See District 9

[Visla Eraclaire]

Humans Are Bastards: (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumansAreBastards) The Movie

I find that the Escapist's movie reviews (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/876-District-9) are hit or miss, but they usually provide a fairly reliable gauge of how a certain type of person will feel about a movie. I don't perfectly overlap with that type, but I have to fully subscribe to the recommendation given to this movie.

It is simply fantastic.

That point aside, I have a brief anecdote regarding my screening of it. Which totally shouldn't derail the discussion, but I feel obligated to share.

I know that most Althanians are not old enough to have children, but under no circumstances should anyone bring a young child to this movie. I'm not the "think of the children" sort of person, but this movie is dark, serious, and frankly unnerving at times, even for adults. Children would not fully appreciate it, at best, and would have nightmares at worst.

When I viewed it, there was a small child seated behind me. So young that by its voice I could not tell whether it was a boy or a girl. My friend says it was a girl, so I'll stick with "she". Her mother was talking during the beginning of the movie. I let that slide, because I had just arrived and perhaps she was still settling in.

A few minutes in, she talked again. I turned around, and rather than mashing that SHHHHH noise that's more annoying than anyone talking, calmly said, "Hush."

She hushes... for a while. Later in the film, the child, who I do not blame because she is simply too young to know better, asks her mother, "What are they doing?"

The mother answers, "They're trying to help him."

Here's a bit of information that should not be a spoiler to anyone. I won't say who HE is or who THEY are, but THEY ARE NOT HELPING HIM. If you have a lie to your child about the movie, it's time to leave. In any event, I turn around and more forcefully insist, "Hush!"

Then only a few more minutes later, the mother exclaims, "That's his friend!"

I turn fully around in my seat and say to her, "Thanks for the color commentary! HUSH!"

If she said one more word, I was going to go find an usher, but fortunately she kept her gob shut for the remainder of the film, which, as I said, was fantastic. Afterward, she had the gall to come up to me and say, "You are one nasty kid."

Let's ignore the fact that I'm a grown man, about a foot taller than her. I replied, "And you are a little shit. Your parents should have taught you some manners, filth!"

And leave the theater.

It was a satisfying experience all around.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Gotta' love people who talk during movies.

I'm hearing that it's an awesome movie, from just about everyone that I work with, but there's a couple things preventing me from seeing it:

1) I can't justify ten bucks to sit uncomfortably in a movie theater for 2+ hours, especially when my attention span will not let me do so
2) I look at that movie and see one giant metaphor for racism, which I do not do well with.

So, regrettably, I'm gonna' pass.

[Visla Eraclaire]

It is a metaphor about racism, but it isn't a South Park episode where it lays it on thick with the same self-aware heavyhandedness from start to finish. That undercurrent is there, and you'll certainly think about it. The movie isn't ABOUT that though, it has a story and some frankly amazing action. It doesn't sit there and mope, crying, "Why are we SO RACIST!?"

To paraphrase from the linked review, "Action scenes are just more exciting when you actually care about the participants."

I understand a lot of people don't like paying for movies anymore, but I still enjoy the experience, when it isn't spoiled by some rude imbecile seated behind me. Also, I try to support good filmmaking when I can. I like to see genuinely well made movies make some money at the box office, not just Mindless Sequel: Episode MMVII: The Re-Reimagining In Space (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitlekt6mtovm4vne)

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

It is a metaphor about racism, but it isn't a South Park episode where it lays it on thick with the same self-aware heavyhandedness from start to finish. That undercurrent is there, and you'll certainly think about it. It doesn't sit there and mope, crying, "Why are we SO RACIST!?"

Oh, I've gathered that much from listening in on my coworkers' discussions.

I dunno', maybe I'm just oversensitive on the issue, and I'll hold my tounge since this isn't what this thread is about.

[Falling With Style]

I like how you linked TVTropes, Visla.

