Kick-Back Friday: #104
District 9 (2009): On their visit to planet Earth, crustacean-like aliens don't hover over Manhattan or Chicago but stop, instead, at Johannesburg, where they are ultimately subjected to a lengthy and cruel apartheid (with evidently little interest from the international community). When the aliens' living conditions become too distasteful for even South Africans, the government—with the logistical efforts of a lackey official, Wikus Van De Merwe—begins their removal to a new camp.
District 9 is, more or less, a character study of the callous and self-serving Van De Merwe, who is made watchable by the curiously named South African actor, Sharlto Copley. But the story is also a very graphic union of depravity, violence, and technology, and its quick telling relies on easily recognized elements from a number of dystopic sci-fi stories, namely "V," Mad Max, The Fly, Aliens, and (God help us) Enemy Mine.
While District 9 isn't Best Picture material, despite its nomination, it is distressingly memorable.
Agree that the film's entire premise draws on a lot of classic entries before it. For me, that included written fiction, including a nasty little story by Rod Serling called "Color Scheme," and Kafka's more familiar The Metamorphosis.
Well, lah-dee-freekin-dah. Look who reads.
I likes the reading. I read real good like.