PLASMA RIFLE ENVY

Humanity Covets Alien Firepower in Neill Blomkamp's District 9

As the faux-documentary footage near the beginning of District 9 reveals, years ago a race of large, insect-like aliens visited earth only to be quarantined -- after a failed stint a living amongst humans -- in a Johannesburg shantytown. Unable to return to their mothership, which ominously hovers over the decrepit slum, the “prawns,” as they’re known, are eventually placed under the jurisdiction of a large weapons conglomerate known as MNU. The plot details the moral reawakening of corporate wonk Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley, oddly resembling filmmaker Spike Jonze), who is nepotistically placed in charge of relocating the troublesome shantytown residents to a tent-city concentration camp further removed from human civilization.

Following this set up is a messy social allegory in which Van De Merwe is accidentally infected by a serum that slowly transforms him into a prawn. Forced thereafter to live amongst The Other, he conspires with a scientist prawn (the only intelligent member of the race that the film offers us) to steal back the confiscated serum, which also, most conveniently, is capable of powering the aliens’ mother ship back to their home planet – where that is exactly, or what it might have been like, the film doesn’t say. And gradually, after so promising a start, we arrive at the standard paradigm for the racially-charged action picture: abusive white man is forced to live among The Other, realizes his host's humanity, and through his own heroism manages to facilitate his former foil’s emancipation. It’s a tired formula, more than a little offensive, and the innovations to it that this film offers only underscore the cliché’s insensitivity and lack of historical perspective.

The film’s most obnoxious problems rest in its dramatic treatment of the alien race: the film argues that our inhumane treatment of the aliens has led to their barbarism, yet also holds that same barbarism up for laughs, as the poverty-stricken prawns are viewed with derision, save for the aforementioned scientist, more or less the archetypal noble savage. So, which came first: human atrocity or the aliens’ own coarse nature? Neglecting the history of the prawns – or, more precisely, communicating it entirely through munitions – leaves the question frustratingly stunted.

Most problematically, the filmmakers (this is Neill Blomkamp's first feature) and MNU's nefarious corporate suits have a parallel interest in the subjugated aliens, namely their superior weaponry, which, through complex biotechnology, can only be operated by prawns themselves. Thus, within the story, there are black and gray markets for prawn flesh, which criminal gangs seek to ingest and MNU hopes to synthesize with human DNA, both with the goal of facilitating the use of the alien weaponry by human hands. Similarly, the filmmakers covet the extraordinary (and extraordinarily stylish) firepower of the prawns; as Wikus’ left hand becomes entirely prawn, he’s able to gun down corporate mercenaries and warlords with extreme prejudice. The candy-colored laser guns and pulsating explosives in the prawn arsenal clearly resemble the imaginative cavalcade featured in first-person-shooter video games, which boasts increasingly sadistic means of eliminating enemies (1). Human bodies (those of the evil bad guys) are shredded, exploded and lacerated with this firepower, dwarfing the effects of the shotguns and sniper rifles sported by the human baddies. The quest for brutal alien technology would easily make for great science fiction, but the filmmakers’ helpless indulgence in fetishized weaponry deflates any higher thematic ambition, leaving the film with a blown opportunity at its core. Even Tarantino’s most recent self-professed death-trip Inglourious Bastards can’t claim but half of District 9’s body count.

Both the faux-documentary approach (persistent, yet violated as narrative convenience dictates) and the shaky, hand-held camerawork strike against the film, the former amounting to lazy exposition, the latter, ostensibly reinforcing verisimilitude, achieving a confused mis-en-scene. Still, there are occasional bits of well-choreographed, adrenaline-pumping action, but they are rare in the film and scarcely compensate for the objectionable narrative development.

Lastly, the highlight of the film must be the digital rendering of the prawns themselves, which appear as lifelike and textured as any computer-generated creature has ever looked. The seamless situation of these finely wrought beings within a grainy documentary image makes the achievement of Peter Jackson’s Weta workshop all the more impressive. But while Weta held up their end up the bargain in creating a wholly realistic (light years beyond the computer constructs populating Jackson’s Lord of the Rings series) alien race, Blomkamp has ultimately failed in injecting these creations with a commensurate humanity, not realizing that his would-be allegory depends on it.

District 9 / USA, New Zealand / 2009 / Color / 112 min. / Directed by Neill Blomkamp / Written by Mr. Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell / Starring: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope and Sylvaine Strike

Notes:

1 - It’s worth noting that there is a tracking shot late in the film which resembles the camera angle of FPS games – gun perched firmly in the bottom of the screen, as the background skirts by wildly – a shot not entirely uncommon in contemporary action pictures, a truly depressing cliché that shows no sign of fading away. Fitting, though, that it would show up in this picture considering Blomkamp was Producer Peter Jackson’s pick to helm the abandoned big screen adaptation of the uber-popular FPS Halo.