I personally liked District 9, mostly because it was creative in the way it went about characterizing the aliens; if anything, they're just as human as the actual human characters were. I could see it being a massive diatribe on racism, but I took it as a sort of study on what it takes to make a 'human' character. You had aliens ranging from the feral to the thoughtful, just like the humans. You have a protagonist who gets quite a bit of character development over the course of the movie. I found it pretty refreshing, considering I went in expecting a Hollywood explosion-fest. Instead, we got a quirky Peter Jackson film set in Johannesburg. It was a lot of fun.

I had a sneaking feeling that Sh33p (aka Caden Law on these boards, veteran of certain other RPing sites) had a hand in writing it. The whole 'humans are bastards' theme and the oddball humorous bits (cat food, eh?) struck me as similar to his style.

[Visla Eraclaire]

I like how you linked TVTropes, Visla.

I personally liked District 9, mostly because it was creative in the way it went about characterizing the aliens; if anything, they're just as human as the actual human characters were. I could see it being a massive diatribe on racism, but I took it as a sort of study on what it takes to make a 'human' character. You had aliens ranging from the feral to the thoughtful, just like the humans. You have a protagonist who gets quite a bit of character development over the course of the movie. I found it pretty refreshing, considering I went in expecting a Hollywood explosion-fest. Instead, we got a quirky Peter Jackson film set in Johannesburg. It was a lot of fun.

I spent more time during Copyright and Trademark last year reading TVTropes than anything else.

I think the above quoted paragraph gives an excellent explanation of what makes District 9 refreshing rather than merely typical. Both humans and aliens run along a continuum from admirable to revolting, and the chief protagonist runs most of that gamut by himself over the course of the film, and not always in a consistent direction.

[Duffy]

Ugh, I stopped watching the video about four seconds in - his voice annoys me.

Having said that, I've heard rave reviews about this from, you know, people with intelligence AND excitement! So I'll go see it (cookie for the reference :))

Any film that dares portray racism (SHOCK HORROR!) is a win win for me, it's the reason I love Crash so much - because it dares to point it out.

[Toy Soldier]

This was an absolutely outstanding movie. I fully believe that this is Oscar worthy, even though many of the flouride drinking, meat-headed mass will surely think otherwise.

"Rawr! I wanna' see aliens mega destroy and stuff! But they were like...uh...gittin' the crap kicked outta them! Boo!! Terrible movie!"

I'm sure many of you that have seen the movie had heard/read similar responses.

[Amaril Torrun]

I just got back from the movie and I have to agree that it is probably one of the better movies I've seen come out this year. Just like the video said, it had better aliens than Star Trek, better gun fights than GI Joe, transformer-like robots, and a better storyline than any of those movies. Oh yeah, and don't take any kids to see it, ever.

Sharing my experience of the movie, some people behind us got kicked out of the theater and I had a bag of coke dropped into my seat as they walked by. I guess they got paranoid.

[Serilliant]

I really have to disagree with the masses here. I don't think District 9 was bad -- I am glad to have seen it -- but it is certainly not a movie I would recommend.

Most of the praise comes by saying that it was a perfect marriage of action and story. I felt it tried to do too much and fell short of success. If this truly were a story-based movie, we might have some information about why the aliens were there in the first place, what their deal was, what Christopher's relationship to his people were (i.e. was he one of the "leader class" or just a particularly smart worker bee?), how/why main dude came to be involved with MNU and what really any of his motivations were, etc. Some questions could have been left intentionally unanswered in hopes of a sequel/prequel, but I felt there were just too many gaps to keep the story compelling. The allegory to racism was interesting, but I felt too heavy-handed and obvious to really be effective. Crash worked on this front because it explored under-the-surface racism. District 9 may as well have had the characters call the prawns "Colored".

On the action front, it felt to me like they went the trite route. Whenever some difficult situation arose, there was always such an easy answer. Main guy caught by Nigerians? Twice? No big deal, we'll just have a super weapon conveniently next to him the first time, and then a super, unstoppable robot with some sort of gravity field the second time. Oh, but then it gets stopped because gravity field only works once apparently?

