August 18th, 2009
I spoil here so if you don’t want the spoilin’, best be moving on. SPOILERS.
I love sci-fi and I love it gritty, so really, I was totally ready to love this movie. And when I am ready to love I pretty much just go ahead and love, so it’s saying something that I will never watch this movie again, despite my great tolerance for repetition and sci -fi that is gritty.
Here is why:
1. Every person in this movie is an asshole. They are all loathsome, selfish pricks. Actually, the wife wasn’t a prick, she was an oblivious, whiny cryer. I revise my opinion: no human in this movie is even remotely likable and so at many points I found myself bored because really, who gives a shit what happens to all these people I can’t stand?
It is not plausible that everyone you run into is a one dimensional shit head, but that is the only type of person represented in this movie (plus one whiny cryer). I can get behind the occasional stereotyped bad guy or overly pure hero, but if you can’t identify with or understand at least one person, you won’t care about the movie.
3. The aliens are badly written. Sometimes they are incapable of deception or even the most basic of social nuances (even though they can communicate easily with English speakers), yet at other times they can haggle with the gangsters over resources, use human weapons to commit crimes, and the like. Even the protagonist alien, who is actually sort of likable, is not consistently portrayed. He has a Huge Important Crucial Vital secret in his shack and yet defies and provokes the authorities into (predictably) raiding his shack – but he also tells his kid to hide, knows to keep his activities secret, and has an extended sneaking scene early in the movie. And this alien is clearly put to the viewer as the sympathetic character, who is very human-like in his caring for others and so on. So which is it – is he socially sophisticated and clever, or is he oblivious and naive? The writers want it both ways and it doesn’t work.
4. This thing watches like a fourteen year old boy’s fantasy about what adults are like. The doctors are remorseless torturers… the head army guy is a vicious, unstoppable bully… the head of the Nigerians is a power hungry tyrant. This isn’t what adults are like, this is a twisted fantasy of unlimited power attached to a sci-fi storyline. Which probably explains…
5. The human protagonist was psychologically implausible. The beginning of the movie establishes him as a cruel social climber, and throughout most of the rest of the movie we see him over and over making deeply, catastrophically selfish choices without the slightest consideration for anyone else. For example he’s known all along that District 10 is a concentration camp that will be even worse than District 9.* Yet this twat is also supposedly in a loving and gentle marriage… because uncaring, self absorbed social climbers always end up in great relationships! Also, though transformation and near vivisection don’t bring him any sympathy with the aliens, he somehow morphs into a martyr at the end. Um, really?
So, the good parts were the effects and the filming, which I thought were excellent. The storyline was also really cool but the execution was just… ugh. This is mainly a movie about a selfish and immature man, when it could have been a movie about racism (er, speciesism) and what happens when people (and aliens) are placed in a frightening, uncertain environment. To the extent that this movie was about those better things, it was great. To the extent that it focussed on perfectly horrid individuals, it stank. Alas, the horrids got most of the screen time.
*This also seriously undermines his credibility in the scene where Dad Alien discovers the medical experiments but the human protagonist insists with shock that he had no idea the Big Bad Corporation was doing such nasty things. Experiments are beyond the pale but concentration camps are okay? Maybe he didn’t know about the experiments – he’s still a concentration camp-supporting motherfucker.
It is certainly well documented that many concentration camp staff were ruthless and inhumane at work but were kind and gentle at home, after work.
Human beings are a complex and certainly not straightforwardly consistent bunch.
I haven’t seen this movie yet, but I recall that historical observers of WW 2 concentration camp survivor behaviour would regularly note the striking disparities between “at work” and “at home” action.
Was that perhaps being echoed in this film?
I have to say that I went into the movie with a preconception. I honestly wanted to see a movie where the humans were the monsters and the aliens the hapless victims. (It was, in fact, something that I said on my way home the night that I saw it.)
the whole “humans good, aliens bad” schtick is so played out, IMAO. Humans have failings too, which should be acknowledged and addressed.The non-acceptance of outsiders and workaday cruelty that we are capable of should not be overlooked or taken lightly.
I found the Pratchett quote (or “quotation” is you want to be all “correct” about it) that I was referring to earlier:
“There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.”
— (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
You’ll have to see for yourself!
I really enjoyed the movie. You are right that the human characters were all jerks, but they also showed that there were other concerned humans out there, they just didn’t work for MNU. Why? Because MNU was controlled by a greedy corporation who had no interest in taking care of the aliens beyond how they could profit from them.
Also, the main alien was not the one that got raided, it was his buddy that he had asked to hide the fluid for. The main guy did a really good job of staying below the radar until closer to the end of the movie. He was clearly smarter than the other aliens, and they hinted that there was a smarter race of aliens controlling the workers left in the ship. He may have been one of them, or just a really smart worker. It was definitely a movie that left a lot of unanswered questions, but I didn’t see that as a flaw.
And I wouldn’t call the main character a martyr…he was a bastard until it didn’t serve him any more. He didn’t die, and he didn’t take his punishment willingly, and he didn’t have a cause.
I liked this movie precisely because I could not relate to this character…because although he was not likable, people like him certainly exist and it’s interesting to explore that.
I was just talking about that movie today! I haven’t seen it yet (just got back from 8 months in Africa!) but am really looking forward to. A friend from S Africa was talking about how it has SO many levels of political satire in it that we N Americans wouldn’t get. But also, know those crazy crazy aliens? My good friend Gus is the animator/artist who dreamed those suckers up and brought them to life!
I’ll be sure not to expect much from the characters, though, apparently!
The aliens were amazing. Actually the special effects overall were superb!
Yeah, I bet there is a ton of stuff we north americans miss. One of my areas of concentration in my history degree was South Africa so I have a bit of a background, but I would love to watch it with a local to get the real goods!