Board 8 > Saw District 9 for the first time yesterday.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I liked it overall but I admittedly have a serious soft spot for first contact stories. I felt like the aliens had a distinctive design that allowed them to be pretty expressive, liked the gore, liked the Body Horror angle, liked the action scenes, liked the whole documentary feel, and I found enough to like about this movie overall. On a scale of 1-10 I'd give it a 7, slightly closer to an 8. My two biggest gripes were the film not really breaking any new ground in the plot it was trying to tell and not really developing any of its ideas that well. Even Black Panther had a more fully-realized message IMO, and 2009 must not have been that great of a year for film if this got nominated for Best Picture. That being said, there were two aspects of the film that really stuck with me:

-The way this movie handles the whole aspect of the hero Going Native felt like a neat contrast from Avatar (released later the same year), almost like it could be read as an answer to the latter film's Mighty Whitey undertones. In the latter film Jake takes the form of one of the aliens to befriend them, whereas Wikus is a racist idiot who is forced to befriend the aliens because he's a wanted fugitive and is turning into one of them. Could also be read as an answer to similar plots like Dances with Wolves or The Last Samurai.

-I liked the use of HANDHELD cam during the action scenes, as it lent a chaotic feel to them that suited the plot very well and captured the tension the characters were feeling at those moments. Handheld cam is not the same thing as the infamous shaky cam, since there the camera moves as if it's being carried by hand rather than just jerking back and forth.

---

I thought it was pretty amazing first time I watched it.

I can't really imagine comparing it to a superhero movie and coming up short, but I basically stopped watching marvel movies before they got "good"

---

The film absolutely broke a lot of new ground, and comparing it to the shallow pool Black Panther which contains maybe two minutes of actually incisive material is pretty hilarious. The movie spends a great deal of time pulling apart the Apartheid, and its visceral nature was pretty unflinching in its representation of that. It really is every bit the spiritual successor of science fiction visionaries such as Arthur Clarke, Larry Niven and so many more.

---

I guess I'm just comparing the two movies because they're both set in Africa lol. I used BP as an example of a movie I think developed its idea better.

---

LinkMarioSamus posted...

I guess I'm just comparing the two movies because they're both set in Africa lol. I used BP as an example of a movie I think developed its idea better.

So you're... racist? Black Panther doesn't really develop much of anything. There is a complete dissection of a societal breakdown in District 9, and it bears out in the daily lives of everyone who interacts with the alien refugees and the refugees themselves. I couldn't tell you one thing about Wakanda outside of the main characters. We don't know how the people of Wakanda really live, day-to-day. It gets a handwave of "technology!" but that technology only exists to suit the superheroic agenda. Again, shallow pool. If that's what you want, it's a good time and an entertaining film, but you have to really choose to ignore the movie to make the argument you're making.

Essentially, it's apples-to-oranges in terms of what the films set out to do. District 9 isn't a character study, and Black Panther is, to the best of its ability, the study of two characters with divergent paths, exploring their contrasting philosophies. District 9 is pure science fiction, exploring with a brutally truthful lens a what-if that reassesses another part of human history critically.

---

I was (partially?) joking about that comparison.

Honestly yeah, we don't really know Wakanda that well. I meant more that the movie developed its central ideas more fully than this movie did. Yeah I guess I shouldn't have compared them.

Oh wait I know why I did - they were both nominated for Best Picture! And IMO Black Panther deserved it.

---

2009, by the way, is one of the best line-ups for Best Picture ever, aside from The Blind Side, and given it was the resurrection of the ten-film nomination list, that's saying something. And, again, the central idea of District 9 probably is about as perfectly developed as possible. You keep sort of saying the same thing over and over, but you don't really cite any examples. I think you just want characters to be the centerpiece of a movie rather than the movie to be about the concepts and the ebb and flow of a society. The front half of District 9 is phenomenally executed, and the film doesn't shy away from the fact that Wikus is an asshole and a bigot, and that his actions are fueled primarily by his own motivations. He's not a hero. If it's easier for you to swallow a film with traditional hero-villain mechanics, sure, go for it, that's Marvel in a nutshell for you.

---

Okay, I probably meant that the film isn't very focused.

Honestly the beginning of the movie gave me strong Cloverfield vibes. I feel like that movie is of similar quality. I guess I should never have brought up Black Panther, but I like those Marvel movies a lot! Well some of them anyway.

---

I don't think Wikus is an asshole and a bigot so much as he was hopelessly naive.

---

That's certainly a good way of putting things, yes.

---

TheRock1525 posted...

I don't think Wikus is an asshole and a bigot so much as he was hopelessly naive.

His naivety I think is the origination of his other behaviors, but I don't think they are exclusive to one another.

---