Guest Blogger: Cait 2

Out of all the alien themed movies in American cinema, I would say District 9 is one of the most unique. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture in 2009; District 9 is a great example of a movie that makes people think in a different way. The film starts out as mockumentary about a strange aircraft floating above Johannesburg. When the spacecraft finally opened; thousands of emaciated creatures were found onboard. The movie then jumps 20 years into the future (present time) and shows the aliens in a shabby, fenced in ghetto named “District 9”. People of every race in South Africa degrade them and coin the derogatory term “Prawns” to address them because of their crustacean like appearance and nature. The company that keeps them contained and out of the city is a company called M.N.U. that secretly carries experiments on the aliens for profit reasons. You are then introduced to the main character, Wikus van der Merwe, a soft-spoken, nervous man who is put in charge of M.N.U.’s biggest operation by his father in-law; who happens to be head of the company. The operation is to move all of the “prawns” to a new and smaller district so M.N.U. can keep them away from the city and continue their inhumane, genocidal experiments on them. When Wikus goes to help move the aliens out of their homes he faces a confrontation with one of the aliens and is injected with something strange. After the substance starts to kick in, he realizes he is actually turning into a prawn and becomes the first alien-human hybrid known to man. M.N.U. tries to imprison and experiment on him until he escapes and hides in the old District 9. The movie ends with an interesting cliffhanger leading a possible second movie. The main character Wikus, is played by Sharlto Copley who happens to be from South Africa like his character. I think he did an amazing job playing Wikus and illustrating Wikus’s journey from a nervous, dull man to someone who is fast to react and emotionally interesting. Despite the obvious theme of aliens coming to earth, there is actually a second theme in the movie. During the same time period as the movie, Apartheid was going on in South Africa and a lot of things done to aliens in the movie, happened to anyone who wasn’t “white” in South Africa.I thought it was interesting how the writer made a story about what we would do to the aliens rather than another movie about aliens coming to earth and destroying us. A.O. Scott had a good point when he said “In the midst of it all you almost take for granted the carefully rendered details of the setting, the tightness of the editing and the inventiveness of the special effects. Not the least of these are the aliens themselves, who are made expressive and soulful without quite being anthropomorphized” the meaning was profound but the critics was completely right when he said the special effects, camera work and editing are nothing to shrug off. I would certainly agree that this movie is completely worth the time and money.