ellen_datlow

Do you mean why it might be or "might not be"???
It has enough shoot-em-ups to make everyone happy I think! Without some of that it might be way too cerebral.
But I found it very suspenseful--because I really wasn't sure where it was going for a long time.

I feel that they told a really good story and without all the high-tech trimmings - I mean, it wasn't just eye-candy. It was a very thought-provoking movie, at least for me it was.

Even my wife, who would be the first to admit she's not all that into sci-fi, even less into fantasy, said that it really made her sit down and seriously think about it.

I can easily see where you could probably do a sequel - but I hope they don't.

I believe I can recognize a thinking person's sci-fi movie ("Moon" was such a one)and loath big budget special effect shoot-em-ups. I also despise ineptly made movies in which we are expected to believe that a giant space ship could hang over Johannesburg for 20 years without every scientist on earth swarming over it. Or that 1.5 million aliens could live on planet earth in a concentration camp/ghetto without anyone examining them or learning anything about them. The relief of the shoot-em up ending was that it meant the movie was actually going somewhere and would end.

Nor does it seem likely that in their effort to clear this area would involve one poor shmuck and a couple of helpers wandering around trying to get alients to put a scrawl on their own eviction notices.

Yes, this has echoes of South Africa's disgusting racist past but that isn't what the movie was about. I also was not happy with the depiction of Nigerians as blood thirsty savages with more than a touch of the cannibal about them.

Wow! I didn't realize you disliked it that much.

I agree on some of what you see as plot holes but I think it's got everything to do with South Africa's racist past.

Lucius can respond to some of your other comments (if he wants to).

Well, I just followed the logic of the movie and assumed that the scientists couldn't access the weapons...and they couldn't access the ship. And since I believe that South Africa once had vast ghettos without evincing much in the way of care, hat didn't strike me as untoward...though I suppose showing a relief worker or two might have added a touch of verisimilitude. As for the Nigerian cannibals...well, there are people like that and they're every bit as much stock as evil corporations, but no less real. I have been in SA, but in Central America the Salva Maratrucha can be every bit as inhuman-seeming as the Nigerians of District 9.

I think the docu style of the first portion allowed for a great deal of narrative compression and I had no problem with it.

The movie was somewhat naive--in this it reminded me of Sleep Dealer, tho District 9 was, in my view, superior in many ways thanks to having a budget.

And, Ellen, a sequel is definitely in the cards, as 9 made 3 million it's first week and cost 30.

What's Sleep Dealer?

Well, I just hope he doesn't screw it up.

Oops. Cost 30 million and made 37 mil it's opening weekend.

Sleepo Dealer ,a low budget scifi pict by Alex Rivera, quite ntteresting.

Lucius, I understand that if I had to watch lots of SF movies I would come to appreciate the ones that treated me as if I had an I.Q. of 90 instead of one of 65. Nonetheless I do think this film was mildly retarded.

I won't even go into the unlikelihood of China, the US and EU allowing the ship or the aliens to remain in the hands of South Africa.

I appreciate what the creative people were trying to do and appreciate their resourcefulness.

Living at the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal Streets I have some small idea of the economic madness of Hollywood. I probably see in a year more major pictures being shot on my block than I actually see in theaters -millions of dollars wasted for five seconds of screen time.

I AM LEGEND with WILL SMITH was, I felt, an idiotic waste of time and money but that doesn't mean that District 9 didn't seem like a mediocre film with a muddled message.

Plea denied!

Is it definite that he's doing a sequel...nurtz!

that's just something I read somewhere. Hollywood patterns indicate the inevitable sequel(s) and a remake.

A sequel made by the same director COULD be good. A US remake, ugh.

I very much liked that it took place in South Africa and that even those who were once victims of apartheid were all for it when it came to "these" aliens.

I have avoided it because I've heard it's very violent and bloody, but the premise intrigues me. It's all but inevitable these days that any successful movie, especially SF, gets at least one sequel. That's pretty much the business model now. ;)

It's violent but not all that graphic (I mean it doesn't glory in the details)--blood flies, people/aliens blow up...but it's not disgusting. Believe it or not, even as a horror editor/reader, I don't like gratuitous graphic violence. I don't feel this is. So you may want to check it out.

Oh good, that's good to hear. I'd heard otherwise. :)

Well, unpleasant bodily functions/things related to--do happen. But you can take it :-)

I know I know. Once the alien said he'd come back you know that yeah, if there's a budget there's a way --oh well.

Now the franchise stuff I could get behind :-)

I'm going to buy Rick a D9 snuggy!

I thought Wikus was an interesting character, the actor was certainly fun to watch. I think some commentary said that the actor who played him had never acted a day in his life and had no intentions of being an actor, or something to that effect. No wonder he seemed so...human.

I would love a D9 shirt or possibly a miniature robot for my desk. =P

Me too me too. I want them.

I know this is going to sound silly, but how bad is the 'wonky cam' and am I going to feel sick watching it? (Like Cloverfield and Blair Witch?)

I don't think it's bad. I barely noticed it.

I dunno. It seemed like a thinking-man's scifi that stopped thinking about twenty minutes in. I didn't care for the mockumentary look of the beginning. I hated the sloppiness of the shoot-em-up at the end. It just felt a little hasty and tacked-together.

They'll make a bundle...

Here are links to some other blog posts about the movie:
http://suricattus.livejournal.com/1116180.html
and
http://sleigh.livejournal.com/266159.html#cutid1

I agree more with Laura Anne's analysis than Stephen Leigh's, because the latter wanted a different movie than the one the filmmaker made and that's not playing fair with any artist's work (I dislike when critics do that with fiction and I dislike it in the other arts).