District 9

[mykalberta]

Originally Posted by Agamemnon

I think the bigger question is; are tiny plot-holes like this one enough to distract from one's appreciation of the movie?

In short, who cares?

I thought they hijacked an MNU SUV.

Its amazing that the all powerful George Lucas can produce crap like Jar Jar, and yet we now have this.

[Kybosh]

As an aside, does anyone know where I might be able to see the original short film that District 9 was based on?

[BlackEleven]

Originally Posted by Kybosh

As an aside, does anyone know where I might be able to see the original short film that District 9 was based on?

It's called Alive in Joburg and available on google video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...12222812358837

[Weiser Wonder]

Why do Aliens always look like lizards and not bears or something like that?

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Weiser Wonder

Why do Aliens always look like lizards and not bears or something like that?

[Kybosh]

Originally Posted by octothorp

I think it was moreso that they were drones and workers not in the sense that they didn't know how to operate weapons, but that they had no order and structure. They could not see, as a group the benefit in starting any sort of revolution. It's like a colony of bees: remove the queen, and they become listless and uninterested, to the point of nearly starving.

It also seemed to me that some of their weapons and technology weren't even fully activated until the mothership went back online.

[Wookie]

Good movie, pretty original, I loved the term "prawns" that was awesome!

[Coach]

Juts came back from it and I was speechless leaving. Absolutely loved it, one of the best movies I've seen in years. Story was excellent, the acting was good enough to move it along. The human actors other than the main guy were pretty mediocre. I loved how they made one of the aliens a main character and his storyline was awesome. He was my favorite character.

[NSFL]

One of my friends said that about 90% of the movie was actually unscripted and improvised. Is this true? If yes, then it's even more impressive.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by NSFL

One of my friends said that about 90% of the movie was actually unscripted and improvised. Is this true? If yes, then it's even more impressive.

I doubt it considering that more than 10% of the movie is CGI... you can't improvise that.

The only part that might be improvised are the documentary parts, which only make up about 25% of the film - give or take.

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by Pastiche

My wife compared this movie to Children of Men. Both movies leave you with that same hollow feeling at the end.

One of the best lower budget films.

[Thor]

Very true, unique sci fi that is in this case 100 times better than a bruckheimer film.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I doubt it considering that more than 10% of the movie is CGI... you can't improvise that.

The only part that might be improvised are the documentary parts, which only make up about 25% of the film - give or take.

Yeah, I don't think much of it is improvised. However there can be a lot of improvisation with CGI in action scenes; with LoTR, they basically had the actors improvising a lot of their fight scenes on bluescreen, and then the CGI guys put in the characters to match the movements of the actors. But I just don't see that many places in this movie where that would be applicable.

[RW99]

Just saw it this afternoon, great movie. A couple of questions though:

So they were there for 20 years and no one could reverse engineer any weapons or anything on the mothership?

Why set up a zone for a million aliens in the middle of a city?

Otherwise, quite happy with the movie.

[keenan87]

Fell asleep at the end... BORING... I really dont like movies with aliens/transformers/robots

I guess if you do (my friends do)..it was an AMAZING movie (according to them)

[kirant]

Originally Posted by NSFL

One of my friends said that about 90% of the movie was actually unscripted and improvised. Is this true? If yes, then it's even more impressive.

Well, that does explain the 137 f***s you hear throughout the movie.

[Oil Stain]

Originally Posted by RW99

Just saw it this afternoon, great movie. A couple of questions though:

Why set up a zone for a million aliens in the middle of a city?

I think most if not all of the living conditions for the aliens were setup to mirror apartheid. Aslo I think they just acted without foresight probably thinking the district would be temporary, but it turned into 20 years.

From Wikipedia--

As one of the oldest black settlements in Johannesburg, Sophiatown held an almost symbolic importance for the 50,000 blacks it contained, both in terms of its sheer vibrancy and its unique culture. Despite a vigorous ANC protest campaign and worldwide publicity, the removal of Sophiatown began on 9 February 1955 under the Western Areas Removal Scheme. In the early hours, heavily armed police entered Sophiatown to force residents out of their homes and load their belongings onto government trucks. The residents were taken to a large tract of land, thirteen miles (19 km) from the city centre, known as Meadowlands (that the government had purchased in 1953). Meadowlands became part of a new planned black city called Soweto. The Sophiatown slum was destroyed by bulldozers, and a new white suburb named Triomf (Triumph) was built in its place. This pattern of forced removal and destruction was to repeat itself over the next few years, and was not limited to people of African descent. Forced removals from areas like Cato Manor (Mkhumbane) in Durban, and District Six in Cape Town, where 55,000 coloured and Indian people were forced to move to new townships on the Cape Flats, were carried out under the Group Areas Act of 1950. Ultimately, nearly 600,000 coloured, Indian and Chinese people were moved in terms of the Group Areas Act


I liked the moral ambiguity of the Wickers character. He committed heinous acts without remorse, like the killing of the prawn eggs, but he was still a committed and loving husband, and cringed at the thought of killing an adult prawn. He was presented as neither good nor evil, but just a man. Flawed, and realistic.

Really, the only noble characters in the entire film were Christopher and his son. Prawns that were supposed to be less than dirt.

Open endings bug me to no end, but it was pretty fitting in this case as there really were no winners in the meeting of the species, and it'd be a shame to have one side triumph.

[Coach]

Originally Posted by RW99

So they were there for 20 years and no one could reverse engineer any weapons or anything on the mothership?

Trying my best not to sound like a ######. They said throughout the movie that the weapons and technology of the aliens required alien DNA to operate and they needed that canister of fuel for the command pod of the mother ship (which i assume was the source of power for the entire ship).

[RW99]

Originally Posted by MattyC

Trying my best not to sound like a ######. They said throughout the movie that the weapons and technology of the aliens required alien DNA to operate and they needed that canister of fuel for the command pod of the mother ship (which i assume was the source of power for the entire ship).

Nah, that's cool. I got what they were saying. But without a power source or an activation method, there's still stuff to work on. Oh well, I'm just a geek without any engineering knowledge And maybe I've seen Paycheck one too many times

[Russic]

Saw it tonight and I really enjoyed it. I didn't know much going in and it was a touch different than I expected. I was more depressing than I thought it would be, which in the end I enjoyed. I had only seen minor things from the trailer, so I half expected a terminator-ish alien revolt movie. Pleasantly surprised.