Why District 9 Rules! (Spoilers)

(For all of my loyal readers, this post is a cheeky response to Ben's latest post. I am so hoping to create an old-school rap-battle style battle here, wherein one person posts something and another person writes a blog post in response and everyone's creative juices get flowing.  For my younger readers, back in the day rap bands used to write songs to dis each other.  It was delightful.

EDITOR'S NOTE:  Having reread this previous paragraph, I realize now how very geeky and white I am....)

I watch District 9 like six months ago.  So, time may be kind to my review, but here is why I really dug the movie (and I did 4 star it on Netflix, so I must have really enjoyed it at the time). 

Before we get into the specifics, there are two things that everyone should know.  (And Ben is right - they aren't blatantly said in the film, but I did some digging around afterwords to figure some stuff out.)
1 - The writer/director (Neil Blomkamp) grew up in South Africa during Apartheid.  (He emigrated to Canada when he was 18.)  This movie was inspired by his childhood.
2 -  Some types of insect colonies have a "drone" type of citizen and a "queen" type of citizen.  These types of colonies are loosely what the prawns are based on.

So, with that in mind, away we go!   Here's why the movie was so awesome:

We aren't told much about the aliens and whatnot.  That's definitely by design.  If we knew too much about them, it would take away some of the mystery.  Plus, in the beginning of the movie, we are seeing things through Wilkus's eyes.  So, we're really meant to see them as more of a pain in the ass than anything else.  Definitely not supposed to be there.  We don't know why they are there and that's that.  (This is a parallel to Apartheid.   Whites didn't care why the blacks were there, they just knew that they were a pain in the ass.)

I really dig that the ship broke and we're not really given a reason why.  I work in technology and shit just stops working.  Sure, if you've got a specialist, he can start to debug it, but if all you've got are drones, then you're pretty much SOL.

And speaking of drones, it's probably worth mentioning that all of the prawns that we see are drones.  There is no ruling class or "queens" around.  The implication is that the prawns were essentially slaves (there was a shot when humans first boarded the ship to see what was there and they were all huddled together in a dark room - not exactly lush conditions).  So, to me, the implication is that there was some ruling class and that for some reason they died.  Infection?  Infighting?  Dunno and I don't really think that it matters.  The important thing is that the slaves were the only ones left and the ones who were liberated.

But Phil, wouldn't that mean that the ship would crash?  No so!  I figured that the ship was on auto pilot.   So, when everyone died, it just went to where it was supposed to go and stop.

The ship broke down since it was just hanging in the atmosphere for 20  years without any maintenance.  I think that it was lucky that the command module was the only thing to fall off.  And yeah, they may have been more fluid on the ship, but the main prawn couldn't exactly get to it (what with the main ship floating about 200 yards in the air...) without raising suspicion.  So, he needed to slowly build up enough to get himself home.

The one prawn that seemed to have a head about him seems to have bugged a bunch of people.  With some bugs, when the queen of a colony dies, someone will step up to be the leader.  (Kinda like how some reptiles have the ability to change genders when there aren't enough of one gender.)  So, I think that this one have something snap inside of him and he was developing into a "queen" class.  He probably could have organized other prawns, but again, he didn't want to raise suspicion until he was ready to make his move.  Plus, prawns were all just drones.  Unless he was able to control them, they would just fuck everything up anyways.  (The less people know a secret, the better.)

As for the prawn behaviour... you have to remember that they really were just stupid.  Unless a leader came along, they were pretty brainless.  The cat food was essentially their crack.  They didn't care about the weapons, they just wanted the food cuz it tasted good.  (Apparently, this was actually something that happened in South Africa too..)  And as for collecting the fluid?  They didn't know what it was or what it could be used for...

One point that I can't really address from Ben's post is why the main character knocked out his prawn friend.  I can't remember that happening.  But maybe it was a heat of the moment thing?  Or maybe the screen writer just needed another reel.  :-)

All in all, I really dug this movie.  One thing to note is that it was actually pretty ballsy to make the prawns look like they do.  Generally, if a director wants the audience to sympathize with an alien, the idea is to make them look really human.  (Take a look at someone who knows what they are talking about when reviewing Avatar:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJarz7BYnHA#t=6m50s )However, this movie goes the other route and it works wonderfully (at least for me...).