Hallelujah! Now this is what I’m talking about!

District 9, directed by Neill Blomkamp, opens with a summary of what has happened over that last 30 years, beginning with mankind’s first contact with aliens. The viewer will immediately notice that this movie is stylistically reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, and lots of other cinéma vérité films of which you’ve never heard. On television this documentary shooting style is all the rage. From The Office to COPS to The Hills (my personal favorite), it’s all over the fuckin’ place. I’m not complaining, though. I love the added sense of realism. You may recall in my G.I. Joe review I went on about the brainfuck that is watching a movie set in the real world, yet, left and right the laws of physics are being raped, plot-holes abound, and everyone looks like the offspring of Pamela Anderson and the Greek god Apollo. This movie doesn’t have any of that nonsense.

In the first few minutes we are shown footage of a massive alien ship hovering above the city of Johannesburg, which leads me to the first distinguishing element of this movie: the setting. It’s rare, especially in this day and age, for a science fiction film to take place in a city that many Americans have barely heard of and can most certainly NOT locate on a map. The setting choice was not intended to mess with American minds, however; there are reasons behind it. One is the fact that Blomkamp was born there. But more important is the city’s role in Apartheid, for which this movie serves as an allegory.

I actually have here a 100% authentic transcript of a conversation between Neill Blomkamp and the movie’s original producer, Jerry Bruckheimer*:

Neill: So the movie takes place in Johannesburg…

Jerry: Johannesburg, Johannesburg… is that a suburb of New York or LA?

Neill: Neither, it’s, uh, actually the largest city in South Africa.

Jerry: There are cities in Africa?

Neill: Well, yes, actually…

Jerry: So you’re saying the movie opens in Africa. Great! Maybe we could fade in to a close up of a black bushman with an authentic-looking bone through his nose and holding a feathered spear. It’ll be an awesome contrast to the next scene where a caravan of U.S. Army trucks comes crashing through the brush and starts blowing the shit out of some African dictator’s palace! And then we cut to Washington D.C. – the camera will circle around the Washington Monument and the Capitol building a couple times and…

Neill: No, actually, it doesn’t just open in Africa. The whole movie takes place in Johannesburg. We never show Washington D.C. In fact, there’s no mention of America really…

Jerry: Awesome, awesome. And then the mother ship hovers over Washington D.C. and… wait, no we can’t do that — Independence Day already did that. We need a different location…

Neill: Right, like I said, it takes place in…

Jerry: How about Boston? No, no. My hometown of Detroit? Hey we could save a bunch of cash shooting in Detroit! Would anyone care if Detroit blows up, though? No, probably not. Maybe Chicago? Did Independence Day do Chicago? Someone get me a copy of Independence Day Goddamnit!

Neill: We don’t actually blow up the city in the mov…

Jerry: SOMEONE GET ME A COPY OF FUCKING INDEPENDENCE DAY!!

Neill: *facepalm*

*Jerry Bruckheimer was not the original producer. I made that up. You may also be surprised to learn that I made up this entire conversation. Jerry Bruckheimer doesn’t even really talk like that. But who cares about facts. I don’t!

I’m not a crazy Peter Jackson fan by any means, but thank God he produced this.

The movie’s main protagonist is Wikus Van De Merwe, played wonderfully by Sharlto Copley. Wikus (pronounced Vikus) seems like a rather ordinary guy. He has a nice wife and a good job at Multi-National United (MNU), the “global leader in technology adaptation and integration”. We meet him just as he’s been promoted and will be leading a team into an alien Soweto called District 9. But as we follow him (still documentary-style) into what looks like any real-world shanty town you’ve ever seen, we start getting the impression that Wikus is actually kind of a schmuck.

His job is to go door-to-door serving eviction papers to the alien inhabitants. They are to be relocated to an internment camp (which, later on, we learn is called District 10) where they’ll live in tiny white tents, 100 miles outside of Johannesburg. It would seem that the people of the city are sick of these non-human pests who are referred to pejoratively as “prawns”*.

* which are essentially shrimp, but you probably knew that.

