I'd have to see the movie first, but maybe none of it? Just at a glance it appears the guy has played HL2, but this could easily be a coincidence.
-It appears they're is some kind of gravity gun or something.
-It appears the aliens look somewhat similar to something in HL2.
-It appears some species is in some kind of containment. "District 9," but in this case it's the aliens.
-It appears there is some kind of robot thing that looks similar to that "dog" in HL2 (can't remember it that was the things name). Granted, it's MORE similar to the Aliens manufacturing robot which is controlled by humans.
ending fights are a little bit cheap, trying to squeeze the drama out of the roboguy, when they shhot him with the sniper rifle, he get up again, then he fall again, and on and on and on, but excepting the drama, the movie is pretty good, especially because its original kinda style
so.. is this like an apartheid with aliens? zzzzzzzzzz then
(speaking of which.. what a big mistake from SA whites to change the regime so fast, instead of a smooth transition. the black population wasn't prepared for responsability of the freedom they have now. country went to to shit)
It's true but change was already way overdue by the early 90's when change was made. And while south africa isn't as solid as it was in apartheid years it's still a LOT better than any other african country.
South Africa went to shit? Compared to what? It certainly wasn't any better before 1990 with most of the population living in poverty with no education and no equal rights.
Sure there are still many problems, and crime has gotten worse, but I think that people being free is better than anything that came before. And I take SA over Europe any day, I'm going back for good next year.
gonna be interesting whether you actually prefer living there once you get back or whether it's just memories.
For example here we have quite some people who claim life in East Germany was better, because they remember it to have been better.
I lived in the UK in 2004/2005 and moved back to SA from 2005 til 2008, so I have been living between both. I go back every year around Christmas and it's AWESOME. :)
But seriously, living in all the countries you mentioned is, from what I have seem, quite different.
Just for example, the size the average appartment/house people live in.
Just watched it and thought it was excellent. This movie just saved the Cinema year of 2009 for me. All I have seen till now - which admittedly wasn't very much - was complete and utter crap.
Loved the atmosphere in the first hour. Lost a bit of its touch once the actioned started. Very little shitty cheesy hollywood stuff in it which took a rather minor role with the rest of the movie being somewhat overwhelming.
nice filming angles
good for its originality kinda
second part of the movie become bad and predictable
especially the final battle, with the roboguy waking up, getting hit again, waking up again, almost touching, almost...
Saw it two day's ago,expect a sequel because its wide open for one. In 3 years perhaps?
It was decent, but think enemy mine + Men in black + starship troopers humour, plus a bit of diary of the dead. Im not a film critic, see for your self, I don't think you would miss out if you missed it, but if you've been fucked over with Transformers 2 and Final Destination 3D as your last two cinema goings this might at least put some faith back into things.
I wouldn't watch it again and I think they could have done a lot more with it, but worth seeing if you got the urge to go to the cinema and not sure waht to watch.
Honestly when I hear people talking about this movie it feels like we saw different movies or something :/
Huge let down for me, wasn't bad or anything I just kept waiting for the moment when it turned into this amazing movie and it never came... ignoring the huge plot holes and unexplained things, it's still only half a story... what's the bug fuss over this film? The action was great though but not enough to save the movie, I'll watch the sequel (since as I said, half a story) and hope that together they make a good movie.
the aliens had weapons, but they were merely drones/workers.. they traded most of them for food and they weren't aggressive to humans.
that's why in the lab you'd expect the "Christopher" alien to go berserk when seeing the medical experiments on his kind. he just stood there in shock.
whatever the plot holes are.. the scope of the movie was to draw a distinction between the two species (races maybe :D).
even tho the prawns were disgusting in their ways, they weren't senselessly aggressive as humans (except when they rip that squad leader dude apart in the ending which was well deserved).
the main point is that even the advanced aliens are a product of their environment and that basic needs can turn them into slumdogs when they have priority.
plot holes don't even matter for this movie, imho.
like.. humans could just ignore the aliens and go scavenging the mother ship for technology.
or how the fuck getting sprayed by alien black goo fuel turns you into one of them?
Edited by Aquashark at 16:30 CDT, 8 September 2009
Movies that try and make a point while at the same time being entirely illogical are retarded, for example, check out the movie blindness. Fucking terrible. It's for pretentious retards.
