Kenny reviews District 9

Last night I had the privilege of seeing District 9, the movie that we get instead of Halo... but I digress before I've even started. (there are only mild spoilers in this review, and sections are clearly labled so you won't accidentally read them).

Setting the scene:
District 9 has an interesting premise: aliens turn up on our doorstep, park their ship over Johannesburg and then promptly do nothing. Turns out they're refugees, and don't have anything tangible to offer us, no weapons, no metaphysical insights into the meaning of life, not even really cool steak knives that can cut through hammers. Not surprisingly we treat them the same way we treat present-day refugees: poorly.

How it starts:
The aliens are placed in a ghetto near Johannesburg and forgotten. Not surprisingly they descend into squalor, crime increases and eventually the people of Johannesburg decide they want the aliens moved away. It's at this point that the movie starts, with the protagonist presiding over the operation to evict the aliens.

Broad overview (mild spoilers):
In overview District 9 is like one of those great stories by the Brothers Grimm. On one level it's simple gory fun told on a personal level but with a grand backdrop. On a deeper level, and continuing the reference the the Grim brothers, it shows some of the worst of human behaviour. At times the protagonist is petty minded, thoughtlessly inhuman, selfish and cowardly. In these moments it's painful to watch, not because of any failing of execution, but because the behaviour is too believably human. However, this is of course so that the protagonist canovercome their baser instinct, see the error of their ways and be more heroic for it.

Finally, and non-too subtly there's a moral to the story: that wallowing in our ignorance and not taking the time to understanding and empathise with others leads to our worst failings. I like this message. Empathy is important, it allows us to build relationships, and love. The flip side is that when we fail to-, or choose not to apply empathy we commit the worst atrocities of history (e.g., the Holocaust , the firebombing of Dresden, or the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)

The science (some spoilers):
Hollywood often portrays several scientific impossibilities: bullets striking sparks as they ricochet (they don't); things changing size and or mass in blatant contravention of the laws of conservation of mass/energy (they can't... *cough* hulk *cough*); or blatant contraventions of Newtons third law of motion, that every action has an equal and opposite re-action (e.g., Optimus Prime wouldn't have saved Sam Witwicky from falling, he would have had a fist full of splattered Sam).

In comparison, District 9 had relatively little of that bad-science, nothing in the movie too obviously contravenes any laws of nature (i.e., physics, chemistry or biology). The weapon effects are awesome, but still realistic (well... as realistic as you can expect of super advanced technology). The conversion of a human to alien isn't impossible (radical retroviruses could plausibly), but does raise some interesting questions, like why does earthly and alien life use the same genetic language... unless they share a common origin? Maybe the screenplay writer is of the seeded from space (Panspermia) school of thought on the origin of life on earth?

The two moments most straining the suspension of disbeliefe involve tractor beams and starship engines.

The tractor beam was used to lift a small shuttle from the Earth's surface to the hovering mothership. It seems conceivable that a suitably advanced alien civilisation might manipulate local gravitational fields to achieve the same result: lifting things into the air with no visible physical lifting device.

The starship engines were on the hovering mothership, a vessle as large as a medium sized city. Throughout most of the movie the main engines had been doormant, with the mothership hovering by some other mechanism. At the end the engines fire up, and they look freaking hot (plasma hot, not awesome hot). Tens of thousands of human spectators under the mothership simply look up in awe as these engines power up... seemingly un-concerned about the consequences of being under a star-faring vessle as it prepares for the energy intensive task of exiting a gravity well... but nothing un-toward happens. Apparently the alein engines just look big and hot, but don't fry people.

The verdict:
One of the best sci-fi movies of recent, and even not-so recent years.