Even though he knows the future that awaits the prawns, Wikus is very casual, and even excited about the work he’s doing. When he discovers weapons in some prawn homes, he’s practically glowing. He laughs and jokes and even brings one of the more impressive weapons outside to excitedly show off.

Some have criticized the movie for this. They say that it lacks a hero to root for; it lacks someone we can relate to. I find this criticism to be… well… retarded.  We can most certainly relate to him.  This is the second element — after its visual style — that distinguishes District 9. This man is quintessentially human: he’s full of contradiction, hypocrisy; he’s endearingly scant; he’s selfish; he’s a lover who will do whatever it takes to be with his wife; he’s prejudiced; he has times of weakness and times of surprising strength. This is not a static, one-dimensional live-action cartoon character. This is not Channing Fucking Tatum’s Duke.

See, he’s not really a schmuck per se. He’s a man behaving exactly as you’d expect him to, given his race, his species, where he lives, his economic class, and having the job he does.  It’s wrong, of course, but contrary to what you may have been led to believe, people often don’t go through the day commenting on the injustices of their time. Most people are thinking of numero uno – themselves — and, specifically, how they’re going to make a few bucks today so that they can live their life tomorrow at some level of comfort.

We hear Wikus joking with some of his soldiers about shooting an alien child. He simply doesn’t see these prawns as equals to humans. It’s natural, real, awful, often times intrinsic, human racism (or speciesism?). “Family-friendly” kitsch like G.I. Joe has indoctrinated in us and enforced the belief that people are either “good” or “evil”. Only Destro or Cobra Commander could joke about shooting the child; only “bad guys” see others as beneath them.

The second protagonist is an alien and his name is Christopher Johnson. I love this name. The writers might have gone the traditional route and maybe garnered a few laughs by calling him Gleekax Zorkaz or something ridiculously “alien” sounding. But, again, realism prevailed. Giving this huge, shrimp-like alien a white, English moniker reminds one of Polish immigrants at Ellis Island: Alfons Sochaczewski becomes Alan Smith. Or maybe you’ve called for tech support and gotten a dude on the other end that sounds strikingly similar to Apu from The Simpsons, yet assures you his name is Kevin.

Chris is more intelligent than your average prawn and has hatched a plan to return to his home world. A strange black fluid that he has spent 20 years collecting is the key to this. But unfortunately the fluid falls into the hands of none other than Wikus, who’ll soon pay dearly for taking District 9 so lightly. We’re about a half hour into the movie when the back fluid spurts into his face and things start getting ugly. At first it seems like no big deal. He wipes it off, tells the cameraman to cut that part out, and continues on. But it doesn’t take long for him to realize that something’s wrong. He vomits, becomes pale and sickly, black fluid leaks out of his nose. He starts losing teeth and fingernails. It’s basically what happened to me after Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

These are the modest beginnings of the gore, which is prolific from here on out, but never what I’d call excessive. I mean, people explode and stuff — actually, LOTS of people explode — but the gore isn’t too crazy other than that. Except for that part when Wikus tries to cut off his hand with a dirty axe. That was cringeworthy. The scene with the gangsters eating the prawn to get its power was kind of disturbing too, I guess. There was also the dude’s head getting ripped off, but that was cool.

I won’t give away what’s happening to Wikus, but from here the documentary-style shifts to a more traditional third-person perspective. This was necessary because the writers/director would have needed to jump through some insane hoops to tell the story they wanted to tell and still manage to “capture it all on tape”. While I don’t really mind the documentary approach, some people I’ve spoken to have suggested that they wouldn’t have enjoyed the movie nearly as much if it had continued, so it’s probably good that they made the shift rather than going for the long hall ala Cloverfield.

The movie gets more and more exciting as it progresses and I found myself vigorously rooting and fearing for the protagonists. By the end we’ve watched Wikus grow into someone just a little more heroic than we ever expected him to be. I contrast this with G.I Joe, during which I never felt much of anything. Well, nothing emotional. I felt mildly nauseated, and there was a strange pressure in my head which I think was my brain expanding from exposure to an intellectual vacuum, similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bug-eyes in Total Recall* when he ends up on the Martian surface without a space suit.

