District 9 Review

So, it seems science-fiction is getting trendy again. With new sci-fi TV shows constantly infiltrating the mainstream and old franchises being revived to much acclaim on both the big and small screens, this once wholly idiosyncratic genre seems to have once again grasped hold of ideas that can attract a much wider audience. This really isn’t an inherently bad thing because sci-fi – well, television and cinematic sci-fi, at least – was at its very best when it was at its most popular. Before it became branded as “geeky,” science-fiction was a pervasive element in Western culture and it was in the fifties and sixties that the two main visual media established some of our more enduring genre icons with shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits and Star Trek and Doctor Who and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, just to rattle off a few. Each of these told stories that were renowned for unbridled imagination, interesting and memorable alien species and for often turning a critical eye back toward the civilization that penned them. And these didn’t just appeal to geeks and nerds and crazy people with tinfoil hats, but rather to an audience that could be easily considered mainstream. So, really, there is absolutely nothing wrong with popular sci-fi.

But this new trendy sci-fi offers only shallow rehashes of things that were done better elsewhere, empty narratives that collapse under the weight of glitzy special effects and a total refusal to acknowledge and expand on everything or anything that came before. District 9 epitomizes this new trend. A disjointed and overly eclectic movie, it offers just enough apartheid allegory to pretend it's intelligent when it isn’t, a sci-fi plot written for people who have never seen sci-fi before and enough action, gore and ray guns to fluff it all out to an appropriate cinematic length. District 9 is a film in three wholly distinct parts: each with its own plot, each with its own narrative approach and each more disappointing than the last.

Before moving on to the plot, though, let’s talk about the aliens. The CG work involved really is quite fantastic. Each alien is rendered in impeccable detail and their nuanced mannerisms give them an extra air realism. But despite the level of work that clearly went into each “Prawn,” they’re still just giant bug people. Back in the sixties and the seventies, even up through the nineties, this was something we all just had to accept. Special effects, prosthetics and CGI technology were limited to the point where the best they could achieve were people aliens. Now, though, we have all this stuff – in fact, the aliens of District 9 are entirely CG and have thus removed the human component altogether – and the best we seem to do is bug people. Just the fact that we can aptly append the word “people” to the descriptor speaks volumes on just how un-alien these aliens are.

One of the most imaginative alien races ever conceived for TV or film was the Daleks from Doctor Who. These were creatures created specifically to avoid the goofy bug-eyed alien conceit that was growing stale even back in the sixties and the results were staggering. Daleks have no legs, no heads, no arms, no hands. They speak with a shrill robotic inflection and glide along in mechanized shells. They were created to be devoid of any point of identification, to be, in essence, truly alien. And this was back in the early sixties, back when Doctor Who was the lowest of the low-budget sci-fi and they still managed to create one of the most inventive alien races on television. Now, over forty years later, the best we can do is make our unimaginative aliens look a bit better.

Now, this whole rant may seem a bit tangential – and in truth it is motivated by a personal pet peeve – but it is key to this whole discussion because the lack of creativity that went into to the bug people aliens is actually characteristic of the film as a whole.

So, now let’s move on to the plot.

The story, as I said, is segregated into three individual parts. The first part is the one you’ve seen in the trailers: the xenophobia and apartheid narrative. This is easily the best part of the movie and in fact the reason most everyone is going to see it. Its basic premise is a bit derivative of Alien Nation, but that’s alright because its higher budget and South African setting should allow them to do things that a sci-fi detective noir film from 1989 just couldn’t.

At least, that’s what I thought going in.

It starts off well enough. We get a documentary-styled narrative that depicts the arrival of the aliens, their relocation to slums and their frictional relationship with their human neighbors. It might be a bit rushed, but it gets the information across effectively and sets everything up nicely. Of particular note is the first shot of the aliens on their mothership huddled up on the floor and scurrying away from the light, depicting them as appropriately pathetic, rather than with the menace of most cinematic aliens.

