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On August 20 2009 02:58 strongwind wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2009 02:26 Xenixx wrote:
what plot holes? be specific about these things you didn't like that will probably add weight to your argument... as it stands you sound too young or stupid when you say things like "oh yeah this movie had many problems, some of which are plotholes and illogical decisions, blah blah blah". Be specific!
and I haven't read any plot-hole arguments that weren't adequately explained in the film... I don't think the movie was perfect plot wise, I had problems with it but they did a good job explaining things plot wise. i wasn't confused or left wondering why about too much have you even read this thread? I said that a lot of the plot holes have already been mentioned, and I didn't want to get bogged down with explaining it all. can you people please stop with this "young and stupid" argument? It just shows how immature you are. Tell me your age and education if you really feel that you're better than me. edit: Xenixx just checked your profile and you are a few months younger than me. So stop with that pointless argument.
well now that i've called you out for the examples, feel free to let loose with them? do you understand why someone wouldn't credit you when you don't provide specifics you just label generally?... in good fun lets hear the specifics.
i have read most of the thread and the 'plot holes' were answered promptly from what i read
e: and to clarify i really want to hear what the plot holes are because its interesting to me, as i said i didnt have a problem with the plot except for a few scenes
and to the guy raging, a post before, its a forum dude, people talk, i want to know what he thinks about plot holes after whats been said already, even after my post he didn't post any specifics... why?
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i think a big problem that a lot of movie watchers have is projecting their own circumstances on the characters, specifically that they're seated, well-rested, comfortable, etc. when they're watching the movie
meanwhile, movie characters (especially using district 9 as an example) are often times borderline delirious with fatigue, physical pain, and psychological torment and they're usually supposed to act accordingly, both in the things the writer has them do and the ways the director has them do it
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this movie was epic imo
but if u didnt know, this movie was an extremely low budget movie that jackson supposedly on the spot. he just got really pissed with the entire "halo" movie incident because microsoft and fox are idiots and cant agree on shit, so jackson just went "screw it" and made this movie in an instant.
shows how good he is even through low budget and on the spot films :D
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yeah the total budget for this movie was almost the same as the cost to make role models
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apparently the experience of halo being canned has turned blomkamp and jackson off from the idea of doing it, even if it came back to life
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
some observations on d-9
the brilliance of the movie is not unlike a thought experiment that challenges comfortable practices by revealing their disturbing and absurd side. the basic move is to show an obviously absurd and morally perverse situation conducted with utter seriousness and unquestioning acceptance by the people involved. viewers would recognize the absurdity of the situation, but also recognize in them parallels to real affairs. further, viewers would recognize a cognitive divide between them and the absurd actors, so that they gain an understanding into the nature of the biases and practices on display.
aside from the obvious and at times sermonizing critiques of racial and corporate issues that seem to be obligatory in films with pretention for social analysis, d-9 gives time to some unpopular issues, and takes on some obscure ones as well.
there is a dig at abortion in d-9, an unpopular target by films. more accurately, it makes light of the scientific rhetoric employed to make abortion sounds clean and fun. amidst the burning and exploding prawn eggs, we hear laughter and descriptions of ingenious feeding machines. now, pointing out that one side of the abortion rift uses dehumanizing language to great effect isn't necessarily anti-abortion as policy. i support abortion even though i recognize that fetuses are human, as do others.
the mockumentary style is well noted, that the narrative is carried out through media clippings is less so. fragments of “residents say” interviews, official statements, and third party expert interviews do well to show the disorderly reverberations of opinion. the natives are insular and oblivious that they are being showcased in order to be mocked, much like when say the nytimes interviews some redneck or christian. the officials are manufacturing dignity and truth, and the media accepts that story all too willingly, but the viewer knows that the official stories are often absurd. (numerous instances of this stuff from the first eviction coverage to wikus having sex with prawns coverage) the third party observer comes off as playing the role of captain obvious, always understating and after the fact, incapable or unable, due to third party status, to make any genuinely meaningful and revolutionary pronouncement. where is the cassandra of the time, or the voice of reason? nothing but inert statements and blind fumbling, a situation that may be a dig at the real media.