Several things didn't add up in this movie: how exactly did the aliens get all this advanced weaponry down without the south african government realising? Why weren't they as concerned as they were about it? Why were humans and aliens ever living together in the first place? Shit like this just wouldn't happen and it ruined immersion for me, if it was even explained a little I might have enjoyed it but as it is I felt like I was staring at a screen with the words "HEY GUYS PREJUDICE IS BAD K" for 2 hours.
-government boss going house to house to get signatures off 1.200.000 erratic aliens himself
-aliens having superadvanced tech they could easily conquer the world with but decide to trade it for catfood instead
-aliens seem to be animals/drones but are somehow capable of constructing superadvanced tech
-completely random behavior of all human characters, yea racism is bad we get it...
-nigerians
-all humans speak fluent prawn and vice versa
I think it was meant to comment on when natives would just give away vast amounts of land or gold etc. for some cattle, which happened during the colonial era.
had they actually paid more attention to the plot rather than trying to make stupid SA analogies that fail miserably, the movie might've not been so shit.
- This happened a few times in South African history where officials went from house to house to approve evictions, in fact it's happening right now.
- I'll not argue about this one.
- Only one appeared to be able to construct anything useful, and he was the "pilot".
- I think this is quite consistant with South Africans, whether black or white they are commonly racist, hypocritical and completely self absorbed.
- Most of the organised crime in South Africa is run by Nigerians, this includes fire arms, stolen goods, drugs and prostitution. (They definitely don't eat aliens though :P)
- In South Africa it is common for people to understand other peoples languages but not be able to speak it. I can understand afrikaans/dutch fluently but I can't really speak it very well. I can also understand a lot of general expressions in the african languages and slag. (We have 11 official languages and our media reflects this) This extends to the apartied era where officials and police would only speak english/afrikaans and africans were forced to do this as best they could. Of course in this film the aliens couldn't make the same sounds so there would have been no way for them to speak english or visa versa.
The whole thing is meant to look "official" and "legal" when in fact it's just made up. Of course you may be referring to that it's only one guy going around for 1 million signatures, but they could have sent more than one team to do so and they just never focused on that. Also you wouldn't need the signature of everyone, just one occupant in every house.
Most of those aren't plot holes, you're just fucking thick.
"-aliens having superadvanced tech they could easily conquer the world with but decide to trade it for catfood instead
-aliens seem to be animals/drones but are somehow capable of constructing superadvanced tech"
I'm really surprised by how many people can't see the obvious plot. The aliens are an insect-like race so as others have said most of them are fairly mindless worker drones and only do what they are told. Christopher is one of the leading cast. The tech is the creation of the leader cast who are shown to be very technically capable. They could easily conquer the world because it's pretty obvious that this was an invasion fleet sent to attack Earth but something went wrong on board the ships leading to the death of the leader cast. That's why there are so many workers and weapons.
Some of you need to stick to retard films for retards because you are retards. Tourist. You're a retard.
"They could easily conquer the world because it's pretty obvious that this was an invasion fleet sent to attack Earth but something went wrong on board the ships leading to the death of the leader cast. That's why there are so many workers and weapons."
Invasion fleet? there was one ship.
How did the weapons get off the ship? the government let a bunch of mindless aggressive drones take all the high tech guns with them?
A plot hole, or plothole, is a gap or inconsistency in a storyline that goes against the flow of logic established by the story's plot, or constitutes a blatant omission of relevant information regarding the plot.
I think the one's you mentioned are just poor screenwriting, a plot hole would be if one of the niggers grabbed an alien gun in the end and started shooting all over the place when they specifically claimed that humans can't operate them.
the whole idea of the movie is stupid tbh. you get a spaceship over your city and you do what? let it rot and make an alien ghetto? as opposed to becoming the tourist capital of the fucking world? spaceship dude! prawns! meh...
-wtf is bunch of alien animals doing in the middle of a city?
-if they're animals why have eviction notices? just kill them.
- if they're animals, how come there's a crapload of alien tech around? government let them bring all the alien guns to the middle of their city?
-so they constructed the guns... HOW CAN THEY CONSTRUCT IT, THEY'RE ANIMALS MAN
-but they're not animals since they do understand human language, have language of their own, can read&write, have gangs, can operate machinery and weapons.