* “Come on Cohagen, you got what you want. Give deese people aiyah!”

But seriously, the characters in G.I Joe couldn’t become heroic because they were already branded as “heroes” or “villains” from the very beginning. The only character in that movie that changed – The Baroness — didn’t really change at all. Her mind was being controlled by the bad guys. As soon as the mind control was removed she was “good” again. Heaven forbid she grows through experience and changes by her own will! The fuckin’ kids will never understand!

The ending leaves the movie wide open for a sequel and of course there’s been talk of one. No big surprise, especially given the box office take. District 9, as of this writing, has made $73 Million. And get this: it only cost $30 million to make! It has made over twice its budget in the first two weeks! My other favorite movie, G.I. Joe, has yet to make a profit!

I must say, they squeezed some crazy special effects out of that budget. I have to eat crow and take back the swipe I made at WETA in my G.I. Joe review. The effects were pretty impressive. The prawns, ships and alien weaponry all looked sufficiently real. I don’t know if it came from the director or the effects designers, but I found it interesting that they gave the prawns mammalian eyes rather than insect or crustacean. I have to assume it was a way of making creatures that are anything but human in appearance just a little bit more sympathetic. Good move, in my opinion (not that they really give a shit).

I do have a few gripes. I feel like an asshole for mentioning them, but this is a review and I need to be objective (HA!). When it came to escaping from hairy situations, the filmmakers tended to fall back on some weak, traditional film practices. Whenever Wikus was about to get his self blown up or shot or cut to pieces, a savior in some form would show up at the very last second and rescue him. I’m thinking of the scene with the Nigerian gangsters – the scene when the leader wants to eat his arm. Earlier in the movie we saw the gangsters backstab and start chowing down on one of the aliens without a moment’s hesitation. But in the scene with Wikus, an eternity seemed to pass between the order to kill him and his acquirement of the alien gun, which he then used to blast them all away.

Near the end Wikus is being taken away in MNU trucks. He is on his way to meet certain death. But then the same gangsters he escaped from earlier show up and “save” him. There’s also the scene at the very end with the main villain, Koobus Venter (played by David James). I won’t go into detail about it but it just supports the argument that, in a movie that is a celebration of fictional realism, Wikus’ luck is a little unbelievable.

Those are really the only complaints I have.

I’m going to end this review with a table of analogies across multiple categories that will hopefully get the point across about how much better District 9 is than G.I. Joe.

I saw G.I. Joe the other night. It was Monday at a theater that only charges $5 during the week. There was no way in Hell that I’d pay the full $10 to see G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Why? Well, a couple reasons come to mind. First, it’s another movie based on a cheesy 80’s cartoon. Second, the studio refused to show it to critics. If that doesn’t imply that your movie is a pile of garbage I don’t know what does. Apparently a small subset of “critics” did actually see it. The studio showed it to people who would be more likely to “get” the movie. Namely: Hicks, Rednecks, Joe Six-Packs and the rest of real America. Red states basically. People who like “dumb” action flicks.

But my question is why do dumb action flicks have to be dumb? They spent 170 million fucking dollars on this movie. $170 MILLION! Where did it all go?

Not to the writers, that’s for sure. Instead of what could have been a decent war movie, we got a spaghetti plot about chasing a briefcase.

Did it go to the special effects? If so, they got TOOK. I could probably cook up better effects with my old copy of Blender 3D. These people could learn a thing or two about effects from Peter Jackson, and that’s saying something (no, I’m not a fan of Weta).

The actors? How much does Channing Fucking Tatum (yes, his middle name is Fucking) catch per picture? Probably too much. But he’s the key to bridging the gender gap so I guess he’s necessary. Marlon Wayans, while pretty good, was not necessary. His character (Rip Cord, who was not black in the cartoon) was nothing more than the stereotypical wise-cracking black sidekick. Dennis Quaid has become the hallmark of a bad film. Which is odd, because he was in some decent stuff in the past. Traffic, The Rookie, Frequency. I guess after Flight of the Phoenix he discovered that he couldn’t get enough of acting in shitty movies and never looked back.

