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District 9

The only good alien is a dead alien one who doesn't deal arms with Nigerian mercenaries.

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I just saw District 9, which I've been wanting to see since the ginormous banner for the film first showed up on YouTube's homepage.   It's different from what I had expected, but it's not bad.   The film could have been better, but a film never lives up to its potential if Peter Jackson's name is attached.

Perhaps the biggest problem with it is the lack of common sense.   Why does this alien ghetto have weapons at all?   Why do they have alien weapons that only they can use?   The organization in charge should have confiscated all of that and kept it locked up.   Their failure to do so should have cost them that babysitting gig.   In fact, why would the world agree to let a single corporation have this law enforcement role for District 9?   Bad Peter, bad!   Logic!

And let's not skip over the very first question:   why are the aliens (called Prawns in the film because they supposedly resemble prawns, but really they look more like grasshoppers) even here?   They've been here for 20 years and no one ever sat down and said "Hey, so...   nice weather, eh?   You like Johannesburg?   Yeah, great coffee down at Nemo's.   Oh, uh by the way, what brings you to Earth?"   They were malnourished when the decision was made to finally break into the ship to see what was going on with it, and it was mentioned that they had been there for 3 months at that point.

They didn't open the door and find sustenance, why?   They were scared?   Alright, so why did they even bother coming here?   Why bother parking over the largest city in South Africa?   They clearly didn't need to come here, as Christopher is under the firm belief that he can get to his home planet rather expediently with one small vial of fuel; a fuel he made himself by extracting a certain liquid from scraps of their technology.   So they could have left at any point.

Alright, so they were here 3 months and we can assume it would take about 1.5 years to get home, maybe they wouldn't have made it if they were malnourished.   However, there were a million of those fuckers on the ship, they could have made the food supply last with population control.   Either way, they didn't come seeking refuge.

Let me touch on that fuel thing again.   When Wickus gets exposed to it, he gets sick and starts transforming into a Prawn.   This raises the most interesting question to me.   When Christopher seems Wickus' arm, he remarks that the only way for such a thing to happen is if...   OK, he never states it, but the film hints that exposure to the fuel is the only way.   So then, it seems that the Prawns themselves were obviously not Prawns originally.   In fact, because of the way genetics work, it would also mean that whoever the Prawns were originally, they were genetically similar to humans.   As in, more similar than chimpanzees are.   Perhaps as close, if not closer, than that between Homo floresiensis and Homo sapiens.

So they're basically mutated humans it would seem.   What were they doing here again?   Did they just come by to say hello but ended up being too shy to knock on the door?   Maybe they came here to expose us and turn us into them; a sort of forced evolution to take advantage of their advanced physical attributes and eventually their advanced technology?   If that's the case, then Christopher was a hypocrite for getting upset at the experimentation MNU was doing on Prawns.Despite all the maddening questions the film raises, I can't help but think that a video game based on the District 9 canon would be awesome.   In theory.   In practice, it'd be cheaply done to capitalize on the film and would be a cheap ripoff of every other man v. alien game to come out in the last 4 years.   So much potential.
derekwalkr
Being trendy fails when it makes you look like the intellectual inferior to a kindergartenerJust The Tip - Just for a second. Just to see how it feels.

You may say that I'm a hypocrite for berating Valve for never meeting release dates, but who's more qualified to judge than the pot to their kettle?
April 22, 2010 at 10:53 PM

Is it just me or does the woman in the PS3/God of War III commercial seem like an entitled, whiney little bitch?
April 11, 2010 at 9:38 PM

Xbox Gamercard - Because you can't tell the players without the score cards.

G 12,020

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