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Finally saw this. Besides making every human ever pretty much the embodiment of evil, there's that nice ending where a human helps an alien to leave with the mother ship, which promises to return.

Resolved: the “hero” has just doomed humanity.
*The aliens have superior technology, as exhibited by the hand weaponry and the battlemech.

*The aliens have the ability to bring substantial forces, as exhibited by the million aliens that originally landed.

*The alien was shocked by the treatment it discovered in the lab.

*The aliens exhibited combative tendencies throughout the movie.

As such the aliens will have the ability to return in force with military forces capable of causing massive devastation, if not extinction, of the human race.

Counterargument?

I think it was the intention of the film-makers that we should fear alien reprisal. Fearing retribution for what we've done to the aliens is probably meant to make us start to think about the situations in the refugee camps we have today.

However, to speculate (wildly) our doom isn't guaranteed. The aliens might have a very different code of morality, and not respond with overwhelming force. The aliens might not care about the ones left on Earth, they seemed to be only drones and it's possible in their apparent caste system it might not be worth sending a ship to go and collect drones. It's left unknown, with a heavy sense of dread... I thought it was one of the better parts of the movie.


And yeah, the film does basically make every human out to be the embodiment of evil. But the people in and around private organisations using a refugee crisis to access alien weaponry probably aren't going to be the nicest people. And even then, you have to remember it's a movie with a none too subtle point to make, so it is going to paint things in broad brushes.

If they do return, I'd think the main character's sacrifice in allowing the alien to escape in the first place would be taken into account when judging humanity.

Perhaps they'd only declare war on south Africa, not humanity in general.

If you think all of humanity was portrayed as evil you weren't paying attention. Try again.

I thought that it was moreso a Battlesuit, or Dreadnought.

You're right the one they put in jail wasn't evil. I tend to not give a gak about meaningless minor characters. Next time please note characters besides film extras.

I'll rephrase, any character who said more than a paragraph in the film.

So, like, any character that doesn't validate your opinion of the film is no longer a character?

The aliens generally seemed to be a bunch of tire-eating douchebags as well.

Besides the smart one and his kid, obviously.

"the smart one and his kid" < we thought that that guy might be the captain and all the others are just drones/workers, makes sense i think, also humanity as pictured in d9 deserves what is coming one of the best films of the year, definitely up there with the dark night

*inb4 heath ledger fan club*

Nurglitch wrote:So, like, any character that doesn't validate your opinion of the film is no longer a character?

A. this is sidetracking from the resolution/discussion
B. nope, thats your supposition not mine.

Frankly I expected a more cogent argument from you Nurglitch than mere sniping, given the opportunity of pure debate. Oh well.


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Orkeosaurus wrote:The aliens generally seemed to be a bunch of tire-eating douchebags as well.

Besides the smart one and his kid, obviously.

Yes they mentioned the alien weaponry a bit in the beginning as a reason for the sequestration.

I was hoping there'd be something right at the end where the "hero" learns that they had originally come to colonize or conquer, and he just set the conqueror's free. Would have been a nice twist.

Frazzled:

Sniping? Pull a cork out and face it: if you're twisting terms like "character" to match your conclusion rather than admitting that your conclusion has been invalidated, then you're not interested in "pure debate".

Fact: there are characters with very minor roles that nonetheless move the story forward.
Fact: all characters in the movie display a mix of virtue and vice.
Conclusion: To say that the movie portrays all humans as evil is a gross over-simplification, and to dismiss these facts when they invalidate your opinion is disingeuous and not in the spirit of open debate.

Trying to map some over-simplified "good and evil" onto an allegory for South African immigration is simply obtuse. As Ahtman said: you weren't paying attention.

If you're not going to actually debate the topic why don't you move the gak on then?

Frazzled wrote:given the opportunity of pure debate. Oh well.

There is no such thing on the internet. The fact that the words alone don't fall off the monitor in laughter is a surprise.

