warp with that much goo! So why didn't Chris Johnson use that instead of spending 20 years taking it out of batteries? or why didn't he enlist the help of more than one of his fellow "my people" in his plans for escape? In fact his plan was to get back to the mother ship before he knew about the medical experimentation on his "people". So was he planning at first to only save himself and his son? then changed his mind and decided to get help instead?
#3 Interracial prostitution.
The Nigerians are said to also be pimps... insects and mammals can't have sex.
#4 How did the aliens get human names?
Obviously they were all processed and all given human names and all had to provide signatures which could be compared later. So while this was happening no-one asked "hey can you get the ship working again?"
#5 Aliens can use the weapons, so why didn't they.
The film shows aliens selling their weapons to Nigerians. How could they have kept any of their weapons from the military? why didn't they use them for more than a cat food trade and fight against their captives?
#6 the international problem..
These aliens were from another planet not another country. Didn't the rest of the world have any say as to what happened? were they property of Johannesburg due to being in their airspace? In sci fi the aliens coming makes all of earth unite together cause we're different from them. So I guess this just another example of the locked door question. Things are the way they are so that the writer gets into the movie what he wants to, even if it makes no sense.
#7 One actually Apartheid comment.
If they wanted to make an apartheid movie then humans should have gone to planet insectoid 9 and put all it's inhabitants into slums.
In closing you don't have to be stuck up, overly intellectual or historical to see that aside from coolio special effects like turning humans into red rain drops and neato-keen aliens that look kinda real, this movie is a plot less piece of trash. the end.
I never have time to go to the theatre to watch a movie during the school year, because of school and work. But I work at the theatre, so I can easily slip in and watch a few minutes of it.
One woman told me that the aliens were completely CG. This true?
WAIT A MINUTE IT IS RATED R...... WELL THAT MEANS IT IS SCARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHH I CANT WATCH IT IF IT IS SCARY BECAUSE I AM QUITE A WUSS AND I CANT STAND BLOOD OR SCARY STUFF! I EVEN SCREAMED IN THAT NANCY DREW MOVIE SO I DONT THINK I CAN WATCH THIS ONE.
Movies can be rated 'R' and not be scary. Sometimes it's just because of language, sexual themes, and drug use.
Also, you don't have to type in ALLCAPS.
Ok Thulu, I respect your opinion to not like the movie. I have to say that your interpretation of the events is a lot different from what I though happened. You don't have to read it if you don't want to, but here's what I thought of some of the things you brought up:
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1)I don't think the shuttle was really a vital piece of the ship in order for them to leave. I think that the reason they got stuck there was just supposed to be a mystery and stay that way. I don't think Christopher was a captain or even a leader at all. I think it's more likely that he found the shuttle, at some point, figured that it could help him get out of there, and decided to use it.
2) If the black goo in the mech suit was the same that was used to power the ship, I doubt Christopher knew about it. The other aliens also were too concerned with living through everyday, or their addiction to cat food, to bother thinking about using the mech suit. Odds are the same with the guns. They didn't want to revolt, they wanted to get food and they figured the way they could get the most was by selling their guns.
3) The aliens aren't insects, they're aliens. They have reproduction organs similar to humans. They can have sex if they really wanted to.
4) I figure that the aliens got human names when they were being taken from the ship, treated, and boxed into their slums.
5)I mentioned that one better.
6) Reading stuff online, MNU is an international company. They have branches all over the world. I think odds are that the company is more in control than any country's government does. There is always the possibility that America tried to throw themselves into the situation in the beginning. But if the aliens aren't doing anything to harm them, I don't see why the whole world has to get in when it's over Johannesburg's airspace.
So it's like the movie Cloverfield? I thought that when I saw the trailer but I can't see it D: It's rated R...I'm prettys sure it was anyway...
Looks great, sounds great, so it is IS great. Dang rating system...My parents would never take me...my Dad's not interested and my mom hates that kind of movie...plus, they're my parents.. -_-' Embarassing...
1) I think they crash-landed on Earth, since they chose not to tell us their motives. Also, no one ever said the piece of the ship that crashed to Earth didn't sustain any damage... Christopher had 20 years to fix this thing up ;]
The humans probably would not have let the aliens go home. They probably would have confiscated the technology and ruined the entire plan, and even if they wouldn't have Christopher didn't trust them. With good reason.
It was left open ended why they got here to begin with, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a plot hole.
2) My best guess is that he had little power over the other aliens, at best. That really didn't make any sense to me either. xD
But it DOES make sense that he wouldn't tell anyone else, because he had few other people he could trust. MNU would have fucked everything up, remember, and they clearly weren't above bashing your skull in to get the truth out of you.
3) Aliens =/= humans. Assuming the aliens have genitals similar to ours, they'd be able to have sex, just not reproduce. Though I imagine there might be some nasty side effects D:
5) When the humans first found the aliens, they were weak and vulnerable. They took advantage of what was probably mass hysteria and overpowered them. There might be 1 million or so aliens but we as people way outnumber them, and we have the advantage of knowing our environment. They probably took out any alien resistance before it had any chance to build at all... one guy with a gun is not going to stop them. Two guys with BIG guns were barely able to hold them down for 45 minutes.
7) Why? Personally, I don't think that would have been very interesting at all... such movies have been done before, hundreds of times. This is the first time I can think of that it's happened in reverse.
Clearly you're looking at it from a different angle.. when I see 'left open for speculation' you see 'plot hole'. Overall, I think they did a good job with the movie.. there were some things left out and some things that didn't make that much sense, but it IS a movie and a certain suspension of disbelief is required, not to mention ability to skip over some facts that were probably handwaved away due to time. (Like how the rest of the world was reacting.)
This was a lot longer than I intended it to be.
It was pretty gory at places, but honestly it's not that bad. It's mostly the context of the gore that makes it scary, I think, or at least that's what made it scary for me.
