District 9 is the best popcorn flick of summer 2009, beating out Star Trek because of its overall seriousness and, more importantly, freshness. Trek. Transformers. Terminator; even a "new" film (franchise? I hope not.) like GI Joe relates back to comic books and cartoons. Not without plenty of cliche sci-fi / action elements, District 9 is far from perfect, but I'm impressed.
Any Blade Runner fan eagerly awaits "serious" or "gritty" science fiction. Such fare usually only gets a major release once a decade: the 1990s had Dark City, and just a few years ago another minor miracle-- Children of Men-- marked what I thought would account for this decade. To be sure, there are plenty of other jewels out there, such as Strange Days, Code 46 and Gattaca, but these either did not see wide release or had very little promotion to back them up, and certainly did not collect blockbuster revenues. District 9 has wide release and major promotion (complete with "This Bus for Humans Only" signs on buses in major cities). I eagerly await the box office reports, but for an R-rated dark sci-fi this seems to be quite a gamble on Peter Jackson's part, and I thank him for it.
There is plenty to criticize about D-9. The film's documentary style starts out promising, but soon enough the audience sees scenes that are clearly not part of the documentary. It's not too difficult to tell these scenes apart, but nevertheless the narrative is a bit clumsy at points. Now-and-then, during long periods of not part-of-the-documentary, some shots are shown through security cameras or the like: although this may have been intended to increase the audience's feeling of paranoia, I think it's more of a fallback that screams "don't forget that documentary thing that's going on! The viewers of the documentary don't know this, but you do!" By the end of the film, when the documentary rears its head for the last time, I for one thought "ah, yes, the documentary. Nice to see you again, old friend."
Every sci-fi has some plot holes and requires suspension of disbelief, but the heavy-handed "Evil Corporation" plot line needs to be retired. Aliens arrive on earth, and a government is going to contract with a private corporation (with its own private army) to manage the population? Spare me. Furthermore, even though these aliens have been removed from their ship, many of them happen to have brought along (smuggled?) what appears to be thousands of alien weapons into District 9. These weapons cannot be used by humans (that's another part of the plot), but one has to wonder whether that would make any difference when herding these aliens off of their ship.
But, anyway... after all this, there's everything to love.
First, no big-name stars. For a summer blockbuster, this is exceptional, and here it's effective. There are some recognizable faces, but by and large District 9 is newcomers and b-list actors. The setting of Johannesburg, South Africa is heightened with a lack of recognizable faces.
Second, uncompromising special effects. Remember Terminator: Salvation a few months back? I still wince at the memory of some of the more mediocre effects. I stayed through the credits of D-9, and it looks as if every major effects studio in the biz had a part in making sure every effect in the film was seamlessly integrated. This has been a problem in film for some time: we've had believable computer animation for over a decade already, but the potential for flawlessness has, shockingly, seldom yielded flawless results. This is one of those seldom results: you will have to remind yourself it's not real. That's as right as SFX get.
Finally, the plot is not stupid or dumbed-down. Once again, this is not to say it's perfect and many of the plot's parallels are simply interesting rather than actually compelling. Apartheid has been over in South Africa for some time. Does dredging this up and proceeding to beat it up really teach anyone a lesson? (Super digression: this is one reason I'm not looking forward to next week's release of Inglourious Basterds: "They're killing Nazis with baseball bats. Haha. That's funny. Because Nazis deserve it! Get it!?" True, but not exactly amusing.) I really don't see the point. Otherwise, it's very well-constructed. Our protagonist acts, I believe, in the way most people would act if put in his situation. He is heroic, but reluctant. And when he finally steps up, it's in a far more plausible way than "Dad quit drinking and flew his fighter jet into the aliens' lazor at the last possible second! We're saved!")
Returning to where I began this review, the freshness of it all, especially after the last few years of summer blockbusters, cannot be denied. Someone actually wrote an original screenplay based only off of his own short film. No novels. No comic books. No "source material." Just in the short life of this blog, it appears every new film review (okay, both of them) suffers from this. I'm tired of comparisons to source material, previous installments, "the original", etc.