The movie wasn't called "The Many Faceted Political Sides of District 9 and a Close Examination of Opposing Viewpoints". This is not a news story and is not trying to show different sides of an issue. It is about one person and his adventure. Groups that are for the aliens are touched on but not integral to the story because he didn't have contact with them in those few days.

Frazzled:

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with debate, but I have given what is called a "rebuttal" of your position. Having rebutted your opinion by showing how it disagrees with the facts, and offered my own take on the subject, it falls to someone else to either rebut my statement or elaborate it.

Ahtman wrote:

Frazzled wrote:given the opportunity of pure debate. Oh well.

There is no such thing on the internet. The fact that the words alone don't fall off the monitor in laughter is a surprise.

True that.

The movie wasn't called "The Many Faceted Political Sides of District 9 and a Close Examination of Opposing Viewpoints". This is not a news story and is not trying to show different sides of an issue. It is about one person and his adventure. Groups that are for the aliens are touched on but not integral to the story because he didn't have contact with them in those few days.

True that, however I'd like to focus away from
*were there any actual good guy humans? I'm happy to argue that and other points of the movie but thought they had been previously (was aviofding the other threads prior to seeing the film)and was looking to discuss the thought that, the good guy human may have actually killed us all.
*why the ing did ing Alamo Drafthouse run out of wine orior to the show and why they seated us ing 30 minutes late so I had to scarf the pizza prior to the movie and why was there almost no butter on my popcorn you ing ers! Seriously.

OT but is like the director really cheesed off at Nigerians or what? I'm surprised there aren't protests or something.

One of the things that pleased me most about this film was the fact that the main character went from a sniveling little bastard whom you wouldn't tire of punching to a genuinely sympathetic character over the course of the film. That's a sign of excellent storytelling to me.

As for the main alien (Christopher?) as he was a slightly different color to the other aliens and seemed much more intelligent than the rest I got the impression he may have been from a higher caste. That he could pilot the ship seems to confirm this.

The only good prawn is a dead prawn...

Ive seen half the film on the internet (Couldnt watch the rest cause of powercut)

I got up to the bit where the main characters hand has gone all prawny and he was holding the scientist hostage and escaping.

What I didnt understand was why the Prawn at the begining couldnt drive the ship, but at the end (Apparently) one could.

Plot hole!
Why could they scavenge fuel on earth from prawn tool bits but not on their actual ship?

Because it's produced by prawns. On the ship they'd run out, and didn't have time to wait for more. But as the prawn survived on Earth and built new stuff, they produced more of the special fuel. Although I think fuel is a misnomer, since it seems more like transmission fluid.

The Prawns seemed like animals when they found them, they were living in huge rooms in there own gak.

I wonder if one of points the director was trying to make with the Prawn/caste system is that its very similar to mankind's; in a similar situation the majority of humans would likely live just like most of the Prawn did in such a scenario meaning that they'd live simple existences just trying to survive without having much informational knowledge --- just like people who live in poverty today do. For the most part the Prawn didn't protest or try to take control of their situation much like what you see in North Korea, etc; however thats not to say that there weren't acts of violence and uprising (again a quality found in mankind as well).

Most of mankind are blue collar people who don't have upper-tier knowledge, respectable speaking skill, or the ability to lead and politicize -- and those of us with college degrees and the like probably would be just as worthless as the 'worker Prawns' if faced in a similar situation as them. Kind of like those "wtf do we do, we're stranded on a desert island" scenarios except much worse since you're being herded in interment/concentration camps.

Frazzled wrote:Plot hole!
Why could they scavenge fuel on earth from prawn tool bits but not on their actual ship?

Perhaps if they flew back to their ship and then started foraging for fuel the humans would go up there and catch them very quickly. Staying in the camp they were able to avoid notice.

Perhaps the device to refine the fuel was built on Earth and couldn't be moved?


But you want to talk about plot holes? When you have a pile of aliens arrive, why doesn't the international community care at all. Oh, that's South Africa's problem... I mean I know it was meant to correspond to refugee issues but it was a real contrivance.

