It Came from Outer Space (1953)
Directed by Jack Arnold
Author and amateur astronomer John Putnam and schoolteacher Ellen Fields witness an enormous meteorite come down near a small town in Arizona. Putnam becomes a local object of scorn when, after examining the object up close, he announces that it is a spacecraft, and that it is inhabited...
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What critics compared It Came from Outer Space to
It's a film packed to bursting with golden nuggets of surprise, humor, and pathos, though it bears noting that the film runs a track vaguely similar to Spielberg's E.T.. That's not to say in any way that Bird's film is a simulacrum; both films owe a great deal to the classic sci-fi films of the Fifties, notably William Cameron Menzies' Invaders From Mars and Jack Arnold's It Came From Outer Space (both 1953 and both referenced in Bird's film).
After all, Spielberg’s genre outings were themselves 20-years-later homages to “It Came from Outer Space,” among other 1950s B classics.
Wirkola makes the most of the 3D technology; there haven’t been as many deadly weapons flying at the audience since the era of It Came From Outer Space.
Just as films about misunderstood benevolent aliens in the 1950s (The Day the Earth Stood Still, It Came from Outer Space) were calling for an end to the Cold War us-and-them mentality, District 9 is likewise making a strong statement about the damage that can be done when refugees are treated with suspicion before being given any compassion.