Everything's derivative to some extent, but District 9 plays, and well. Breathe that fresh air while you can.
Any Blade Runner fan eagerly awaits "serious" or "gritty" science fiction. Such fare usually only gets a major release once a decade: the 1990s had Dark City, and just a few years ago another minor miracle-- Children of Men-- marked what I thought would account for this decade. To be sure, there are plenty of other jewels out there, such as Strange Days, Code 46 and Gattaca, but these either did not see wide release or had very little promotion to back them up, and certainly did not collect blockbuster revenues. District 9 has wide release and major promotion (complete with "This Bus for Humans Only" signs on buses in major cities). I eagerly await the box office reports, but for an R-rated dark sci-fi this seems to be quite a gamble on Peter Jackson's part, and I thank him for it.
There is plenty to criticize about D-9. The film's documentary style starts out promising, but soon enough the audience sees scenes that are clearly not part of the documentary. It's not too difficult to tell these scenes apart, but nevertheless the narrative is a bit clumsy at points. Now-and-then, during long periods of not part-of-the-documentary, some shots are shown through security cameras or the like: although this may have been intended to increase the audience's feeling of paranoia, I think it's more of a fallback that screams "don't forget that documentary thing that's going on! The viewers of the documentary don't know this, but you do!" By the end of the film, when the documentary rears its head for the last time, I for one thought "ah, yes, the documentary. Nice to see you again, old friend."Every sci-fi has some plot holes and requires suspension of disbelief, but the heavy-handed "Evil Corporation" plot line needs to be retired. Aliens arrive on earth, and a government is going to contract with a private corporation (with its own private army) to manage the population? Spare me. Furthermore, even though these aliens have been removed from their ship, many of them happen to have brought along (smuggled?) what appears to be thousands of alien weapons into District 9. These weapons cannot be used by humans (that's another part of the plot), but one has to wonder whether that would make any difference when herding these aliens off of their ship.
But, anyway... after all this, there's everything to love.
First, no big-name stars. For a summer blockbuster, this is exceptional, and here it's effective. There are some recognizable faces, but by and large District 9 is newcomers and b-list actors. The setting of Johannesburg, South Africa is heightened with a lack of recognizable faces.
Second, uncompromising special effects. Remember Terminator: Salvation a few months back? I still wince at the memory of some of the more mediocre effects. I stayed through the credits of D-9, and it looks as if every major effects studio in the biz had a part in making sure every effect in the film was seamlessly integrated. This has been a problem in film for some time: we've had believable computer animation for over a decade already, but the potential for flawlessness has, shockingly, seldom yielded flawless results. This is one of those seldom results: you will have to remind yourself it's not real. That's as right as SFX get.
Finally, the plot is not stupid or dumbed-down. Once again, this is not to say it's perfect and many of the plot's parallels are simply interesting rather than actually compelling. Apartheid has been over in South Africa for some time. Does dredging this up and proceeding to beat it up really teach anyone a lesson? (Super digression: this is one reason I'm not looking forward to next week's release of Inglourious Basterds: "They're killing Nazis with baseball bats. Haha. That's funny. Because Nazis deserve it! Get it!?" True, but not exactly amusing.) I really don't see the point. Otherwise, it's very well-constructed. Our protagonist acts, I believe, in the way most people would act if put in his situation. He is heroic, but reluctant. And when he finally steps up, it's in a far more plausible way than "Dad quit drinking and flew his fighter jet into the aliens' lazor at the last possible second! We're saved!")
Returning to where I began this review, the freshness of it all, especially after the last few years of summer blockbusters, cannot be denied. Someone actually wrote an original screenplay based only off of his own short film. No novels. No comic books. No "source material." Just in the short life of this blog, it appears every new film review (okay, both of them) suffers from this. I'm tired of comparisons to source material, previous installments, "the original", etc.
Everything's derivative to some extent, but District 9 plays, and well. Breathe that fresh air while you can.
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