If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Rockne S.
O’Bannon must be extremely flattered indeed with District 9. The creator of such
SF TV series as the dismally bad seaQuest, along with the far superior Farscape,
O’Bannon wrote the script for the original Alien Nation film, which dealt with a
group of aliens who crash-landed on earth--yet instead of taking us over, they
assimilated into our culture, which formed the basis for some incisive social
commentary, thanks largely to V producer/director Kenneth Johnson’s reworking of
the theme in his cancelled-before-its-time TV series. But if there is truly
nothing new under the sun, the sheer originality of District 9 comes from the
intelligent and imaginative handling of its familiar material.
The film was born when producer Peter Jackson (The Lord Of The Rings) originally
teamed with director Neill Blomkamp to make a movie out of HALO. One would think
a movie based on one of the most popular video games of all time would be a
cinch, yet the project fell through, and it was decided to keep the production
crew working on another, less expensive film. That turned out to be District 9,
which is based on Alive In Joberg, Blomkamp’s 2005 short film about aliens
living in the slums of South Africa. In District 9, aliens arrive on
earth over twenty years ago when their massive ship hovers to a halt right over
the South African city of Johannesburg. When the ship is finally cracked open by
a human investigative team, they find that it’s teeming with a million starving,
malnourished aliens.
With no knowledge of how the ship works, the aliens appear to have been slave
laborers whose masters had died off from a virus. South Africa promptly shuffles
this newest group of immigrants into a ghetto called District 9. And after
twenty years with them festering in this hellhole, the decision is made by the
SA government to move the aliens further away from Johannesburg to a new camp called
District 10. Wikus Van De Merwe (well-played by Sharlto Copley) is placed in
charge of this mass eviction, and despite the happy face that this gentle--and
racist--goofball tries to display to documentary cameras, it’s still an
unpleasant removal by gunpoint that grimly recalls the persecution of American
Indians, as well as South Africa’s own apartheid past.
But the eviction has been outsourced to a company known as MNU, who has an even
darker motive--one that the hapless Wikus soon finds out for himself. Blomkamp
does a marvelous job at not only setting up the fantastical idea of aliens in
South Africa, with their ship constantly hovering over its largest city as a
constant bleak reminder of their presence, but he manages to also maintain the
suspense by making us care for Wikus. Copley is great as a nebbish office worker
who undergoes a fascinating character arc here. And the film never misses a beat,
never giving into lame action film conventions even in its slam-bang climax. The
best science fiction is that which forces us to examine new ideas and re-examine long-held
beliefs. Using dark, witty humor, mixed with some very gritty social commentary,
District 9 has truly become one of the most original and startlingly
mind-blowing science fiction films to be released in recent years. Don’t miss it.
--SF
