District 9 is Alien Nation(1988) meets The Fly(1986), except not as good as those films. An interesting story with very good SFX,but has too many holes. The movie has a lot of gore and as a viewer I felt very dirty,which I applaud the filmmakers for my uncomfortableness. The problem I had was the lead actor,although he did a good job I never cared about him. I found myself more invested in the aliens and wanted more of them.The entire film is shot in two styles, documentary and a CNN type broadcast.I would have preferred the documentary style through the whole film. I wanted the story to be told through facts instead of through helicopter cameras.The first half was thoughtful and had my attention, by the second half the cliches set in and so did the plot holes.**SPOILERS** It never explains why alien fuel turns humans into aliens. The viewer was also left in the dark at why some aliens were smart and some were animalistic,or were they,I don't know it never says.I was perplexed at why the aliens didn't use their weaponry to stop the humans from pushing them around. They are a militaristic race,why do they allow people to enslave them and push them around. They still have their weapons,and two aliens alone take out a building and a whole platoon of humans.The main human character (Copley) is a spineless company man and his character is unlikable and all over the place. One minute he double crosses the one thing in the world trying to help him and the next he sacrifices everything to save him and his son. The villains are one dimensional and cartoonish and by the end I really didn't care and was just waiting for them to get theirs. By the end I was just thinking how Alien Nation was a better film and that the term "Slag" was replaced by "Prawns" and rotten milk was replaced by cat food. It's not a bad film it just falls apart at the end and could have been something special. 3 out 5 stars
Spot on Coco. Not a bad action flick with some relatively ballsy subtext, but really coulda been something much greater -- weighed down by the inconsistent lead character (though the director deserves some respect for electing to have such a deliberately unlikeable protagonist) and the plothole about the mugwumps or whatever not using their weapons for whatever reason was just too gaping to ignore.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, definitely not enough James Caan and aliens with nards in their armpits.
I totally disagree. If we are going to talk about stealing things from movies as a bad thing, we might as well write off every movie for the past twenty years. It's like ANDREW said, QT has been stealing off of Sergio Leone and because he throws a racial joke in it, it's genius. And the great thing about sci-fi has always been a great way to talk about social issues within a different frame of mind. I think the lead character is amazing because he is a normal person trying to deal with a totally abnormal situation. It's not like when Indy turned into a fucking mongoloid when he saw the love of his life in Indy and the Crystal fuck and then preceded to be a "hero" throughout the rest of the movie. It's just surprising to me that there are certain things that people let go of (like the entire plot of the new Star Trek) and then somehow get all righteous when it comes to movies like District 9 because it's popular. Alien Nation is a piece of shit (get over it).
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