After this, the story moves to introduce us to our “hero,” Wikus – an endearingly hapless corporate peon – tasked with serving all the aliens eviction notices and relocating them to a less opulent slum. This is the movie at its peak, as it shows the cultural barriers between humans and aliens, by displaying one alien’s confusion about the meaning of a signature, and the violent militarism of the human forces taken joyfully against those that are different. Even our lovable Wikus gleefully burns down a shack of alien eggs and encourages his associates to keep souvenirs of their first “abortion.”

This part of the movie highlights the darker aspects of human nature: our fear and hatred of the Other and our willingness to turn a blind eye to morality if guided by a higher authority. It even ties in nicely to its apartheid backdrop, with “Non-Human” posters replacing that regime’s “Non-Whites” policies. This opening sequence does what sci-fi is supposed to do: it uses the conventions of the genre to make a point about human civilization and it’s all very nicely handled… for about twenty minutes or so.

It’s near the end of the raid, the first time the film breaks from its documentary trappings and shows two aliens conspiring in a hut. From this point on, it devolves into a pretty trite sci-fi narrative, in which Wikus must contend with transforming into an alien himself. This has been done at least once by nearly every major franchise. Off the top of my head, I can think of episodes from The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Dark Side and Doctor Who that have all done this before and done it better. The reason for that is that each of these stories tied the transformation plot in with their own xenophobia allegory and used the former to facilitate a resolution to the latter, either through an epiphany and a reconciliation or as a means of poetic justice. But neither happens here because the xenophobia narrative completely disappears by the end of the raid.

It is replaced instead by a much narrower focus on Wikus, as he is experimented upon by the corporate Powers-That-Be in an effort to use him to unlock alien weapons. This part of the film likely fancies itself as something of a character piece, but it is completely absent any sort of character development. Ideally, this transformation gimmick should drive home the xenophobia story by centering it around the audience’s Same and forcing it to identify with the Other.

But this just doesn’t happen.

Consider the two methods by which I said this mechanism usually operates: either by instilling empathy in the protagonist or by acting as poetic justice. We can immediately eliminate the latter as a viable motive here because Wikus is never really the bad guy or ‘The Man” or whatever you wish. He’s not the architect of oppression, he’s just a tool. Consider that shack-burning scene I mentioned. Wikus may have smiled while burning it, but that was not because he was roasting them aliens, but rather because he considered the shack “a find,” something for which his masters would reward him. Wikus is just looking to advance in his career; his opinion toward the aliens seems to be one of general indifference. So, it isn’t really poetic justice to have him become an alien, it’s just another name added to the list of the oppressed.

The empathy option is probably the one the film is shooting for, but it misses by a considerable margin because – like I said – there is no character development. There is one scene during the experiment sequence where Wikus is ordered to shoot an alien and he staunchly and emphatically refuses. Good for him. The problem is that the last time we saw Wikus interacting with the aliens, he was burning down their homes and threatening to take their children away if they didn’t sign an illegal eviction notice. So, we go from that to him suddenly caring about what happens to them and it just doesn’t mesh. There is no moment in between those two scenes to suggest that Wikus has come to identify or sympathize with the aliens. You could argue that his motives early in the film were driven by loyalty to a company that he now no longer feels obliged to indulge and that would certainly account for his initial defiance and refusal to shoot anything. But when it comes time to shoot the alien, he specifically says he’d be willing to shoot a pig instead, which makes this a new form of defiance, centered entirely around a sympathy for the Other that just magically appears when the plot wants it to.

A good character piece generally has a person develop and evolve (or even devolve) throughout the story – they quit drinking and pull their life together, they grow into a leader, they fall to the dark side (which is not to say Revenge of the Sith qualifies as a good character piece, but you get the idea) – and the story follows a logical series of cause and effect, of catalyst to reaction, to show us clearly how the protagonist goes from being who he was to who he becomes. Wikus’ only real transition is from a dumb yutz who’s happy when he has everything to a dumb yutz who’s very angry when people start jabbing him with sharp things. It’s certainly a logical move from cause to effect, but not exactly a real character development. And that’s the problem: Wikus remains the exact same guy throughout the film and his actions are always motivated by selfishness. He wants to impress his boss, he wants to escape his captors, he wants to be turned human again. He is always thinking of himself. Given his current predicament, it’s hard to fault him for selfishness, but it does highlight that he never changes and it also provides a barrier to his identification with the aliens because – even as he grows alien body parts and moves into their slum and eats their food – he retains his characteristic indifference to them.

