[SPOILERS] District 9 Review Thread

[Big Orange]

Probably, seeing as he's just a stupid nerd with glasses.

Or he's just be somebody with stubbonly held opinions and having his own website with widely watched reviews must've inflated his ego a bit. The movie hasn't pleased the Nigerians either.

[Zac Naloen]

How can they be cannibals, they were eating Aliens not humans...

[TheLostVikings]

How can they be cannibals, they were eating Aliens not humans...

Well some of them do eat albinos... just not in this movie. Though I'm pretty sure that's what Mr. Blomkamp was inspired by.

[Zor]

I am actually suprised that it took this long for Nigerians to begin complaining about their depiction in the film.

Zor

[NecronLord]

Just seen this film. The stupidity of the humans is galling but believable. We probably would cock up that badly given half a chance to. I am particularly entertained by them just making 'District 10' with smaller shacks, while knowing that the whole alien civilization might be hauling ass their way with blood on their minds. I'm with the free press, if I were the aliens' hypothetical leader caste, I'd rescue my own kind, and then punish the humans. A nuke on every major population center and a big asteroid for good measure. These guys obviously weren't inane pacifist-aliens.

I'm rather behind the 'Christopher was or was becoming a higher caste alien' explanation. The performance of his son in saving the day was particularly good and I think the description possibly fits him even better. I couldn't credit a human child of similar size doing all that. I'm fairly certain he at least remote controlled the mecha somewhat - I interpreted the iron-man esque scene of it designating Nigerians as enemies as the kid doing that. Your mileage may vary of course.

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.

I was actually expecting them to try and then get smacked down by some defence system the kid had activated on the mothership.

It doesn't bother me, though, you'd have to be an utter retard to pick a fight with a large space-ship. They've got to operate on the assumption that either aliens got on board, or are remote controlling it from somewhere in the camp. For all they know, the Aliens in command of the mothership would decide to retire to the asteroid belt and exterminate the human species for the loss of the drop ship.

The game has changed absolutely the moment they got that thing working. The sensible thing to do would be to start grovelling and offering them as much cat foot and tyres as they can eat, because if you don't, they might just exterminate your entire species. Hell, just pulsing the mothership's engines, which can after all, loft it to orbit, on full thrust over Johannesburg would likely cripple the South African nation - sixteen percent of GDP gone in an instant, not to mention lives and actual material loss, enjoy.

[Big Orange]

We don't know that the city was seriously wrecked by the engine thrust (even if there's a lot of energy being thrown about, the engines seemed more like effectors that white hot jet blast) since MNU was still just about in business and the main characters (who've got homes and offices around Johannesburg) are still around to give interviews after the event. The aliens could wipe us out like an elephant stomping on an anthill, but why exterminate humanity for the acts of a irresponsible company in some craphole African country?

[tim31]

The engines coming online shattered every window in the CBD.

Proof, approx 0:25

[Big Orange]

But the ship ascended slowly and gently, without demolishing the skyline and frying crowded streets (and besides the area directly beneath the ship would not be prime real estate anyway). The aliens were a primary source of income for Johannesburg, their valuable ship just upping and leaving alone would cause a huge dent in the economy, robbing MNU's chances of getting at the best alien stuff.

[NecronLord]

We don't know that the city was seriously wrecked by the engine thrust (even if there's a lot of energy being thrown about, the engines seemed more like effectors that white hot jet blast) since MNU was still just about in business and the main characters (who've got homes and offices around Johannesburg) are still around to give interviews after the event. The aliens could wipe us out like an elephant stomping on an anthill, but why exterminate humanity for the acts of a irresponsible company in some craphole African country?

Slow lateral movement doesn't require a much energy at all, and anti-gravity can in fact manage with next to no energy if you accept the notion (seems very likely, given the ship hovered so long over Joburg) of anti-gravity in the first place. See also.

The ship didn't ascend rapidly over the city, so there's no reason to think it was operating at even one ten thousandth full thrust. Most likely, given that it was described coasting over the world until coming to rest over the chosen city, it would continue lateral movement until out over the Atlantic ocean, before engaging its drive, in order to prevent massive damage.

It's obvious that Christopher didn't do it but a ship like that could certainly destroy a city, given the damage its engines did even on a miniscule fraction of what must be their full power.
_____

As for why?

You're an Briton, yes? Imagine it's found out that some backward state, say, Kenya has a vast concentration camp full of shipwrecked UK citizens, that it has been vivisecting for some reason. Certainly, only one company has actually been doing it, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the government sanctioned it or turned a blind eye.

What would you want done with them? Would you want a nice, limited extraction, or would you want to punish the Doctor Mengles and their supporters by kicking the shit out of the lot of them?

Now increase the power difference by a factor of several thousand so they literally can't do anything to stop you, not even a gureilla war, and make them as inhuman as the prawns were. Are you sure you wouldn't kill a crapload of them?

I would.
_____

Oh, one other thing, some people have said 'of course, there must have been a nuke on the mothership by now' - highly unlikely. Because as far as the world's leaders knew, the major risk was not of the aliens escaping, but of a rescue mission arriving. I can see it now.

<Leader Caste Alien> You were preparing to destroy our people if they tried to leave.
<POTUS> But...
<Leader Caste Alien> You and all the other leaders will spend the rest of your lives in a pain amplifier. Bring them to me.
<Senior Soldier Alien> Yes Great One!

*Rape of Earth begins, is over in ten minutes flat*

Because they've no reason to assume that the more dynamic leaders are any more cuddly than human rulers have historically been, and most human rulers have been pretty cruel.

