For 11 years, I was the film editor/critic for Urban Tulsa Weekly, an alt-weekly with a circulation of about 35,000. In that time, I reviewed something in the neighborhood of 1400 movies and received boatloads of hate mail. I quit because, well, I got tired of having to go a couple times a weekend every single weekend whether there was anything opening or not. And more often than not, the movies sucked. Can you imagine spending your weekends watching crap you don’t really give a damn about and then having to write about it for two or three hours?
By the end, I hadn’t a weekend off in something like six years. Enough was enough.
Saturday, I went to see District 9 with a buddy, noting that that was the first movie ticket I’d bought for myself in 11 years I wouldn’t be reimbursed for.
There’s a certain freedom involved in just going to see something I want to see as opposed to something I have to see. For instance, I hadn’t been to the movies in three weeks prior to District 9. And though there were some phantom limb moments on Sundays of those weekends, if felt good not to have to do anything.
Why do a review at all? Some habits die hard? I figure if I’m going to go, I might as well write a review. Hey, at least my friends still want to read them.
It’s not like I woke up the day after quitting my column and was any less of a movie fan. The compulsion to see things I want to see is still there. So I’m letting that be my guiding directive. I’m still going to review movies, but only when it’s something I actually want to see. I sure won’t be going every weekend.
So… District 9.
Character Driven? Wha!?
When someone says “character driven” in regard to a movie or book plot, what they mean is that the choices of the protagonists typically determine the direction of the story. Cause and effect and all that. You actually rarely see that in today’s blockbusters.
Take Transformers 2. The story didn’t progress because of Shia LaBeef’s choices. Stuff happened, like Prime getting whacked, and the rest of the characters went along with it. “We’ve got to find the dagger thing to bring Prime back to life!” Nothing that happened in the movie was a result of a decision a character made.
Typically, those kinds of stories are less interesting and less compelling to watch. I’m not saying they’re always bad. There are plenty of “plot-driven” movies out there that were pretty good, or at least pretty entertaining. But the one’s dictated by the characters are almost always better.
They’re better because it allows the audience to better empathize with the character, to better immerse themselves in the protagonist’s plight. To agree or disagree with the decisions that are made on the screen or page.
District 9 is very much a character-driven story. Most of the events on screen happen as a direct result of the decisions made by Wikus Van De Merwe. And why they’re not always the decisions you would make, they give the movie a sense of gravitas and urgency.
The story goes something like this… 29 years ago, an alien spacecraft parked above the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, and did nothing but hang there. Nothing came out. No communications came forth. Eventually, the South Africans cut their way in and found millions of “Prawns” aboard (Prawns being the derogatory slang name used for the aliens due to their physical characteristics).
The city opted to do the “humanitarian” thing. They removed all the aliens from the ship and relocated them to District 9, which was more or less a giant slum/shanty town. Time past and tension built between the aliens and humans. The citizens just want the aliens out of their city, preferably off-planet. Most of this exposition is provided to us via documentary-style interviews “taped” after the events of the film.
So a plan is hatched to relocate the Prawns to District 10, a razor-fenced encampment 240km from the city. Wikus is tasked by the MNU to deliver eviction notices to the 1.8 million residents of District 9 and tell them they’re going to be relocated. It’s not a job anyone really wanted, and he’d been promoted to it by his father-in-law. The man expects, and wants, Wikus to fail. Nice guy.
Wikus has a really crappy first day on the job. He comes across as mildly incompetent, so there’s a bit of sitting there and waiting for the bad things to happen to him, and that somehow he deserves them. He gets knocked around, has his arm broken, and then when he stumbles across a shack filled with contraband, his life gets ruined. He finds a cylinder that he doesn’t think is a weapon, but when he fiddles with it, it shoots some black liquid into his face. That’s pretty much the end of life as he knows it, though it takes the rest of the film for the consequences to play out. He makes, as it turns out, one of cinema’s most unlikely of heroes.
The film is strong enough that it can take a pretty gruesome looking alien and by the end of the film, have you sympathizing with them as though they were human. Humanity, in this case, is the antagonist, and you’ll have no problem with that.
The movie starts slow, narratively speaking, but when the interviews start to thin out and more time is spent with Wikus, things pick up and build to a kick-ass final act. There’s a lot to like. The special effects are outstanding and make it appear as though the film is happening in a plausible reality. The aliens look real enough, despite their appearance. The tech looks plausible. The mothership looks like it was just filmed hanging over the city. It’s easy to achieve suspension of disbelief when such a convincing illusion is performed.
As a sci-fi geek, I couldn’t get enough of the movie’s ordnance. My buddy said this after the movie… “They out iron-manned Iron Man.” Disctrict 9 has the best Mech in any movie to date. The thing is awesome to watch and features an arsenal that’d make Tony Stark envious. Then again, I guess Tony wouldn’t really want to make pink mist out of people with one shot.
Like all the other “tech” in the film, it’s gritty, rugged and as “realistic” looking as possible.
Neill Blomkamp, who’s all of 29 years old, was slated to direct the Halo movie back when it was actually in development. After seeing District 9, I wish Microsoft, Fox and Universal would’ve pulled their heads out of their collective ass and let the dude make the movie. As it stands now, neither he nor Peter Jackson want anything to do with the Halo property. I imagine that’s because they’re giddy at the prospect of owning their own blockbuster sci-fi franchise.
I , for one, can’t wait to see the sequel to District 9. You know there’s going to be one. First, the story leaves it wide open, and second, the film made back its production budget on opening weekend.
If Blomcamp can do this with $30 million, I can’t wait to see what he can do with a real budget.
