LogFAQs > #913246315

#13 - District 9 (2009)
Johnbobb - 3
Scarlet - 5
Charon - 7
Snake - 9
Stifled - 10
Genny - 12
JONA - 14
Karo - 22
Inviso - 22
KBM - 35
Wickle - 38
Total: 177

"Look at sci-fi and fantasy now and "non-human creatures as a metaphor for racism" has become a staple of the genre (an overused one at that). It wasn't always like that though, and District 9 is one of the films that really established it. What really makes District 9 good though is that it doesn't take the easy way out. This isn't Bright taking black people and replacing them with orcs and leaving it like that. This is a unique protrayal of a very specific race of aliens, brilliantly shown through the lens of African colonialism. It tackles heavy subjects without sugarcoating them. Neill Blomkamp never comes across as trying to bask in his own cleveness. District 9 is just an incredible sci-fi thriller that manages to be both fun to watch and thought-provoking." ~Johnbobb

"What It Is: An allegorical tale of life under Apartheid told through the lends of transient aliens.

Why It Matters: District 9 revitalized the think-piece sci fi genre and even landed a Best Picture nomination from the Academy, a pretty rare feat for sci fi.

What I Think: District 9 opens like The Third World Office, and you'd be forgiven if you thought that Wikus was meant to be the South African Michael Scott. But the movie extremely quickly proves itself to be a powerful, potent mix of Hotel Rwanda and Alien Nation. The documentary aspect very quietly melts into a an action film, but throughout the movie, I was really hit hard by my personal experiences in Sierra Leone. The danger, the visceral brutality, the mistreatment of a unwanted peoples, the segregation that is so utterly and infuriatingly demhumanizing, it all of course is representative of the Apartheid in South Africa. But spending time in Sierra Leona just a few short years after a deadly massacre jokingly referred to as a civil war, I was hit with a boulder to my chest, stopped dead in the tracks, in this poignant retelling of the events to which I had only been given the smallest of glimpses. District 9 is so startlingly accurate in how several African nations treated tribes or indigenous peoples, and it made me clench my teeth and bare my fist in anger. I imagine other users will also struck by that portrayal of just utter injustice, and that it hits close to them.

When the movie ramps up, it chooses to tie itself to individuals that are immensely flawed and unlikable on the surface. But in reality, the ignorance, the prejudice, these things really give character to the, erm, characters. And I feel so invested in seeing them evolve and change over time. Wikus himself isn't a hero, and he's not given a hero's resolution at the end. And more importantly, our alien centerpiece is just phenomenal. I never realized until District 9 how easily (or for how long) sci-fi has been spoon-feeding us the notion of monotonous alien races. It's mostly, "Hey we're Klingons and we're like this!" or "We're Predators and we do this!" Then we eventually get that one autonomous alien who is the conflicted exception to the stereotype rule - or, at best, an alien culture split into fractions by some kind of superficial/ideological difference. What District 9 presented was a much fresher and challenging concept to deal with: an alien race that doesn't have its shit together.
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"It is too easy being monsters. Let us try to be human." ~Victor Frankenstein, Penny Dreadful