Unfortunately for those who fantasise about giving the prawns one (weirdos) there is no way to confront a reasonably realistically rendered technologically and numerically superior alien race when the gap is that big, and expect to survive. They were lucky to have the prawns end up there; they should have gone out of their way to give them maximum respect and the best possible treatment (all the rubber they can eat), and learn from them (in less abhorrent ways) and try to send them on their way, rather than persecute them as they did.

Unless the prawn government is somehow otherwise concerned (plague, major war or something), we can reasonably think Earth will have some very difficult explaining to do in three years time.

[Big Orange]

Of course the "mothership" blasting off immediately would render Johannesburg into a miles wide crater, I don't think Christopher would want to blow up his fellow prawns he was presumably getting round to saving within a few years time. Whether he and his friends are going to come back guns blazing contributes to a suspenseful, ambiguous ending.

[wautd]

I saw it last night. I thought it would be good, but it turned out to be better. Amazing what they did with a budget of $ 30mil. Who needs overpaid Hollywood actors anyway?

Time to wail trough this topic to catch up

but the main character was just such a retard I found it hard to sympathise with him.

Agreed. But at least his father in law already mentions he's not very bright at the beginning of the movie

[wautd]

Looking at the pay discrepancies.. a human seeking a 'Non-Human Technology Engineer' position at MNU gets a starting salary of 2,000,000 Rand a year or higher (a few grand short of a quarter million USD a year if you go with the very shaky assumption that the exchange rate is the same). By contrast under the non-human career you have a position for 'Non-human Engineer' whose job description is listed as being an assistant for a human engineer working on non-human tech. Pay for the Prawn is 110 rand/hour or about $13.50 (using the same assumption from above).. about twice what I used to make working the concession stand at my local theater.

Where do you get that data? It sucks if your job includes weapon testing when you're a prawn (most disturbing scene in the movie for me, as the test subject seemed well intelligent enough to realize what was going on).
I'm suprised the movie was all ages to begin with (I guess violance is OK as long as there isn't a boob in it).

Doesn't Christopher say he's been collecting the fluid for 20 years? That doesn't seem like he only suddenly woke up.

I'm sure he was aware much sooner. Remeber the thing that broke of the mothership and that the authorities could never find back? They must have hidden it on pupose.

[wautd]

Third post in a row (apologies)

Finally, on Christopher's "evolution", the aliens have been in D9 for 28 years, yet he claims it took 20 years to get the fluid, thus he could have been a regular drone who began to awaken as a higher caste through those 8 years, setting off to collect fluid and rebuild the command module (after locating it and digging it out). The process could've started even earlier, aboard the ship en-route to Earth.

I doubt he was a regular drone from the beginning (he was smart enough to hide/build that spacecraft underground afterall).

It looked to me there there's some hierarchy based on their colour schemes. Christopher/unfortunate weapon test subject had a red paintjob on their skin + white tattoo on their head (engineer?), Christophers friend is yellow (soldier drone?) and Wikus turning into a green/silvery alien (commander? pilot?), while the vast majority of the dumb drones were brown.

Probably, seeing as he's just a stupid nerd with glasses.

Or he's just be somebody with stubbonly held opinions and having his own website with widely watched reviews must've inflated his ego a bit. The movie hasn't pleased the Nigerians either.

Meh, since they're notorious from their money scams, they were logical choice for catfood scams

[wautd]

4th post but I just thought of this

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.

What did the shoulder missile pods from exosuit blew up again? Perhaps it was the SAM site (I can't really remember)

[tim31]

It looked to me there there's some hierarchy based on their colour schemes. Christopher/unfortunate weapon test subject had a red paintjob on their skin + white tattoo on their head (engineer?)

Uh... In the case of the live fire subject it was a red X

[Laughing Mechanicus]

Having seen the movie 3 times now I don't think the various colours of the aliens mean very much. Only a few were brightly coloured, and those ones looked like they had painted themselves. If you look at Christopher's friend in closeup scenes his colouration does look very much like splashed on yellow paint, you can also see that he has driven spark plugs into the shoulder parts of his exoskeleton (presumably as decoration) and these are also yellow.

The white "tattoos" some of them had on their heads (including Christopher's child) had the letters "MNU" and some smaller text stencilled on them, so they weren't natural; probably they were part of the "registration" that was mentioned a couple of times.

Also, the missile launcher which fired at the command ship was a variant of the Rapier system. There are quite a few versions of that but it could be possible that the version depicted only had IR guided missiles, and hence they could lock onto the active engines of the ship when it was flying under its own power, but not when it was essentially "dead" and was being moved by the tractor beam. Honestly though, simple confusion in the MNU command structure is probably enough to account for its lack of action.

[TheLostVikings]

The white "tattoos" some of them had on their heads (including Christopher's child) had the letters "MNU" and some smaller text stencilled on them, so they weren't natural; probably they were part of the "registration" that was mentioned a couple of times.

AFAIK they all say "Property of MNU", you can see it clearly in some of the promotional shots.

[andrewgpaul]

Looking at the pay discrepancies.. a human seeking a 'Non-Human Technology Engineer' position at MNU gets a starting salary of 2,000,000 Rand a year or higher (a few grand short of a quarter million USD a year if you go with the very shaky assumption that the exchange rate is the same). By contrast under the non-human career you have a position for 'Non-human Engineer' whose job description is listed as being an assistant for a human engineer working on non-human tech. Pay for the Prawn is 110 rand/hour or about $13.50 (using the same assumption from above).. about twice what I used to make working the concession stand at my local theater.

Where do you get that data?

IIRC, it's from the promotional website: www.multinationalunited.com.

As to the movie's rating, it's a 15 in the UK.