District 9 (2009)
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Thirty years ago, aliens arrive on Earth. Not to conquer or give aid, but to find refuge from their dying planet. Separated from humans in a South African area called District 9, the aliens are managed by Multi-National United, which is unconcerned with the aliens' welfare but will do anything to master their advanced technology. When a company field agent contracts a mysterious virus that begins to alter his DNA, there is only one place he can hide: District 9.
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What critics say influenced District 9
The creatures combine insect and crustacean anatomy and at times recall David Cronenberg’s DNA splicing of fly and human from “The Fly” to deliver some genuinely uncomfortable scenes.
Physical transformation scenes reminiscent of Cronenberg’s The Fly will freak out some viewers — and thrill others.
It’s not that there isn’t a clear weight of genre history behind Neill Blomkamp’s astonishing feature debut: District 9 nods to everything from Cronenberg’s The Fly to Verhoeven’s Robocop, from Raimi’s Evil Dead II to Scott’s Black Hawk Down.
While built on elements from Alien Nation , Enemy Mine , and even David Cronenberg’s The Fly , District 9 transcends its inspirations by focusing on story, character, and the very human disregard for others until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.
The film recalls the likes of The Day the Earth Stood Still, David Cronenberg's The Fly , and Independence Day .
Soon his body is undergoing a transformation similar to the one in David Cronenberg’s The Fly, and he becomes a fugitive, hunted down by both thuggish government mercenaries and a group of Nigerian gangsters who want to eat him for animistic religious purposes.
Seamlessly blending the natural and the unnatural, Blomkamp layers visual gags (signs warning "No Non-Human Loitering") with aural (alien conversations that sound like extreme intestinal distress) while advancing a plot rife with references to E.T., The Fly and Alien Nation.
(The core concept — extraterrestrial asylum seekers land on Earth and become second-class citizens — was explored in the 1990s Alien Nation movie and TV series.)
While built on elements from Alien Nation , Enemy Mine , and even David Cronenberg’s The Fly , District 9 transcends its inspirations by focusing on story, character, and the very human disregard for others until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.
Sci-fi fans will spot similarities between District 9’s premise and the 1988 film Alien Nation that starred James Caan and Mandy Patinkin, which was later made into a television series.
Like “Alien Nation” (1988), it begins with the premise of a large alien population being stranded on Earth.
(And it’s as little like the 1988 flick Alien Nation as it could possibly be, even if at the shallowest surface, D9 appears to be aping it.)
For all this time the aliens, designed by Image Engine of Canada from the Goliath beetle and which look like a cyborg experiment in an underwater metal shop, fought for survival, dreamed of their home planet, and procreated, with their mother ship in the sky over them like an inert protective shell, visually akin to the space ship in "Independence Day."
The film recalls the likes of The Day the Earth Stood Still, David Cronenberg's The Fly , and Independence Day .
Blomkamp could have made his human protagonist a dashing hero, someone like Will Smith in Independence Day .
It is a fascinating contrast to the politics of alien invasion films such as Independence Day and War of the Worlds (original and remake).
This is what Independence Day should have been.
“District 9” flips so many sci-fi conventions on their heads that making a movie like “Independence Day” today would be laughable.
Although Blomkamp and company have obviously drawn from previous films including "Close Encounters," "Enemy Mine," "Aliens," "Starship Troopers and even a dash of "I Am Legend," their film is the first in a long while that shouts out for series treatment à la "The Terminator" and "Alien."
And let's not forget the executives from the bio-weapons division of Weyland-Yutani , who cause all the carnage in Aliens .
Bodies are torn apart, Blomkamp’s “Aliens” fixation is satisfied, and bullets of every design zip around the frame.
District 9 is part Starship Troopers, part Mad Max, part Aliens and part The Fly.
"District 9" is a compelling apartheid allegory -- think "Aliens" meets "Schindler's List" -- but there's not a moment of preaching in it.
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Wikus is played by Sharlto Copley as a mix of Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy and Lionel Cosgrove, the dweeby but ultimately heroic protagonist of Peter Jackson�s Dead Alive.
I’ve always been a fan of Peter Jackson (going back to “Bad Taste,” “Meet the Feebles,” and “Dead Alive”).
The casting of Copley is problematic: He's not really an actor; his resume is heavy on producing, directing and effects work, and his overeager hamming would be better suited to a movie such as "Dead Alive," the Peter Jackson zombie romp.
But Jackson knew how to have fun with such grody romps as Dead Alive and Bad Taste.
Wikus is ultimately not very different from the hero of Jackson’s 1992 splatter comedy Dead Alive (aka Braindead), while the officials here are similar to a number of Jackson characters.
While built on elements from Alien Nation , Enemy Mine , and even David Cronenberg’s The Fly , District 9 transcends its inspirations by focusing on story, character, and the very human disregard for others until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.
Although Blomkamp and company have obviously drawn from previous films including "Close Encounters," "Enemy Mine," "Aliens," "Starship Troopers and even a dash of "I Am Legend," their film is the first in a long while that shouts out for series treatment à la "The Terminator" and "Alien."
Rather, this ham-fisted Apartheid allegory involving beleaguered insectoid space aliens herded into the eponymous South African ghetto wins several points because it craftily hybridizes much that was cool about '80s sci-fi (V, Alien Nation, Enemy Mine, plus a huge debt to The Fly -- these creatures seem to have flown in directly from Planet Brundle), whilst rocking both the action and the truly unusual setting.
District 9 takes an attractive premise and approaches it from an unconventional angle resulting in a wildly entertaining sci-fi satire that melds bits and pieces of The Fly Midnight Run Starship Troopers Enemy Mine Alien Nation and TV’s Cops .
It’s not that there isn’t a clear weight of genre history behind Neill Blomkamp’s astonishing feature debut: District 9 nods to everything from Cronenberg’s The Fly to Verhoeven’s Robocop, from Raimi’s Evil Dead II to Scott’s Black Hawk Down.
Eventually, like Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom , the documentary conceit fades away and genre conventions assert themselves — in this case in a blend of violent action, humor and horror tropes, with riffs on everything from Cameron’s Aliens to Verhoeven’s Robocop to Cronenberg’s The Fly — but the film remains a startlingly fresh and provocative take on well-traveled terrain.
It has a healthy amount of social commentary – it does not take long before drug dealers exploit the prawns, and let’s just say that one scene will make Michael Vick very uncomfortable – and an equal amount of gratuitous violence, much like his “RoboCop” from two decades earlier.
The approach to the change is a weird blend of Cronenbergian body horror (especially The Fly) with a nod to the 1959 version of The Fly and possibly The Quatermass Experiment (1955)—and a dose of the kind of gross-out humor one finds in producer Peter Jackson’s early horror comedies.
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As TV's much-mourned "Battlestar Galactica" reminded us, the best sci-fi turns a mirror on ourselves.
Wikus is played by Sharlto Copley as a mix of Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy and Lionel Cosgrove, the dweeby but ultimately heroic protagonist of Peter Jackson�s Dead Alive.