And why did no-one outside of one merc company care about the weapons tech? There would have been hordes of researchers from Lockheed Martin, H&K and whoever else pouring over every possible application. Why weren't there researchers up in the alien ship, working day and night?

And if you have weapons tech that only aliens can use and a few hundred thousand unemployed aliens... surely one problem solves the other. Alien mercenaries?

Why were surface to air missiles installed to guard a refugee camp?

It was a fun movie but it really didn't make a lick of sense.


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Cane wrote:I wonder if one of points the director was trying to make with the Prawn/caste system is that its very similar to mankind's; in a similar situation the majority of humans would likely live just like most of the Prawn did in such a scenario meaning that they'd live simple existences just trying to survive without having much informational knowledge --- just like people who live in poverty today do. For the most part the Prawn didn't protest or try to take control of their situation much like what you see in North Korea, etc; however thats not to say that there weren't acts of violence and uprising (again a quality found in mankind as well).

Most of mankind are blue collar people who don't have upper-tier knowledge, respectable speaking skill, or the ability to lead and politicize -- and those of us with college degrees and the like probably would be just as worthless as the 'worker Prawns' if faced in a similar situation as them. Kind of like those "wtf do we do, we're stranded on a desert island" scenarios except much worse since you're being herded in interment/concentration camps.

I think the idea was the people floundering in refugee camps are, indeed, floundering because the camps give little or no opportunity for escape.

*The aliens exhibited combative tendencies throughout the movie.

They were a disorganized mass. Individuals trading weapons. And only individuals continued working on ways to return to their ship and leave. The only type of solidarity I saw was at the end where the colonel was about to kill Vikers.

I actually thought it was quite interesting how they brought in the whole "human/alien rights" into it. The film was shown from a political perspective more than anything which was a refreshing change.

Back on topic though I think Frazzled raises some good issues, though the aliens seem to be capable of individual thought and reason. The fact that Christopher (I think that was the alien's name) said he will return in 3 years to help out the main character shows that there is in fact some humanity/alienity in them. This in itself could lead to a peace treaty of sorts, especially since the aliens would have a huge advantage technologically...

Why destroy us, when they can just assimilate us. Then we too can have awesome Mechs of badassery!

Yea that was awesome wasn't it. made me think of what a crisis suit would be like.

It will be interesting to compare those to the mechs in the upcoming avatar.

I saw the first trailer/sneak preview whatever of it. I was so confused.

Frazzled wrote:Plot hole!
Why could they scavenge fuel on earth from prawn tool bits but not on their actual ship?

The state they were found in on the ship makes it sound like they were on the edge of death, to be honest. Perhaps they needed the stability of the camp (or any situation where they had food) before any of them had the spare time/energy/inclination to start making the fuel. Also, we don't know the origin of the fuel. Maybe it's a biological product of the worker class, maybe it's found in some elements of their technology so all the "fuel" on earth would be in artifacts taken from the ship during the inital move to earth.

As for the question of

sebster wrote:
Perhaps if they flew back to their ship and then started foraging for fuel the humans would go up there and catch them very quickly.

Given that they had just the one ship, which was dropped from the main ship during the evacuation, and which didn't work without fuel, they would have kind of a hard time getting to the mothership in order to forage. Unless they could persuade the local government to lend them a helicopter.

sebster wrote:
But you want to talk about plot holes? When you have a pile of aliens arrive, why doesn't the international community care at all. Oh, that's South Africa's problem... I mean I know it was meant to correspond to refugee issues but it was a real contrivance.

And why did no-one outside of one merc company care about the weapons tech? There would have been hordes of researchers from Lockheed Martin, H&K and whoever else pouring over every possible application. Why weren't there researchers up in the alien ship, working day and night?

This was my main issue too... why were the city, the camp, the mothership and every other spare centimetre of the place not swarming with research units, UN reps, politicians etc etc? I can understand the lack of additional private weapons companies - the SA government would probably have had a tendering process and picked one researcher to give exclusive access in return for full disclosure/access to results.

sebster wrote:
Why were surface to air missiles installed to guard a refugee camp?

