District 9 Rises From the Ashes of Halo

JohnSmedley sent in a story about what might be the last SciFi film worth caring about this summer. He writes "Wired has an interesting piece up on the upcoming District 9 release. District 9 rose from the ashes of a failed Halo movie and expands on 'Alive in Jo'Burg' which is a South African short film by Blomkamp. Both the short and full feature films expand and explore a premise in which aliens in space are treated as badly as illegal immigrants and the underclass. The story begins as a damaged alien craft lands in Africa. The foreign race is quarantined in a remote area called District 9, and from there are subjected to xenophobia, and the desire of a multi-national conglomerate to steal their technology. The film is an exploration of what would happen in terms of segregation between an alien race and humans, subjecting the stranded visitors to the very human condition of greed, fear, and exploitation. District 9 will be in theatres on August 14'th, and you can view the trailers from the viewpoint of Multi-National United."

Interesting parallels

[woutersimons_com]

The referenced site in the article on Wired for the trailer and the D-9 site in the article here do not work for me it seems. I found a good trailer on the site Sony made for it [district9movie.com].

This is sure to be a movie that I am going to watch, very interesting story. It also interests me that the director is from South Africa, the way the aliens are moved to camps does seem to have some parallels with the Apartheid [wikipedia.org]

Alien Nation

[RenHoek]

So.. it sounds like the premise of the Sci-Fi series 'Alient Nation'.. which was a very good series.

Re:That May Work as a South Africa Satire

[OzPeter]

Green card holders pay taxes yet can't vote - something that you citizens held a tea party over a few centuries ago.

Just kind happy that it's not Hollywood SighFi

[theolein]

I'm South African so yay for South Africans of all colours, shapes and broken accents, and yay for an SA director making a really interesting SF movie set in SA. It is really nice to see something that isn't shallow Hollywood crap. It might be shallow South African crap, but at least it's different and interesting shallow South African crap.

"1984" vs "WE"

[jbssm]

Actually I'm a big fan of Orwell, but after reading We from Zamiatine. I must say that Orwell, was at least "heavily inspired" (not to say an harsher word), by the much less know work of Zamiatine.

Re:Moon

[Kurusuki]

I don't know. I tried watching 1984 once, and only made it about 30 minutes in before I had to stop watching. The movie is just so bland. It's a movie about the message, one of those artsy political movies that doesn't need any semblance of flow. The people who watch it will already be well versed in the mantra it preaches. However, V for Vendetta and Equilibrium both set out to entertain with an undertone of the 1984 mantra. This lets people take in the meaning without having to put forth any thought. Watch, enjoy, and receive political propaganda (from the good side of the fence albeit) without even knowing it. It's like separating a movie like An Inconvenient Truth to a movie whose plot revolves around those downtrodden by global change, the animals in the arctic regions for example. Someone seeing An Inconvenient Truth already someone leans in that direction and is already expecting a message, disregarding the fact the movie is a documentary. Someone seeing the later genre of movie will probably be seeing it for entertainment, and take away the important message at a subconscious level. They are more likely to start acting eco-friendly without attributing the shift in habits to the movie or its message.

Re:That May Work as a South Africa Satire

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of the tea party was: "No taxation without representation." If you don't want to give non-citizens the right to vote, that's fine. But according to the US's own core beliefs, you shouldn't be taxing them in that case.

Re:Just kind happy that it's not Hollywood SighFi

[amilo100]

Switch to Al Jazeera at this moment and you will see a pretty telling picture. Joburg municipal workers are on strike and they really make a mess when they strike (vandalism, etcâ¦). There are also âoeservice deliveryâ strikes (although none in Joburg as far as I know). There is no doubt that the inner cities decayed a lot in the last 5 to 10 years (of both Joburg and Pretoria â" the decay in Pretoria at least bottomed out).

You can get the statistics for the past few years at the SAPSâ(TM) site: http://www.saps.gov.za/statistics/reports/crimestats/2008/crime_stats.htm [saps.gov.za] You should however bear in mind that statistics tampering has become widespread in the past few years.

This country has a lot of problems â" unfortunately a lot of foreign people are not willing to accept that (and still cling to the âoerainbow nationâ fallacy). Problems locally also do not get handled because any criticism against the government or the ANC is seen as racism. This coupled with a criminal for president really removes the confidence in the future of South Africa from any rational person.

Re:"1984" vs "WE"

[caitsith01]

I am a big fan of "We" but I must say I find it to be much more in the vein of Brave New World or Brazil than 1984. It presents a society which attempts, perhaps even genuinely attempts, to run itself on principled and idealistic grounds, but which in reality imposes a bureaucratic dystopia on its people because (a) those ideals are fundamentally misplaced and (b) the very notion of forcing people to live according to particular principles is doomed to have that result. But, for example, D's friend R is a government-endorsed poet and a 'true believer' in the state and its principles. The characters are able to engage in discussion and reflection on these issues, even though those who become too prominently troublesome are subject to 'correction'.

By contrast the core of 1984 in my mind is that there is literally no room for debate or reflection - the state doesn't ask you to accept anything, it demands it with absolutely no tolerance whatsoever for anything other than complete subservience. The state is also more overtly cynical, for instance waging perpetual war as a means of keeping the domestic population under control, and deliberately entrapping its citizens to ensure total compliance. The character of O'Brien in 1984 serves to emphasise that the state is not interested in your consent - he engages Winston Smith in political/philosophical discussion, but this is just a ruse of the state to trap Winston, who still instinctively believes that there must be room for such things. This differs from the government in We which genuinely (in my opinion) believes in its stated principles and indeed wishes to export them to the rest of the universe to 'enlighten' other species.

Anyway, I suppose I take issue with your implication that Orwell stole his ideas from Zamyatin (as I think his name is spelt in English). Orwell freely acknowledged that We was very influential on him, but I think it is equally clear that 1984 takes certain ideas about the totalitarian state to much more brutal and harsh extremes. Orwell's idea is really that the state can assume total control to a point where the consent of the individual is utterly irrelevant; in We, the consent of the individual is still significant, and it is the belief in the system which allows it to continue.

Just my two cents, they are both great novels. I hope Zamyatin had a better grasp on humanity than Orwell, but I doubt it.