-still they somehow manage not to kill the nigerians and take all the cat food they want
-speaking of nigerians... governemnt goes in with a fucking army, avoids to upset a bunch of smugglers.
Your whole plot whole stuff revolves around them being animals..
They are just peasants of whatever alien society they belonged to and the movie clearly states they are refugees or something, although their habits are weird compared to humans they still follow a sort of herd mentality that human common folk also possess and just try to fit in the system they have ended up in.
Being nothing more then workers ( or civilians if you prefer) they also lack any sort of militaristic nature which is clearly evident in the film. I remember from the film their was some cases of robberies being reported by aliens, how do you know these were not isolated cases of aliens using their weaponry? Heck most aliens don't even seem to have these weaponry and have no idea how to make them (not that it is even mentioned anywhere in the movie that they are making these weapons, dunno where you came up with that).
Anyways, what did you expect that these aliens would do if they are no soldiers at all? go Rambo with a weapon and end up dying to the military anyway? Most just seem to be bend up on surviving. You seem to forget this is a glorified concentration camp..
Anyways this rant is useless, you refer to them as animals for some reason and that makes me think this movie was made for people like you anyway lol
Yes because I am truely amazed by your internet argument and world class movie analyzing skills. I believe you should join some olympics that hold these sort of contests.
seriously dude, you're being retarded right here like many pointed out before.. let it go
or if you want some "plotholes":
- how come humans weren't concentrating on the alien ship to find new technologies? surely the aliens couldn't carry everything to their camp.. not to mention the ship itself is alien technology
- how come humans were dumb enough to make genetic experiments in order to operate the alien weapons? that's the most complicated solution to the reverse engineering problem.. surely you can at least copy some essential aspects
(ex: you can't operate the mech, but at least you can take it apart and see how the joints work, how limbs are structured, what materials are being used.. and if you can't reproduce the materials just recycle them from alien scraps and do a similar mech with human controls)
- how come the aliens didn't have any means to communicate their situation with the rest of their kind and ask for help?
anyway.. it's just a 2 hours movie, not a book or what if simulation
some things you just assume or ignore as a convention
chill brah, I agree you can argue against the strict definition of a plot hole here, the point is the movie is full of holes. plot/script/story is less important.
Apparently the nigerian goverment were complaining to sony studios and really pissed off that they made fun of nigerians and showed them as a "alien-eating psychopaths" and Sony replied: "we're not going to edit anything, it's not like people actually believe nigerians are maneaters"
The main character was really, really annoying, I was hoping the bad guys would kill him off and harvest his shit. The only likeable character was the Cristopher alien and his son.
The way he said f00k actually sounded eerily like how the chav types in Teesside say it, which was mildly amusing but then somewhat annoying when he said it like 98326482983467 times more.
Really awesome and hilarious parody of the west. Don't remember when I laughed as much last in the theater. Great use of sci-fi elements made it all even better.
I saw it. Did you? It looks promising at the start, but after 10 minutes it's nothing than an action movie, and the ghetto is nothing else than a good looking background where action scenes happen. Not so different of Transformers, just disguised of seriousness. Alien Nation wasn't that great, but had much more depth than this one.
"pretentious
Adjective
1. Marked by an unwarranted claim to importance or distinction
2. Ostentatious; intended to impress others
[edit] Synonyms
* poseur"
in the context of cinematography, a pretentious movie is one that tries to be great but isn't. consequently, a great movie is NOT a pretentious one.
with your statement "Don't go on to list a bunch of pretentious films and then claim to be superior, I didn't say it was a great film. " you're suggesting jal listing some superior movies to which D9 looks bad in comparison. so according to your logic, great film = pretentious film. therefore, one can only conclude you have no clue what pretentious means.
The former? Look at any 'greatest films' list and you'll find a lot of them are purely pretentious titles. The latter? I don't see the evidence, you tried to pick me up on my own language and failed.
Citizen Kane. In any case that's a little aside from my point as you're trying to prove that something can't be great and pretentious while my point was that when you ask for a list of great films the films listed are often pretentious. It's also further away from my original point that District 9's a decent film, especially given the low budget and first time for the director. What objective measures we have- metacritic, IMDB and its theatre take would support this idea.
on the other hand it could easily be argued that District9 is pretentious bullshit. it tries so hard to promote the anti-racism message with its shallow use of SA analogies, faux documentary shaky cam, bland character development, all of which in the end amounts to a poorly scripted action flick that takes itself too seriously.
