First, I agree entirely with you, A-----, that the special effects and acting were phenominal. And I loved the documentary style and how they did it, maybe because it was just so different from normal movies.
Second, my complaint actually wasn't that it wasn't happy. I like the depressing, the warped, etc. The aliens got away, anyway - to me, that's a happy ending (at least partially).
R------ - the basic plot of the movie is that a alien mother ship stops over a part of South Africa and is unable to move further on. Eventually, the government drills into the ship to find millions of starving aliens aboard.
The government builds a bunch of low income housing and the place easily turns into a ghetto. Poverty, crime, et cætera. People stereotype the aliens, assume they want to kill humans for the fun of it, ban them from different establishments (there are signs reading Humans Only), et cætera.
The idea is that it's supposed to be an allegory for apartheid South Africa (or, at the very least, racism or marginalized group descrimination).
Here's my complaint. While, yes, it opperates quite well like a regular action flick (actually, too much so; without the advanced concepts, it's strickingly like a formulaic action movie) and has the basic concept of this allegory of suffering and prejudice, let's shed the allegory for a bit and actually look at the aliens as a suspect class and marginalized group.
While some parts are *perfect* (like the woman commenting about how the aliens will take over a buisness and kill everyone while, in the background, an alien is digging through the garbage for food), there's the aspect that nearly ALL the whites in the movie are in position of power, all the blacks (except a select few) are in positions of poverty, gangs, etc.
Well, this is just accuracy of current South Africa (caused by apartheid) - fine. But that means different levels of damage against marginalized groups (the descrimination and isolation of the aliens) and the results of the above on sociol-economic issues for blacks. This isn't addressed. Rather, all humans are treated in a color-blind fashion (despite the obvious racial division throughout the movie) and the aliens are thought of sadly only because of the actions taken against them by the humans. The movie could have probed these different levels and effects of descrimination through these different levels - but it doesn't.
My second complaint was the blatant descrimination toward the alien within the movie itself.
First off, Wikus is pretty much an abhorrent character at the beginning. On top of clearly being xenophobic, he happily massacres tons of babies, and he's a spineless twat.
Of course, that's just the beginning. And I like the concept of giving us a character like that to see his development. I actually really like that concept.
Here's the problem though - he doesn't really adequately change. The worst part is when he decides to steal Christopher's ship and doesn't bother to even flinch when he hears the poor guy being beaten above him as his son looks up, asking "Father?". In fact, as the boy then looks toward Wikus in fear, Wikus just lies to the kid and says it'll be alright. I mean, how do you do that and live with yourself?
And THEN, after crashing the only means that Christopher has to get home, he has the audacity to try to fun away when he's in a full metal body suit and could have easily saved Christopher when he's, once again, getting the living shit beat out of him.
And then there's the fantastic aspect that Wikus continues, way until the end of the movie, to refer to Christopher as a Prawn, a term already clearly defined and well known to be derogitory towards the group. If we are to use the allegory of an apartheid South Africa, the aliens can be thought of as blacks. It's essentially like calling them niggers the whole movie through.
The issue with this slow and rediculous character development for Wikus is...he's the main character and he's gets so much focus it's rediculous. I mean, it's one thing to have the plot like this but then we focused on Christopher. But, no, it's pretty clear our sympathies are meant to go towards Wikus.
Christopher is the one who's been isolated in South Africa, has his people shot with no issue, has them starved and cheated in this ghetto - and we're focusing on Wikus.
I mean, there wasn't even much sympathy given towards Christopher. In the scene that *should* have been really powerful (when he finds the room where they're expirimenting on his people) - the damn camera stays on Wikus most of the time! I mean, is it human-centrism? I don't get it. Regardless, for a movie trying to point out the cruelties of one to another, it's a pretty bad slap to the face to focus on the human so singularly when the cruelties are happen ten-fold to the other species.
Basically, District 9 had amazing potential. They could have really probed the different levels of descrimination in a really creative way, as I mentioned above. Rather, they just ignored it.
Then they could have *at least* given attention to the plight of the aliens. There are racist movies from the 90s with a black and white main characters thatare more sympathetic and better at highlighting the marginalized character as a multi-dimentional character than District 9 was.
Sorry; I was really disappointed.
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