I don’t like sci-fi. However, RM convinced me to see District 9 after selling it to me as ‘not your typical sci-fi movie’ but an allegory on the treatment, discrimination and segregation of immigrants and refugees in First World countries.
Someone in my book club once argued that sci-fi shouldn’t just be dismissed as a genre for geeky teenage boys. Beyond the aliens and the droids, a sci-fi world can be used by an author to make deep social and/or political statements without being burdened by the prejudices and conventions of reality or known science and technology. So at first I was quite impressed with the film – the real-time documentary feel made it plausible that aliens had been forced to live in a segregated slum (District 9) in Johannesburg for the past twenty years. In the interviews with Johannesburg residents about their impressions of aliens, you could have easily replaced the references to ‘aliens’ with ‘blacks’, ‘Jews’ or ‘immigrants’ and it would have been a tabloid voxpop.
But then it just got ridiculous and, well, typical sci-fi [spoiler alert]. Wikus, a human, is responsible for evicting the aliens (who are similar to prawns) and clearing the slum. In the process he accidentally sprays prawn juice on himself and to his horror begins to transform into a prawn. With his prawn hand he’s now able to operate prawn weapons and thus the hunter becomes the hunted as the other humans want to capture his DNA for their own nefarious purposes. Whilst hiding in District 9, Wikus befriends a prawn (Christopher) who tries to help him but in order to do so they must fly a vehicle to the mothership using the remaining prawn juice which is now in the humans’ laboratory. After a very satisfying gunfight involving the liberal splattering of evil human mercenaries with crew cuts and clenched accents, Wikus and Christopher get the prawn juice but on their return to District 9 Christopher is captured by more humans. So Christopher’s young prawn son (a shrimp?) must fly the vehicle on his own while Wikus dons a Transformers get-up to attack the humans in order to provide Christopher with an escape route to reunite with his shrimp.
If you like sci-fi, you’ll love this movie. The CGI effects are amazing and there’s lots of exhilarating shots of people being blasted into smithereens. As for me, it wasn’t a terrible film, just not my bag.
- District 9, Greater Union, 131 Russell Street, Melbourne 3000 +61 3 9654 8133
Ugh.. my boyfriend wants to watch this film and I am so NOT looking forward to it. And now that one of my favourite Melbourne reviewers (i.e.: you) say you didn’t like it, I am going to balk at the prospect even more. Then again, I made him watch a chick flick with me the other day so I guess it’s my turn get tortured.
Love, love, love your site! Thanks for showing a newbie melburnian (ie ME) all the cool places and things to do
Twitter: _beachbutterfly
| August 24, 2009, 4:07 pm
Hi Chay, don’t worry too much about seeing District 9 – you just have to manage your expectations that there is lots of quite silly prawn action happening in the film
And you may be put off eating prawns for a while afterwards – I went to the fishmonger yesterday and felt nauseous looking at all those wiggling antennae.
I’m glad you enjoy reading the blog. Remember you can always Ask the Doctor if you need any specific ideas for things to do/see. I’m not a native Melburnian either so I can objectively say that it’s a great place to live and a city that rewards exploration.
Well some people love this movie. I for one have loved this movie and I am happy there is going to be a sequel, District 10. It is your opinion if it is the best movie YOU’VE SEEN, but maybe not to others. So people have the freedom of speech about what is and what is not the best thing to them.