District 9 is different. It’s unlike the typical Hollywood SF movie, that’s for sure. Well, it’s different except for all the parts that it ripped off from the 1998 flick Alien Nation, such as:

• The aliens are a worker caste
• They are tougher than humans
•  They essentially become refugees
•  The humans that live around them don’t like them very much

Alien Nation takes place in Los Angeles – an area plagued by racial tensions – and the movie makes some kind of metaphorical statement about this and how we should all just get along and blah, blah, blah.

Conversely, District 9 takes place in Johannesburg – an area plagued by racial tensions – and the movie makes some kind of metaphorical statement about this and how we should all just get along and blah, blah, blah.

However, where Alien Nation is filled with mediocrity and downright suck, District 9 is filled with awesome and righteousness. Allow me to explain.

Alien Nation had Star Trek aliens in it. This means they took some guys and gave them a quick splash in the makeup chair, had them speak American English and said, “There. You’re an alien.”

Gay.

Speaking of gay, Alien Nation had Mandy Patinkin in it as the primary alien dude. He’s a guy, and his name is Mandy, which was also the name of a song by Barry Manilow. Patinkin is also known for his work as the bad guy in the movie Elmo in Grouchland. You do the math.

Unlike Alien Nation, District 9 is full of CGA goodness, so the aliens look like, well, freaky, bug-eyed nightmare ALIENS. They also speak all in clicks and gargles and shit, and this makes them more convincing as creatures from another planet rather than just another area code. I mean, look at your typical Klingon; you’d have a hard time telling them apart from a guy from a bad neighborhood who has a nasty skin infection.

One of the other interesting things about District 9 is that when you meet the main character you instantly hate him, and you don’t realize for quite a while that he IS the main character. I was a third of the way through the movie before I said to myself, “Wait. THIS GUY is the protagonist? He’s a total knob!” Without giving too much away, the dude kind of grows on you after a while. He is a convincing Joe Schlub and you start to realize that he’s not so bad, and considering the steaming pile of shit he is thrown in to he actually behaves admirably. By the end, you are cheering for him.

I should also mention the body count, because it’s awesome.

It’s not Jerry-Bruckheimer-America-Fuck-Yeah kind of awesome; it’s more like a couple of pot-smoking, Doom and Duke Nukem playing teenagers visualized a science fiction battle scene awesome.

To make another reference to Star Trek, you know how people in that show get hit with a Phaser gun just glow in the targeted area for a second and then fall over? Lame. Lame. Lame. This is nothing like that. The violence in this movie is probably the most realistic portrayal of futuristic weaponry I’ve ever seen.

Think of this: you have the ability to move a space ship across the interstellar gap. This is a technological feat of unimaginable complexity involving tremendous amounts of energy. It proves that you have your technological shit together in a major way. It stands to reason then that your ray guns would kick serious ass. Oh, and do they ever kick ass.

If you create a futuristic weapon for doing battle with interstellar space nasties, then you want to make sure it gets the job done, am I right? So, you use that same type of interstellar drive power source and put it into boomstick form. Then you take said boomstick and aim it in the direction of whatever it is that you want to die and pull the trigger.

And then awesome shit happens.

People who get hit with these ray guns are instantly turned into wallpaper. It’s less gory than it is fucking hilarious. You watch these people get shot and go Spppllllttt! all over the surrounding landscape and say, “Fucking A! I WANT one of those!”

I could write about how the movie is a big metaphor about Apartheid and pays homage to the 1966 relocation of 60,000 blacks from District 6 in Cape Town when the area was declared “Whites Only,” but others have already done that. It’s true that this movie makes an important statement and is a character study and all that, but my opinion is that what really makes it cool is the guns.

Author’s Note

Any ragging on Star Trek is unintentional. I love that show.