I've seen a lot of people saying the portrayal is this, that and the other shallow, fake whatever. It amuses me that most of the South African and especially Johannesburger feedback is that it's extremely accurate so I'm not sure on what basis it's shallow. The message about racism was more demanding than most films on the topic- the aliens were actually repulsive and totally unlikeable so the film does a good job eventually making you care for Christopher's success and the fate of the aliens.
Character development? What character development are you expecting over the time-frame of the film, some grand epiphany? How many adult humans have a radical change in character over the course of a few weeks? That's such typical, lazy film criticism when you can't actually think of anything worth saying.
Why are you criticising the documentary style? You just seem to be looking for things to whine about, it worked well and wasn't over-used. The idea that a SA film where the main character is called Wikus Van de Merve takes itself too seriously is amusing. You don't know the connotations of the name though, so much like the rest of the SA elements it will be completely lost on you.
like I told the kraut earlier, the analogies aren't shallow because of inacuracies. yes district9 really exists, yes blacks are really treated bad but you can't just slap real world analogies directly into an SF scenario and expect it to work. hey let's portray blacks as technologically superior aliens that just kinda land over our city, and we'll try to make a big message about how RACISM IS BAD K. meh...
your argument about character development is just too funny. you have no clue what it means either apparently.
and I still claim that a good movie can't be pretentious.
What you mean to say then, is not that I don't understand what character development means, because I just gave the definition that fits exactly what I said, is that you were using it to mean a different meaning.
It still doesn't seem to have sunk in for you that Wikus is meant to be a stereotype. He's a part of the satire of SA that's completely passing you by. When a writer is clearly not attempting to make well rounded and complex characters picking them up on it is retarded. Show me some sci-fi films with good character development.
you're stating it as if I was suggesting some dramatic change of character in my post, while I did no such thing.
it's not that the author was supposed to make another Rainman in a sci-fi flick, but being as it is, he could've as well used cardboard figures instead of actors.
here, I'll help you. take top10 movies from here: http://www.imdb.com/chart/top
all of these are great movies (bar Batman which is there because idiots get to vote on the internet). according to you films in these lists are often pretentious so you should have no trouble fining a pretentious one among these. hf
you don't get whats wrong with the sentence "Don't go on to list a bunch of pretentious films and then claim to be superior, I didn't say it was a great film. " ?
actually, no, but I don't particularly care, either. I was more interested in the opportunity to point out how pretentious you are than I was interested in whatever discussion you were having.
Well, it is obviously, as you won't ever agree, but just for fun:
start:
I said you can be described with a word.
Micke corrects me and says the description needs to words.
I accept his correction and based on that write I should stop writing in English.
Then we have two possible lines of what happened:
1 (sarcasm):
A somewhat keen mind can easily spot the sarcasm in my post, for examply shown through the word "Engrish", but also through the fact that obviously there are multiple ways to describe you with one word.
If in fact you did spot that sarcasm, which isn't hard to do, then writing "Yes, you should." does not fit at all.
2 (truth):
You don't see the sarcasm and in that case you are serious when you agree that I made mistake and should stop speaking English. However, my statement "a word" is only a mistake, if the description "narcissistic cunt" is correct. Therefore by saying I did something wrong you have just called yourself a narcissistic cunt. Good job.
"Well, it is obviously, as you won't ever agree, but just for fun:"
yes, stop speaking English.
as for my original post, you can obviously not comprehend what was wrong in ix's statement and retort to cheap ad hominem attacks. when challenged to find a fallacy in my argument you write an incoherent bunch of nonsense. gj
So here we have a German, an American and a Brit. Two of which are native English speakers (and I at least lived in the US for half a year), all saying the same thing.
On the other hand, we have one Croatian with English as his second (?) language.
so the best argument you can muster is HEY LOOK THERE'S OTHER TWO GUYS WHO DON'T GET IT. I never considered you to be very bright, but I did consider you to be slightly above jamerio level. guess I can be wrong after all.