I got the impression they were inteded more to keep people out than in, but in the defence of the imaginary camp organisers, the aliens arrived in an enormous flying ship, and it doesn't hurt to be cautious.

M.

Cane wrote:I wonder if one of points the director was trying to make with the Prawn/caste system is that its very similar to mankind's;

You were on precisely the right track here for a moment. Allow me to elucidate.

District 9 is based upon Neil Blomkamp's student film "Alive in Joburg." Kind of similar to how THX-1138 was based on George Lucas' student thesis...Neil got Peter Jackson and George got Francis Ford Coppola...

For "Alive in Joburg," Neil interviewed black South Africans (mostly) about Nigerians living in the country. Go watch the movie...he takes their comments and edits the film to make it sound like they're talking about these aliens living in their country, but they're talking about Nigerians irl.

If you're informed about race relations among American blacks in someplace like South Florida, Haitians, black Cubans, Jamaicans, and American blacks descended from slaves (the only real "African-Americans") all have very clear lines between them which they draw themselves. There's no quicker way to piss of a Haitian than to call them "African-American."

I don't know if the caste system among the prawns is meant to mirror humanity's - it's the way the humans treat the prawns which is meant to mirror the way humans treat other humans. In Culture Studies they teach this concept called "othering" where one group of people clearly delineates another group of people as being "different than" them, or "other" than them, which is a kind of dehumanization. It's not brain surgery or rocket science to identify the phenomena, all of us do it every day if we get a little, just a little, introspective for a moment.

I think the prawns are meant as a metaphorical stand-in for any group of people who humans are "othered" from, and therefore don't give a gak about. You don't see massive outcries over the raping and genocide taking place in Darfour because those "aren't people," they're just a news item, and one which doesn't really get covered much anymore - but if you suddenly switch a bunch of Americans for the people getting raped and slaughtered over there you'd see the armed forces in Darfour in about two seconds.

They're not us, so they don't matter, so no one cares.


The scene that got me the most in District 9 was when the MNU was burning the shack of alien eggs. Those are babies they're killing, and Wikus, the gak, is getting all excited about how the eggs "pop" and "the little guys are trying to get out of there." When we later see Christopher's child I hope it becomes clear to most of the audience just how heinous what the MNU did in that previous scene was.

What I liked most about this movie was that the only really sympathetic character wasn't real. Christopher the alien was the only character I gave a gak about, well him and his son. Everyone else in that movie other than some of the cut-in researchers who might not have been bad people, or the character who exposed the MNU programs and is awaiting trial, is pretty much a piece o fshit who can burn for all I care.

If the aliens do come back and humanity bites it from sub-orbital bombardment, it may be a case of the majority of the species ruining it for the minority, but as a species humanity, in that fictional universe, deserves it.

It's an age-old philosophical debate about humanity being good or evil...I think Men in Black said it best, something about individuals being smart but groups of people being panicky and stupid. Or you could go the Nietzsche route and say that the bulk of humanity is just an engine to drive the development of the select few who actually achieve and are geniuses and who represent what our species is really capable of, and you judge us on those few, not everyone else...


I'm not sure to what degree the prawn's intra-community makeup was meant to mirror ours...the fact that they're aliens confuses things. I don't whether you were looking at castes or what...Christopher is the only alien portrayed with any complexity...we don't know if the other aliens are just stupid or whether Christopher is just particularly bright, and the other prawns aren't stupid but just pissed off.

We don't know whether they were living in the ship for months in their own gak because they were too stupid to realize they were doing it, or whether their ship was broken and the majority of them weren't pilots or engineers and just couldn't figure out how to escape the ship, and by that time they'd pretty much grown resigned to their situation because they'd tried everything they could try. We have no idea.

From the fact that they HAVE interstellar spacecraft and advanced weapons, battlesuits, etc., we know that as a species they're a hell of a lot smarter than humans...