Perhaps it was more the fault of the script than Christopher Eccleston who played McCullen/Destro, but when he delivered this line near the end of the movie in his thick Scottish accent, “I’ve finally taken ma place in tha loong line of McCullen’s” my brother and I were practically rolling on the floor laughing.

They should have spent a little more money on the script and a lot more money on a better director. Have you seen Stephen Sommers’ aggregate score on Rotten Tomatoes? It’s 10%. 10 PERCENT! How does he keep getting hired? Well, I guess for the same reason as Michael Bay (7% on RT): box office numbers. But the thing is, action flicks can bring in big audiences while simultaneously being good. I know, it sounds crazy, but look at the Batman movies. Look at Christopher Nolan (100% on RT). There are a billion wannabe directors out there. Granted, 999 million of them probably blow, but if 99% of the remainder are busy making art films that no one wants to see, that still leaves 10,000 Christopher Nolans. Christ, Hollywood, give one of them a chance you nepotistic bastards! Fuck you and your fear of anything new!

Speaking of Michael Bay, this movie may actually have fared better in his hands. I can’t believe I just wrote that, especially after my brain got gang raped by the Transformers movies, but I’ll repeat myself: this movie may have fared better in the hands of Michael Bay.

I say this because it felt a little too soft. Maybe even too liberal? I feel like an action movie about American soldiers and American exceptionalism should have been tougher; meatier if you will. Especially given the apparent target audience. Michael Bay films are all about that kind of stuff: overly patriotic, overly obsessed with soldierhood and military power. I actually would have enjoyed seeing some gung-ho, go from the gut, old school, cowboy conservatism in this movie. I’m thinking of John “I believe in white supremacy” Wayne or Clint “I’ll kill Michael Moore” Eastwood. Those are tough guys. These Joes just seemed kind of weak. No sooner than Duke and Rip Cord were brought in to the “secret” G.I. Joe base in Egypt (of all places), did the bad guys show up and trash the place with little effort at all. Later on they just barely saved Paris and allowed the Eiffel Tower to be destroyed in a scene reminiscent of Team America: World Police.

The Joes really came back in the end sequence; a sequence also known as “Star Wars Under the Sea.” But the CG submarines flying this way and that doing loop-de-loops and barrel rolls around the Deathstar – err, enemy undersea base – made the whole scene too unreal in my opinion. This was a shiny fantasy movie while I wanted a gritty war movie.

I guess that’s more my fault than the movie’s. I mean, it was based on a cheesy 1980’s cartoon for Christ sakes. If sticking to its source material was the primary goal, I suppose I’d have to label this movie a success. It was, most concisely, a cartoon without drawings.

I suppose I need to delve into the American psyche to understand why we need these live-action cartoons. Why not just release the movie as a cartoon where suspension of disbelief is a given? Within the context of a cartoon I might be more willing to accept the God-awful flashbacks for Duke and Snake Eyes. I might also have been more willing to accept the ridiculous motivations behind the characters’ actions. I still can’t understand why Joseph Gordon-Levitt went from being a bright-eyed, intelligent, young soldier to wanting to enslave his sister’s mind and take over the world. Apparently it had something to do with science? Or something? And why was Ana (or The Baroness) so pissed at Duke for “what he did?” What did he actually do? And McCullen — he wanted to destroy Paris because the French killed his ancestor in the 17^th century?

In one of the Snake Eyes flashbacks we see Pat Morita, err Mako or no… Viktor Wong… no wait… I don’t know who it was… some generic Japanese martial-arts master declare that Child Snake Eyes is “Top of the class!” Seconds later we hear “ARGHGHGH!!” and discover that the master has been killed by Child Storm Shadow. That’s essentially the history behind the two most badass characters in the movie. Later on we learn why Snake Eyes doesn’t speak, in a single, very awkwardly written line delivered by Storm Shadow. It seems like the writers wanted to tell us why Snake Eyes doesn’t speak, but they couldn’t really find a way to work it in.

