Had a man-date on Monday and we went and saw District 9 (both the wives had no interest in it so it was up to us to make it happen). I went into the theater very excited, having read and heard reviews to the effect crowning it instant classic-icity, an SF film to be revered and worshiped alongside 2001 and Alien. Okay. All right. Bring it on.
Well, I left somewhat deflated and disappointed. Still think it’s better than 90 percent of the SF junk Hollywood puts out, but it just didn’t live up to the hype. I leave you to watch the trailers and read the reviews, if you’re interested. And see it or rent it in a few months; I do recommend it. But it was just a tad too gory, a tad too guns-n-explosions, a tad too CGI-dependent. (Not that the CGI is noticeably distracting; it isn’t. In that regard Hollywood is advancing in leaps and bounds, as long as the producer wishes to throw the bucks in that direction.)
The aliens are the focal point of the movie, or at least should be. But they’re not fleshed out too well. Only two are given any amount of screen time (there’s supposed to be something like 2.5 million of them on Earth in this camp, which looks like a city block in downtown Paterson). There’s a lot the movie doesn’t explain about them, which is okay, I suppose, but I felt some things should be addressed rather than glossed over. Why are the prawns so morally ambiguous? So barbaric if they have the capacity for interstellar travel? So weak to be dominated by humans? Is this all the result of evil humanity consigning them to the eponymous relocation camp?
A couple of things didn’t make sense, plot-hole wise. You’ll pick them up when you see them. And it was so dark, ethically speaking. No one’s a hero on the human side of the equation. Men suffer from that cinematic psychosis I call “evil to the end”, which means that even mortally-wounded and facing the notion of possibly meeting their maker, the God and Creator of Life and the Universe, a man will still try with his final breath to kill the fleeing good guys in cold blood. Sigh.
But it does deserve kudos for an original concept, if a little heavy-handed metaphorically and despite stealing motifs from Cronenberg’s The Fly and those Transformer movies. The characters are interesting in spite of the one-dimensionality, and the heroes of both species do take a beating but that doesn’t stop them from pursuing their self-interested goals. I think the advertising was trying to portray it as a thinking man’s SF movie, but it really is just a point-and-shoot video game in an unfamiliar setting.
Grade: B+.
Well, I left somewhat deflated and disappointed. Still think it’s better than 90 percent of the SF junk Hollywood puts out, but it just didn’t live up to the hype. I leave you to watch the trailers and read the reviews, if you’re interested. And see it or rent it in a few months; I do recommend it. But it was just a tad too gory, a tad too guns-n-explosions, a tad too CGI-dependent. (Not that the CGI is noticeably distracting; it isn’t. In that regard Hollywood is advancing in leaps and bounds, as long as the producer wishes to throw the bucks in that direction.)
The aliens are the focal point of the movie, or at least should be. But they’re not fleshed out too well. Only two are given any amount of screen time (there’s supposed to be something like 2.5 million of them on Earth in this camp, which looks like a city block in downtown Paterson). There’s a lot the movie doesn’t explain about them, which is okay, I suppose, but I felt some things should be addressed rather than glossed over. Why are the prawns so morally ambiguous? So barbaric if they have the capacity for interstellar travel? So weak to be dominated by humans? Is this all the result of evil humanity consigning them to the eponymous relocation camp?
A couple of things didn’t make sense, plot-hole wise. You’ll pick them up when you see them. And it was so dark, ethically speaking. No one’s a hero on the human side of the equation. Men suffer from that cinematic psychosis I call “evil to the end”, which means that even mortally-wounded and facing the notion of possibly meeting their maker, the God and Creator of Life and the Universe, a man will still try with his final breath to kill the fleeing good guys in cold blood. Sigh.
But it does deserve kudos for an original concept, if a little heavy-handed metaphorically and despite stealing motifs from Cronenberg’s The Fly and those Transformer movies. The characters are interesting in spite of the one-dimensionality, and the heroes of both species do take a beating but that doesn’t stop them from pursuing their self-interested goals. I think the advertising was trying to portray it as a thinking man’s SF movie, but it really is just a point-and-shoot video game in an unfamiliar setting.
Grade: B+.
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