Stephanie Lamp
UNST: Wall-E Gospel
January 19, 2010
District 9
District 9 was directed by Neil Blomkamp, it was also written by Neil Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, produced by Peter Jackson. In this particular film they use an insect looking creature to represent an alien, definitely not the typical alien we are used to seeing in science fiction movies. It’s very gory and sad in some parts. I would say it is not a movie for children to watch although I’m sure some little boys would love the idea of killing aliens like they would be able to in some sort of video game. In the beginning of the movie I know that I right off the bat thought “what a stupid movie!” “When is it gonna get good?” and it doesn’t for a long time. They do a great job of getting you to become attached to the main character Wikus Van De Merwe once you see how sad and lonely he is not being able to live in society anymore. The religious aspects I saw in this movie are; the aliens could be compared to the story of Moses and the Israelites just wanting to go home. The main alien in the film plays the role of Moses wanting to “take his people back to the promised land” or in their words back to their planet.
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Nick Villegas
ReplyDeleteUNST
District 9
19 January 2010
District 9
District 9 is essentially about an extraterrestrial species, known as the prawns, coming to earth and hovering their mothership over the country of south africa. The prawns were stranded on earth because they were lacking a certain energy to power their ships. Some of the prawns become restless and start to engage in criminal activity causing their whole population to be confined to a sort of concentration camp. The camp soon becomes run down and unsanitary, so the authorities plan to relocate all the prawns to a new camp called District 10. A reporter by the name of Wikus van de Merwe is serving the eviction notices to all the prawns in District 9 when he is exposed to a foreign chemical that begins to change him into one of the prawns. His escape from the change is unlikely but all he can do is try. District 9 was written by Terri Tatchell and Neill Blomkamp who also directed it. The movie was produced by Peter Jackson(director of lord of the rings trilogy and king kong) and released by TriStar Pictures on August 14, 2009.
This movie uses the usual action film tactic at drawing people in, which is guns firing off left and right and the occasional missile launching off an alien gun in a new way our special effects haven’t seen up to that point. A small child should pretty much not be allowed to even touch the case of this movie, due to its blood and gore, and strong language content. Not to mention a man slowly turning into an alien might frighten them a little. A teenager who sees this movie will take it for its outward appearance and the whole action factor. They will most likely not dig deeper into the elements of the movie but just be entertained by the mere explosives in nearly every scene. An adult who is open and aware to uncovering new ideas will easily see where this movie is going(a little knowledge of the history of south africa might help too). District 9 has this theme of forced evictions. Strangely enough in the 1960’s a “whites only” area was declared in a residential area in south africa. This declaration removed 60,000 africans and placed them in another area, segregating them. So now that we’re done with the brief history lesson we can see that a knowledgeable adult is likely to catch this theme.
This message is not being sent just for entertainment(although if it were to be just for that then it would have done its job well........and very well at that). We can see that deeper lying theme of segregation playing out when the prawns are being treated so cruelly. When you begin to stop paying attention to the guns firing and cars exploding and begin to feel sorry for the prawns you know there has to be some other meaning to District 9. Towards the end of the movie I just wanted the prawns to be able to leave earth so they could get back to their lives and not be treated so horribly. People ought not to be treated cruelly just because of how they look. We are all children of God, each and every one of us. God intended all of us to live in a community together, skin color irrelevant.