I believe the reason it can’t be a cartoon is money (what else right?). Cartoons are for kids and there just aren’t enough kids with cash. We were kids when we watched G.I. Joe. Now we’re grown ups. We can’t watch animated drawings do stupid, ridiculous shit. We need to watch real people do stupid, ridiculous shit.

Perhaps the 300/Sin City treatment would have served this movie better. Those flicks blur the line between reality and fantasy in a more acceptable way. We get to see 2-dimensional characters come to life as real, breathing human beings with depth and emotion, yet the world they inhabit is still very much a stylized, brush-stroked, fictional universe. These big blockbusters like Transformers et al are supposed to be set in our world — the real world — so we’re supposed to believe what is happening could actually happen, while simultaneously suspending disbelief because none of it could happen. It messes with the mind.

When I was asked about the score I’d give this movie, I said two stars, 5 out of 10, one thumb up, whatever. It has explosions and action and all that escapist stuff. And like I said, it stuck to its roots well enough. I just think it could have been better. I’ve been pondering what I would have done if Paramount had come to me and said, “Shaun, we want you to make the G.I. Joe movie for us. Will you do it?” In reality I probably would have crapped myself and responded, “Yes I will do it. Tell me exactly how you want it, sir, and I will do it. That goes for both the movie and whatever you want me to do in your bedroom later.”

But if it wasn’t reality and I wasn’t a big, weak, nerdy pushover I probably would have done it something like the following. It would begin during a big battle in World War II. The allies are getting crushed by the Nazis and are about to retreat. But one man, maybe his name is Joe, gathers his courage and turns the tide of the battle. From that point on he leads a special elite team of “Joes” throughout the remainder of the war and kicks lots of Nazi ass. Then we jump to a Watchmen-esque opening montage of passing time: the war ends; Joe has a son (Hawk) who he teaches about valor and manhood and all that crap; Hawk becomes a hero in his own right in Vietnam; when he returns, Hawk is disillusioned and angered by the treatment of American soldiers, but he’s calmed by the birth of his son; we see the 911 attacks; then Hawk’s son goes to fight in Iraq, where he’s killed in battle. Hawk, who is a general at this time, leaves the military and almost gives up entirely.

But then! There’s a massive attack by a new, mysterious organization calling itself Cobra. Maybe a sports stadium blows up ala The Sum of All Fears. Hawk is called in to form a special team to fight this new, technologically advanced enemy. We see him scouting out and recruiting the Joes: Duke, Flint, Shipwreck, Snake Eyes, Lady Jaye, Scarlett, etc, etc. The things his father taught him about valor and courage and standing up against enemies are the glue that keeps this elite fighting force together. I imagine a Patton-like quality to his demeanor and speeches. In the end, when Cobra tries another attack, they get their clocks cleaned and as we leave the theater, we’re all singing the National Anthem and planning cookouts and calling our auto dealers to trade in our Priuses for the biggest, baddest, gas-guzzling SUV’s we can find.

I don’t know. Maybe that would suck. But at the least it would have a rousing score. To me the soundtrack is an incredibly important tool for aiding the visuals in conveying tone and emotion. I love Alan “Back to the Future” Silvestri but the score for this movie was so generic and forgettable, so overshadowed by the explosions and shouting, that as far as I’m concerned it didn’t even have one.

Apparently this is supposed to be the first installment in a trilogy. I’m not sure what movie isn’t part of a trilogy these days, so that information is mostly useless I guess. I’m sure that, like Transformers, I’ll go and see the sequels. I’ll validate the idea that you can put crap in a can and slap a nostalgic label on it and end up swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck. I can’t help it. I already mentioned how much of a pushover I am. You probably are too. I think we all need Hawk to give a rousing, Patton-esque speech about standing up against movies like G.I. Joe. Until then they will keep invading our theaters, and I’ll keep complaining, but nothing will change.

(By the way, this was 100 times better than the movie: http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/076041c13b/the-ballad-of-g-i-joe)