wikus’s insistence on getting the aliens to sign paperwork, at gunpoint, through a chaotic and obviously quixotic expedition is satire to the legitimacy and sense of civility conferred to formal legal proceedings. a barbaric and forceful act carried out with utter seriousness and official dignity, the appearance of rationality and procedure conferred by codified paperwork. all of these modern pillars of organized social life are revealed as power-serving rhetoric as the prawns react to the farcical proceedings with understandable rude reality. for those willing to look deeper, the corp first declared a right to evict, an unilateral move that paid no mind to the interests of prawns. then, the farcical invitation to contract. as we know, contractarian ideals confer a sense of fairness, voluntary organization, reciprocity and even an obligation to obey the law. however, prawns are clearly being forced into a contract that they neither desired nor much understood. of course, the media does its part by portraying the situation as law enforcement, rather than a clear power struggle with the prawns being the weaker side. here, viewers of practically any political persuasion can find real life doubles of what the prawns went through. for libertarians, taxpayers, otherwise known as victims of property violation, are also handed tax forms to sign, even though the very institution of taxation is a coercive and unwanted intrusion. if this is the way they view taxation, then d-9’s satire of paperworks won’t be lost on them. similarly, leftwing revolutionaries object to the greater legal formalism, or ritualism as duncan kennedy would say. the treatment of immigrants by assorted papers and procedures established on the presumed right to exclusive control of territory bears closest resemblance to events on the screen.
d-9’s treatment of property and capitalism is less concentrated but still novel. when wikus walks away from his government job and into the midst of the nigerian gang, he was severed from capitalist civil society and dumped into something obviously different. the novel thing that d-9 does here isn’t to point out that, in the jungle, your money is no good, but to portray wikus’ bewilderment and confusion. he was an institutionalized man whose incapacity to live apart from the rules of capitalist exchange screamed mental blockage. nevermind the cute offer to “buy” weapons, walking into the camp is itself absurd. the assumption that such an attempt at trade would be successful is manifestly absurd, yet wikus still followed that thought, as though it wasn’t a thought at all but a mechanical habit. a habit that is replicated in his going to the food store, both before and after he became the most wanted man alive.
logically speaking, the nigerian gang could impact the interests of big capitalism tremendously, either by their storage of alien arms, or the way they affect alien relations. why doesn’t the mnu deal with them before they had a chance to mess things up? well, what did you expect? the way mnu deals with the nigerians is not unlike how google and yahoo deals with china. it is a part of the cost of doing business to accept the presence of irrational regimes. you can understand them and hence act around them, but why remove something that is too costly to touch, and isn’t posing an immediate impact. I don’t think d-9 featured this detail, but the message is clear, it is both useless and dangerous to mind things outside of your business, atrocities included. this petty cynicism is the inert core of modern political life.
the beautiful thing about d-9’s political tentacles is that it knows how to be loud yet understated. absurdity is most stark when it is natural and subtle, when the viewer has the sense that she is the only sane person left on earth. d-9 manages to avoid, for the most part, plastic and shrill caricatures. (all three words bring up images of sarah palin, painfully) it is not preachy or sentimental, but at the end of the story, you can’t blame yourself for wishing that a prawn armada lays waste to these silly monkeys.
which brings us to the ending that some say is inconclusive. the problem is, if the ending is conclusive, then the moral situation would also needs to be conclusive. the prawns are not angels nor unambiguously moral beings. they are apparently a centralized and collectivized society with no real sense of intelligent culture in the vast majority. perhaps a popular caricature of soviet style communism, but also a popular archetype that many foreign cultures are thought to exhibit. whatever the case with the prawns, it is clear that their victory is anything but a tragedy, albeit a one tinged with poetic justice. a prawns retribution fleet won’t develop the far more ambitious moral vision that I suspect is in store for d-10.
ps a lot of the so-called plotholes are there to either create a sense of the absurd, or to plainly tell you that you shouldn’t bother paying attention to questions like “how exactly does the dna tech work” and instead pay attention to more important content. at points, it is obvious that artistic license has been taken on things like dna etc that are not realistic, but this is not a big deal.
