[SPOILERS] District 9 Review Thread

[Big Orange]

The best movie I've seen this year has been The Hurt Locker.

After the solid but coldly mechanical Watchmen, the rancid mess of Revenge of the Fallen and the dumb fun of The Rise of Cobra, District 9 feels like a breath of fresh air. You don't get many sci-fi movies where you see a three way battle between Nigerian gangbangers, Afrikaner soldiers of fortune, and a weasley office drone in alien battle armour. Christopher's son was very cute for an infant bipedal insect. I'd give this movie a 8/10 score.

How did Multi-National United get exclusive rights to District 9 and not the South African authorities proper? Or was MNU a semi-government organization with a commercial front? I don't think it was much of a stretch to get from the regional MNU headquarters into District 9, since the casualties and explosions at the HQ building must've left the security forces too much in disarray to immediately launch a organized pursuit and citywide lockdown, and District 9's security seemed a joke if heavily armed criminals could set up a shanty fortress within its perimeter without being bothered by MNU troops for years.

[2000AD]

It's finally been released over here in the UK. Went to see it yesterday and loved it. On top of what everyones been saying I'd like to add that it worked the sequel hook well, the story was properly ended and they left it open wihtout it being an annoying cliff hanger like a few recent films.
Also like to echo the sentiment that if those effects are what he can do on $30million imagine what he'd have been able to do with the $100+ million on Halo before it got canned.

[andrewgpaul]

How did Multi-National United get exclusive rights to District 9 and not the South African authorities proper?

Presumably because the SA government outsourced the security operation. I'd imagine there would be some sort of information-sharing clauses, but MNU were obviously keeping secrets from everyone.

[Xon]

I want to know why the hell SA even has an independant government after the alien spaceship rocked up. I would expect outright invasion from the various powers and super-powers across the world.

Little things like sovereignty wouldn't matter in the face of the potential of the alien technology.

[Big Orange]

I get the impression that Multi-National United is not really a South African company, but seemingly more like a giant shell company for various other Western corporations, government agencies, departments of defence, and military thinktanks, etc (hence the "United" moniker). Knowing African politics and hypercorruption, I doubt MNU had much to fear from the local politicians, civil servants, and police (especially with a MNU employee getting busted for trying to expose MNU's illegal projects).

How advanced are the aliens, generally? They seem to have relatively primitive but pretty powerful effector technology to levitate their ship (and stop bullets) and the mysterious black goo could very well be nanomachines (if it can work alien hardware).

[TheMuffinKing]

I want to know why the hell SA even has an independant government after the alien spaceship rocked up. I would expect outright invasion from the various powers and super-powers across the world.

Little things like sovereignty wouldn't matter in the face of the potential of the alien technology.

One of the myriad ways to rationalize this is to consider the timeframe. During the aliens arrival, SA would still have been the foremost military power in Africa, with a well trained and armed army and air force. SA also maintained considerable stockpiles of chemical weapons and was just beginning production of their first nuclear devices, all of which must be factored in consideration of possible invasion and occupation.

A worldwide coalition would most likely be victorious, but what benefit would the reap from a potentially nuclear blasted, mustard gas cloud, VX raining wasteland?

[Big Orange]

Like I said, MNU must've been a compromise by the NATO powers to have unofficial direct control over District 9 in independent South Africa (the Multi-National United's CEO was an African-American, likely as another compromise).

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

District 9's security seemed a joke if heavily armed criminals could set up a shanty fortress within its perimeter without being bothered by MNU troops for years.

I have not seen this movie, so I'm not trying to dispute anything, but is it possible the criminals were simply bribing the security forces? Maybe they're not really inept, but rather corrupt to some degree.

Just somthing I thought about when I read your post.

[Hawkwings]

It doesn't seem likely, given how many heavily armed Nigerians were there, and how visible they were. More likely, the loss of life in clearing them out was deemed too great, while leaving the there to terrorize the prawns was acceptable because people aren't really fond of prawns anyways.

[Sky Captain]

I have not seen the District 9 yet, but what I don`t get is why everyone was so focused on weapons (which they had trouble to get working) when the aliens also supposedly have things like highly advanced propulsion systems, power generation and computers which may be easier to reverse engineer and also have obvious weapon applications.

[Darksider]

Because man has no creative impulse, and only desires more power to destroy.

[Zixinus]

Or perhaps that they were able to take the weapons into the lab and were unable to remove sections of the ship for whatever reason?

[andrewgpaul]

I assumed the security was to keep the prawns in, not necessarily to keep other people out. As far as they were concerned, the Nigerians could amass all ht alien weapons they liked, because they were useless. It also looked like they kept them inside District 9 anyway.

[Guardsman Bass]

I have not seen the District 9 yet, but what I don`t get is why everyone was so focused on weapons (which they had trouble to get working) when the aliens also supposedly have things like highly advanced propulsion systems, power generation and computers which may be easier to reverse engineer and also have obvious weapon applications.

Didn't it mention that all of their technology had that same issue - it seemed to be coded specifically to the Prawns?

Aside from that, MNU was mentioned at some point as the world's second-largest arms company. It's no surprise that they'd be looking for weapons.

