I saw District 9 today and boy am I glad I did ^^
Some would say that the film starts out too slowly but I believe the film gained momentum at a great pace. It seemed real to me. The film is about an alien ship which becomes inactive over the South African city of Johanasburg. It is clear why the ship has stopped over that city and why it is unable to move. The ship hangs suspended over the city for three months before humans are able to get inside of it. The humans who enter work for an orginization known as the M.N.U. or Multi-National Union. It seemed more like a faceless weapons contractor rather than a multi-national organization though.
Once aboard the ship it was discovered that over a million creatures were found onboard. They were humanoid but had insectoid features and vestigial limbs protruding from their midsections much like shrimp. In fact the term '
rawn' is used as a derogatory term against them. The prawn were airlifted from the ship and placed into a sort of camp which was quickly quarenteened from the general public by the M.N.U. [now acting far more like a military orginization]
Another couple of plot points before I type up the entire film:
* Aliens cannot leave
* Aliens scavenging to find components to fix their ship
* Humans cannot use alien weapons whatsoever
* Humans fear the aliens even though the aliens don't seem to want to harm humanity
* The fearful/ racist humans want to aliens to go away
* District 9 is also the home of Zulu criminals/ gangs
So, back to pacing. The main human character begins working for the M.N.U. but stuff happens and the main character, Wilkus, becomes pursued by the M.N.U. The story played like a History channel documentary at some points and it becomes obvious from the beginning that the story the film is telling is a story that has happened X amount of TC's earlier [TC = time counters example being days, weeks, months, years, etc ...] The story is told mainly from Wilkus's point of view though we see enough of his wife, her father, the alien's and , several other seemingly minor character's point of view to sort of get into their heads as well.
Where music and sound is concerned, it stayed right at the background where it does best and made the slum of District 9 seem to live so: it did it's job. I am not a music critic. I am not a critic at all to be honest but I try ...
The film was did contain some closure at the end however, there is enough at the ending to imply that there could, possibly be more to come. That remains to be seen but the ending was satisfying and a bit sad as well. I have not seen Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen or Terminator Salvation so I can't say if this movie was better than those. I can say that I enjoyed it though. It started slowly yes but, the last 45 minutes are filled with explosions and action and is very good indeed in my opinion.
Peter Jackson was going to work on the film version of Halo. Halo the movie however failed so, Peter worked on this instead and it was a very, VERY good thing he did because District 9 was not only a good movie, it could have been called a Half Life movie. Half Life is a popular computer game if you haven't heard about it and it is quite excellent. Why do I call District 9 an unofficial Half Life film? The aliens in District 9 bare a strong resembelence to the aliens of that game, the Vortigaunts. Another incidator: The main character of Half Life is Gordon Freemen, a bespecaled scientist thrust into a first-person shooter. The main character of District 9, though not bespecled, is just as misplaced in what can be discribed as a small military action or series of scermishes.
The biggest incicator? The most well known aspect of Half Life, other than the vort, Gordon Freeman or, the face huggers [no such things being present in this film] is the gravity gun. The gravity gun is a weapon that distorts gravity and allows one to move and fling large, heavy objects. In District 9, one of the alien weapons is a device that did exactly that. It was only used once in the film and it was one of the most impressive action scenes in my opinion. People shot at the weilder of this weapon, the bullets amassed in midair before the weapon and it's weilder flung the bullets back at extremely high velocity. One other similarity: M.N.U. = Black Mesa
If this film was an unofficial Half-Life film, it did everything right [says the person who knows very little of Half Life's story line]. The worst thing a video game movie can do to itself is to call itself by the video game's name. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was not a bad movie but it was also by no means a Final Fantasy movie. Mario Brothers could have changed some names around and been a decent film. Mortal Kombat ... should have waited five - nine years, changed some names and, included Vin Diesel and it may have been watchable.
Now before the movie started there were previews of other films which I believe is the norm but could be wrong. As you may or may not know, Gerard Butler is staring in the film Gamer which looks like it's going to be a steaming pile of excrement. Gerard Butler's next film is entitled Law Abiding Man. It is an action movie so, it takes familiar action plot A (man wants vengence after wife and child [daughter in this instence] is killed) How he goes about it is different than every other media. Normally, the surviving family member runs around shooting people until there is one guy who is the target is finally killed in an overly elaborate way.
In this film, according to the trailer, the murderers are caught by police and sentenced to death which in itself is very, very different. For whatever reason, this isn't enough for Mr. Butler's character. The execution is supposed to be a painless injection but apparently it isn't painless at all. The other murderer is kidnapped and held in a very Saw-like manner by Gerard who proceeds to use buzz-saws on the confict. There is more to the trailer though, to show that this isn't Max Payne meets Saw.
Gerard Butler's character is imprisoned which is another aspect of the above storyline that doesn't normally happen. The murders however, of people related in his family's death continue. Judges, police officers, all sorts of people are killed while Gerard is imprisoned and it is up to Jamie Fox's character to put a stop to it.It is hard to tell who the antagonist is though. On one hand, Gerard Butler is killing people and having other people killed. On the other hand, Jamie Fox is making backroom deals with convicts and criminals. I guess I'll have to wait to see though >.> It looks like a very promising film.
Another interesting film which is coming soon is called Legion. It is about how God once again loses faith in humanity. He said he'd never flood us again so this time he sends Angels to kill us. It seems the fate of humanity lies in an unborn child being carried by a woman whose name I can't remember. Gabriel was shown and I'm sure they will make Michael appear in the film as well as he was the one who drove Samael from Heaven.
The thing which caught my eye with this movie isn't the fact that the angels were being killed off by heavily armed humans. It was the fact that the angels behaved like Deadites. I said it: the angels were behaving like DEADITES from the Evil Dead series. The trailer showed a kindly looking old woman who told main-pregnant-woman that her baby would burn before revolving her head and jumping up to cling on a nearby wall/ ceiling. I am curious about this movie and just might have to see it.
The one movie that I absolutely must see no-matter-fucking-what was also previewed before District 9 [and this is the last one I'll talk about I promise] The film is entitled Zombie Land and is about Zombies. This movie features running zombies and seems to be a parody on zombie films as a whole. It looks as though the film may break the fourth wall in a sort of, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy sort of way. It follows the story of a young man, a not so old man and, an assortment of other characters as they try to survive the Zombie-pocalypse. I am such a Zombiephile
Anyway: that's about it for now! Hope you all survived that litany
Devious Journal Entry
's profile. The others however, will be coming here. I plan on doing more before work tomorrow but, you probably won't see anything posted until closer to X-Mas because I will be kept busy with Work and whatnot [trophy hunting on Borderlands]
Euphoric
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