By the way, super convenient that main guy was able to control that robot as if it was an extension of himself. Dude is some lab rat, but is able to pilot alien technology with almost fluency? I can't even pilot any sort of human technology above a personal car. In fact, I can't even drive stick. Nice to know that if I had a tentacle growing out of me, though, all of the sudden an alien transport vessel would be a breeze.

And if main-character-can-do-anything cliche wasn't enough, they had to throw in the main-character-is-a-silly-bumbling-bureaucrat-no-wait-now-his-a-bad-ass-mofo cliche too.

My main gripe, though, was that the climax of the movie was ruined by the previews. Not really a fault of the movie, I'll grant, but still something that irked me. In the preview, they show a robot grabbing a missile that was fired at a flying ship. Thus, the moment I saw main-dude get into that robot, I knew what the course of the rest of the movie was going to be.

Again, I don't think the movie was bad, per se. As far as action movies go, it was decent. As far as sci-fi goes, it was okay. As far as story-driven social commentary goes, it was meh. The CGI was incredible, the acting was solid, and I enjoyed the score, but everything else was just average.

[Visla Eraclaire]

I think that most of the questions Serillient raised have no satisfactory answer. If they tried to answer them, they would have failed and the movie would have been four hours long.

I don't think you can go into any science fiction movie asking as many questions as are contained in the post above. I thought of all of them afterward, but by then I had already enjoyed the movie. If you can't manage Willing Suspension of Disbelief, this sort of movie is destined to fail.

To be as well-put-together and detailed down to the grit as such questions demand, you need a book. Maybe my standards are just set too low, but I think if I set them much higher, I'd never enjoy a movie.

I also have no problem with the idea of "these facts do not matter for the story." It's something I routinely lose points for in my own writing, and I refuse to accept that it is a bad thing.

Still, I'm happy that someone doesn't like it. My elitism requires that I not like things if they become too popular.

[Relt PeltFelter]

The real awesome thing about District 9 is that it is a film which is successful in America without any "name" actors, or indeed any American actors at all, and which takes place entirely in South Africa. 'America' is not even mentioned in the film once. Not too long ago, a studio would consider this box office poison, and people would avoid the film like the plague.

Thank fuck we seem to finally be moving past that kind of Amero-centric bullshit.

[Duffy]

Out of interest Ser, what did you think of Crash? I still personally hold it as one of my favourite movies of all time - top ten for sure - it's 'message' and scripting still grips me, and this must be the 8th month I've watched it.

[Visla Eraclaire]

The real awesome thing about District 9 is that it is a film which is successful in America without any "name" actors, or indeed any American actors at all, and which takes place entirely in South Africa. 'America' is not even mentioned in the film once. Not too long ago, a studio would consider this box office poison, and people would avoid the film like the plague.

Thank fuck we seem to finally be moving past that kind of Amero-centric bullshit.

I was waiting the whole time to see the token clip of a generic dude in a suit presenting "America's position" on the happenings. I was pleased that it never materialized.

[streak101]

District 9 was terrific, so terrific, I watched it a week ago and I'm still thinking about it like I just stepped out of the theater. The movie had no familiar actors you usually see on the big screen, and it kicks ass. Seriously. Go watch it; it's actually worth money to see.

[Terror's Thrall]

It was a pretty cool film, and I loved the aliens characterisations. As previously done to death, the absence of big names etc was also a bonus, particularly as they used decent actors instead.

Despite this, I found it a fairly mediocre film. Don't get me wrong, it was worth watching. It just didn't particularly grab me and I found parts a little uninteresting. Before any of you accuse me of being of the 'I want more action' strain, believe me I'm not and I could list countless films I've enjoyed based on the story alone. It just didn't really appeal. And it was very predictable. All of it. Maybe I should just stick with books when I want a story, and movies when I want something visceral and visual, because honestly films are mostly not that good at the whole 'deep' thing anyway. Again, I know there are exceptions so please don't jump down my throat :).

[Sumnner]

I absolutely LOVED the film. Best one I've seen in ages!

Because, the good guy (or at least, the semi-hero guy of the plot) gets royally FUCKED at the end.

Love movies that end that way. =)

[Duffy]

Spoiler tags.
*Facepalm.*