[Sky Captain]

Didn't it mention that all of their technology had that same issue - it seemed to be coded specifically to the Prawns

Missed that, I thought only their weapons can be operated only by Prawns.

Aside from that, MNU was mentioned at some point as the world's second-largest arms company. It's no surprise that they'd be looking for weapons.

A good propulsion system also makes a good weapon and have many military applications, an arms company should have known that. It just seems the logical way would be: No luck reverse engineering weapons > try to take apart and reverse engineer something else that could be useful.

[Wing Commander MAD]

Yeah, but then again there is also the issue of the fact the the ship is floating over a major city. Is it really a good idea to poke around and take apart something if it could cause the ship to crash to the earth? Heck its a completely alien system anyways, I'd hate to play the"I wander what this button does?" game (even if you had a pretty good idea). Heck the fact that the ship stayed aloft for 20 years itself is a marvel of thier engineerng capabilities and automated systems.

[Gerald Tarrant]

How did Multi-National United get exclusive rights to District 9 and not the South African authorities proper?

Presumably because the SA government outsourced the security operation. I'd imagine there would be some sort of information-sharing clauses, but MNU were obviously keeping secrets from everyone.

Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought MNU had been contracted specifically to move the Aliens from the shanty town District-9 to the shiny tent city District-10.

Certainly there was another agency that had some influence over human alien affairs. The UIO was mentioned as having regulations that MNU was supposed to follow, and may even have been the official human-alien liasons. I got the impression that whatever the time-frame on their contract, MNU was just the hired help.

[edit:] There's a scene when Wikus is attending his surprise promotion party where his father in law is chewing him out due to the number of aliens that were killed in the day's eviction proceedings. Watching that scene I assumed MNU had to have only a weak contractual claim on D-9. If their contract over human-alien affairs were secure, I assumed they wouldn't have had to watch public relations so carefully. [/edit]

[Big Orange]

MNU had laid down all of the military/security infrastructure at District 9, with MNU's veritable army of rent-a-cops practically doing what they wanted to the aliens (despite reservations from the media and alien rights groups), and the UIO (whoever they were) seemed to be onboard as lip service.

[Bedlam]

It was interesting that their was an anti aircraft system on the walls of District 9. Before the events of the film there seemed to be no evidence the aliens had any flying vehicles so it suggests (as mentioned previously in the thread) that other countries and corporations might have tried to get their own aliens by airlifting them out and the system was there to 'discourage' them and keep the monopoly on the technology.

It seems a bit of a plot hole that after grounding the drop ship when it was being tractored into the mothership they didn't fire are more missiles at it. I kept expecting a more downer ending (not that it was happy bunnies as it was) with the drop ship getting blown up at the last minute.

[TheLostVikings]

It seems a bit of a plot hole that after grounding the drop ship when it was being tractored into the mothership they didn't fire are more missiles at it. I kept expecting a more downer ending (not that it was happy bunnies as it was) with the drop ship getting blown up at the last minute.

My guess is that after hanging lifeless in the air for 20 years everyone was pretty surprised when it suddenly busted out a tractor beam from nowhere, and since the mothership hovers over a densely populated area they most likely have strict orders not to mess with it.

[Bedlam]

It seems a bit of a plot hole that after grounding the drop ship when it was being tractored into the mothership they didn't fire are more missiles at it. I kept expecting a more downer ending (not that it was happy bunnies as it was) with the drop ship getting blown up at the last minute.

My guess is that after hanging lifeless in the air for 20 years everyone was pretty surprised when it suddenly busted out a tractor beam from nowhere, and since the mothership hovers over a densely populated area they most likely have strict orders not to mess with it.

I wasn't thinking of missiling the mother ship just the small drop ship thing being pulled up into it. I supose it could have been considered a difficult target or command were arguing over what to do but it seemed to be drop ship seemed to be moving quite slowly.

[Hawkwings]

Probably a case of "better safe than sorry". Besides, what's the missile gonna do? Blow some chunks off the shuttle that will still get pulled up into the mothership?

[SylasGaunt]

I figure it was someone higher up getting a word in. I mean the news media just watched an MNU SAM battery blow an alien ship out of the air, something that probably sent the various prawn-friendly groups into a frenzy. It's also possible that their ROE didn't allow them to fire without a direct command and the merc leader was kinda busy by that point.

[Sky Captain]

It seems a bit of a plot hole that after grounding the drop ship when it was being tractored into the mothership they didn't fire are more missiles at it. I kept expecting a more downer ending (not that it was happy bunnies as it was) with the drop ship getting blown up at the last minute.

My guess is that after hanging lifeless in the air for 20 years everyone was pretty surprised when it suddenly busted out a tractor beam from nowhere, and since the mothership hovers over a densely populated area they most likely have strict orders not to mess with it.

I`m just wondering who would want to live in city which have billion ton spaceship hovering overhead. Alien technology might be reliable, but still breakdown can`t be ruled out especially if there is no one aboard to perform system maintenance that might be necessary after all those years.

[Zixinus]

From what I could gather, the city isn't the kind that you can just leave.

Furthermore, people can get used to pretty absurdly things. For example, living in a city that's below sea level or living in one where there is an earthquake every few months.