District 9

This is a demonstration of Science Fiction done well. It’s a story about a fantastic situation with amazing technology as the backdrop and how the characters react to it, not the other way around. If a movie doesn’t plausibly handle the human equation, then it’s just a collection of noise, special effects and landfills of unsold action figures, aka Star Trek (Abrams version), Men in Black and Independence Day. District 9 will join the standards of the genre because it gets it right such as Soylent Green, The Andromeda Strain and The Day the Earth Stood Still (the original).

So around 30 years ago, an alien spaceship got stranded near Johannesburg (South Africa’s largest city). It didn’t crash, it just hovers like it was parked on the outskirts for unknown reasons, even to the alien inhabitants which might explain why it’s there instead of some place more important such as Washington, London, Paris or Moscow. Once an armed expedition went aboard and discovered the inhabitants incapable of resistance, the spaceship was evacuated and the occupants (a million of them) placed into a temporary camp until humans could figure out what to do with this new legal conundrum: Do they have the same rights as humans? Where should they reside? Which nations will take them in? Obviously, the temporary situation devolved into a permanent limbo settlement filled with squalor, violence and tension. A ghetto full of aliens in the same plight as the Palestinians, Sudanese, and numerous other displaced groups. It doesn’t help that the moniker given to them is “prawn,” equating them with bottom-feeding crustaceans.

Now the government of South Africa and MNU (the military contractor and weapons manufacturer created to handle the “prawn situation”) have decided to move the aliens 200 kilometers north…”for their own safety.” Enter Wikus Van De Merwe, a mid-level bureaucrat from MNU. His superiors have chosen him to lead the eviction of a million and a half enigmatic beings, most of which don’t understand human legalese, the concept of property and aren’t too trusting of humans, especially when they show up, backed by paramilitary forces. It’s a herculean task Wikus must face while the whole world is watching through the cable news cycle.

You have to see the movie on what ensues.

What separates District 9 from being a modern-day Alien Nation or worse, V, is the context and execution. Neil Blomkamp, the director, grew up in South Africa during the Apartheid and State of Emergency era. He may have been a member of the more privileged, affluent South African class but he still had a front-row seat to the regime’s cruelty, misjudgments and horror. These lessons are transferred on to the aliens demonstrating that maybe the human race isn’t as enlightened as many think. Our first contact may not be a smooth Close Encounters of the Third Kind event, it will probably be a Cortez-meets-Moctezuma repeat, especially if the beings have advanced weaponry we want.

Worth Seeing? Definitely. It’s a good counter to all the crappy, shallow stuff Hollywood is peddling as Science Fiction such as the new Star Trek, Transformers sequel or the (hopefully) final Terminator flick. The subject is a bit heavy for casual audiences yet I don’t really care. Great movies foster discussion about the bigger issues they raise. “Popcorn” movies (Hollywood-speak for “terrible”) are quickly forgotten and shown on cable to fill time and shelves at Best Buy. I also had a small, personal connection to it. Over 26 years ago, my father almost got a job in South Africa. The opportunity fell through but I did some research into the nation, the ugly situation and current events in the area. Anyway, Peter Jackson backed a winner and I’m grateful he let Blomkamp make this instead of Halo.