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Hate to post this late into the thread just to say I saw it...but I just saw it yesterday and it was awesome! Now I can finally read this 11 page thread that I have wanted to read since it started.
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This movie was really well done. There's so few things that I didn't enjoy in it, and most of the plot holes here are non-existant, or just people being anal.
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i would have liked to learn more about christopher and if other smart/leadership/pilot prawns existed/died off
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What...
Why are so many people praising this movie? The tedious middle section and terribly inconclusive ending aside; I have issues with the movie as a whole. Yes, I got the mock documentary style and noted its critiques of corporate/government excess as well as the irony of "civilized" bureaucracy carried out at gunpoint.
However, the pervasive feeling I got from D-9 was a sense of "why". The movie simply shows a series of events, little to no explanation given. I suppose one could argue that this is in fact a strength, forcing the view to draw his/her own conclusions, but to me it speaks of poor writing and an overemphasis on flashy CGI gun battles. To top it all off, I found the main character (Wikus) thoroughly unlikable. His behavior at the beginning of the movie and when he abandoned Christopher nearly entirely nullified any empathy I might have felt for his plight.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
you are not supposed to understand everything. you have to remain distant enough from that world, without any firm reference points of understanding, to grasp at any insinuations you can find, and thus stumble on the correct ones. it is a way of guiding your viewing by sensitizing you to peculiarities. the irrelevant details are whitewashed, or you should already whitewash them after you recognize what hte point of the exercise is.
wikus is not likeable, but he acts like a typical human would act. humans are not altogether likeable.
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I thought District 9 was a rather terrible sci-fi movie in a lot of aspects. I think they handled the whole Aliens living on earth thing incredibly well, but the main plot of the movie was so weak and riddled with plot holes. Basically everything having to do with the Spaceship fuel was bad. In terms of a movie that was just a fun to watch movie i'd say it was great in that.
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On August 23 2009 12:51 oneofthem wrote:
you are not supposed to understand everything. you have to remain distant enough from that world, without any firm reference points of understanding, to grasp at any insinuations you can find, and thus stumble on the correct ones. it is a way of guiding your viewing by sensitizing you to peculiarities. the irrelevant details are whitewashed, or you should already whitewash them after you recognize what hte point of the exercise is.
wikus is not likeable, but he acts like a typical human would act. humans are not altogether likeable.
And what precisely is the point of this movie? That the vast majority of humanity is despicable scum? That "aliens" are really just humans underneath it all?
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
i dont know about you, but i got the point about 5 minutes in. don't want to waste much time on this, so i'll just link this and say what you get out of a movie has a lot to do with your store of related experiences/thoughts.
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I keep thinking this thread is about a sequel to Banlieue 13 or something. :/
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On August 23 2009 14:39 tarpman wrote:I keep thinking this thread is about a sequel to Banlieue 13 or something. :/
People still speak French in canada?
That's ridiculous.
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the reason why the made wickus (sp?) such a dick and somewhat not likeable was a commentary on people. it was telling us that THIS is the best humanity has to offer which was obviously, very little.
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Slightly offtopic btu I thought this was a fantastic movie. Probably one of the best in the last 5 years atleast. Classic.
Yeah This was done by the guy chosen to be hte Halo director. Halo got pulled on him 5 months in so Jackson privately financed him with his personal group.
I thought the writer deserves props for making the humans so human. Wickus is almost equivilent to a nazi bureaucrat at the beginning of the movie. (Slums but no scientifically planned massacres, yet. There was talk about breeding control). Though he changes as his circumstances change throughout the movie, he never acts in a way unrealistic with how he would seem to naturally grow. Sure he can suddenly grow a heart for something he at the very least disdained, but it's not as realistic as him demanding a quid pro quo exchange. Something not out of the goodness of his heart.
Is anyone else disturbed there's going to be a sequel?
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EPT