So, Wikus is never made to personally identify with the aliens and he only teams up with one when he discovers that that very specific one can help him. Still, one could argue that Wikus is created as an everyman figure and thus an outlet for audience, rather than personal, identification with the Other. And that’s all well and good, except it doesn’t happen. Well, let me rephrase. It doesn’t happen through Wikus. In point of fact, the audience is made to identify with the aliens, or at least one very specific alien; but this has nothing to do with Wikus and his transformation is entirely ancillary to this purpose, as it tells us nothing about the aliens’ mentality, culture or history. Rather, the most pathos is generated for the “Prawns” in scenes where Wikus is not present, such as the moments between the alien father and son. Really, the only thing Wikus’ metamorphosis shows us about the aliens is how cool their guns are.

And that brings us to the third part of this story, which is nothing more than a mindless runaround with ray guns. You have all the basic action movie stuff: big guns, a hero who says “fuck” more often than “the,” a military villain who seems a little too evil to be believable, a big robotic battle suit, lots of pretty explosions and a grand heroic climax. Of course, this all really comes at the expense of character and plot development. The story that once hit on discussions of such lofty notions as alienation and marginalization has devolved completely into: “Fetch the magic tube and solve everything.” We get another jarring break in characterization in that heroic climax, where Wikus saves the day. It’s a bit weird considering not five minute beforehand, he whacked the day upside the head with a shovel and put it in a position to need saving. And, of course, there is no transition within that five minutes to account for how we go from shovel-to-the-head to heroic rescue.

This whole chunk of the movie is nothing but bluster, a shrill cacophony, just meaningless, empty noise; but it eventually fizzles off and leaves us with a nice somber conclusion that does exactly what it should do. It returns us to the early documentary trappings, it tells us what happens to Wikus without actually saying it and leaves us with the question of how we as a society will be made to atone for our treatment of the aliens or if we will ever have to atone at all. The ending is notably devoid of resolution and that should be maddening, but it’s not. It works and it really makes one wish that this was the tone and pace of the whole movie: the stern and critical analysis of human nature, devoid of the gimmicky conceits and mindless action.

One thing that strikes me as funny about this film is that people talk about how it would have been ruined if it were made by Hollywood. And this is funny because this is exactly the way I think Hollywood would make it. Obviously, the cast would change (which is admittedly a bit of a shame), but that doesn’t inherently mean it would be worse. The setting is debatable, but it doesn’t really matter because the apartheid elements of this film are fairly infrequent and superficial anyway. It really wouldn’t change anything if this were set in Baltimore or Chicago or New York because the narrative is focused around a white guy and a major multinational corporation and a pretty generic crime lord in a few parts. But that’s not really the point. When everybody says that District 9 could never have been a Hollywood movie, they mean that the mainstream moviemaking machine would have ground out any trace of thought or originality. Hollywood is after all stigmatized these days with a dearth of imagination and not unduly, as most every movie they release anymore is an adaptation or remake.

But to say District 9 could not be produced by this machine is to ignore the fact that District 9 is itself severely lacking in imagination. From the design of the aliens, to the basic plot, to the narrative modes that drive it forward, this movie is traveling down a well-worn path forged over decades of experimental television and cinema. One could look at District 9 as following the development of its genre over the last few decades. It starts off with a great premise that smartly uses aliens to tell a story about humanity, but then falls into plot mechanics that have become far too standardized and then degenerates completely into spectacle, with the sci-fi conventions serving only to create cool weapons. But what it really is is a cheesy sci-fi action remake of Alien Nation, with bug people, cool special effects and the pretense of relevance. That sounds pretty Hollywood to me.

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