You wrote there why you think you get it. But you fail to see what ix is actually saying.
And no I will not explain it you, because, as we both know, you would never be able to accept an explanation from me in the first place... (apparantly the best you can do, is stop talking about :P)
I accept explanations from anyone with arguments. herd mentality and excuses are NOT arguments. but you can believe that they are, I know you already do.
no you don't, you only think you do to have a higher opinion of yourself.
Look at your discussions around this site, not just with me.
They almost alway end the same.
Quite a unique story, there has as far as I know never been a full length movie with a story such as this.
It is quite interesting to know that the main character, Wikus Van De Merwe have never acted before. Also, all his lines are improvised.
The ghetto where it was filmed, District 9, actually exists. All the different slaughtered animals, sheds etc are there for real, the only one made for the film was the one where the spaceship was.
The film is also based on reality, the inhabitants of the real district 9 in South Africa are as of this moment forced to evacuate into a "district 10".
+ for making tabloid story telling work
+ for using South Afraican stereotypes against themselves and creating rich characters in the process
+ for wet and squelchy special effects
+ for the prawns
+ for the suit
+ for the railgun :p
+ for the uber kiddie who saves the day
- for predictability beyond the initial premise
- for sucumbing to as many South African discriminatory beliefs as it banishes
- for being really quite vulgar but still managing a 15 cert because it had Jackons's name on it. (The classifacation board's morals cost so little these days it seems...)
End of the day tho, easily one of the best releases this year, and deffo one of those films you can bet is studied in English Lit or Drama for years to come. Awesome.
If an Icelander (especially you) thinks it looks stupid it probably bodes well for it being the thriller of the year.
I have pretty good taste and I would be deeply surprised if I was wrong. I'll be back to edit this post and put up some reviews when they are more widespread, just to show how consistently wrong you are.
P.S.
The reason you keep failing is because your ancestors crossed the bloodline too many times. I don't expect you to understand or accept this as it goes againstwhat you are, but you are an inaccurate inbred spawned from coawrds who fled the mainlands and bred among themselves once too often.
And when the film reviews come out. I'm confident this will be another fine example to prove my theory regarding you people.
You should get a job.
If you think its good it'll be bad.
If you think it's bad it will be good.
Those flawed gentics you carry could net you a small fortune.
And you never reply to me apart from sticking the boot in or sticking up for one of your little boyfriends who you found at the depth of the internet.
Besides, I find the inbred one is a pretty fundamental thing.
It kinda explains why he's like that.
Just as you're the way you are becaue I upset you once too often and you always feel at a disadvantage.
That explains why you always reply in a negative fashion.
If you look at the thread it was nothing of the sort.
I just commented on a film I am looking forward to see.
It was yet again the Icelander that was the fuckwitt.
(Can't blame the poor bastard though if you knew is life :P)
If you were remotely impartial you would have infact acknowledged he as the fuckwitt.
Instead of that you ignored that and just focused on my response.
I know you're stupid, angry and probably unemployed, but do try to read what I write and apply some logic.
But I'm happy to explain your stupidity as I have little else to do this pm.
GIVEN YOU LOOK LIKE A FAT, BALD VERSION OF RENE ZELLWEGER AND ARE STUCK IN A DEAD END JOB AND TRYING FOR A DEAD END QUALIFICATION, I DON'T THINK YOU'RE IN A POSITION TO CALL ANYONE A TWAT.
LEAST OF ALL ME.
A) Lives in a country where there are more sheep than people (fact).
B) Lives on a bankrupt volcanic rock in the middle of nowhere which lets face it could sink tomorrow and the only thing most people here would know about it is Linkoo died.
And you live next to England and that's the only thing keeping you from being like Africa. Besides we don't have a reputation for shagging sheep. You do.
Non factual? Every welshman shags sheep. I can provide you with genealogical records to prove I'm not inbred. Can you disprove the claim that you don't shag sheep. I don't think so.
We may be fucked atm but at least we haven't been a charity case for hundreds of years.
i don't care if it had plotholes or not, it just got terribly boring towards the later half. it started off really well and i was actually impressed with the film making style and the story's basic setting but all i was thinking later on was "wtf is this Michael Bay bullshit?"
that actor was very good though for the most part... especially if he's really never acted before as i read somewhere.