Gobs of unanswered questions

Rating: 5/10 (13 February 2011)

District 9 is a good example of what happens when filmmakers are more concerned about their political message than they are making a good movie. Not to say that it is totally bad, but there are too many questions without sensible answers. I've listed some, but not all that I could come up with:

Why did the space ship end up where it did? Was it simply a transport for sub-par aliens with the goal of just dumping them off on another planet? I suppose this is an analogy of humans being packed into boats and shipped off to another country that doesn't want them either. I would be fine with this, but it is never adequately explored in the movie.

Were the aliens criminals or just really stupid? They briefly addressed this, but they never actually find out despite having learned their language.

Once humans breached the hull of the spacecraft, why did they not set up shop after the aliens were brought down to the surface? Wouldn't there be a permanent research group of some kind in there?

Why is a multinational corporation (MNU) put in charge of this as opposed to some new multi-governmental body or even the UN?

Why did MNU put a cross between Inspector Clouseau and Basil Fawlty in charge of the eviction process?

If the aliens are unintelligent rejects from another planet, why did they get a big honkin arsenal of weapons, including one that turns living flesh into red pudding in less than a second?

After the live film documentation of the eviction process, why is the rest of the movie still shot the same way as if someone was there following the main character with a camera?

How come the fluid that is used to power the spaceship also mutates people into aliens if it sprays in their face?

Were the aliens originally 'prawns' or did they get a blast of the same magic fluid and transform from something else too?

Why were tribal gangs allowed to trade cat food for advanced alien weaponry unchecked?

I know there are some messages in here, like big corporations are evil, humanity is still made up of insensitive barbarians and big men with guns are mean, but how about a little subtlety? Not to mention the obvious reference to apartheid since the whole thing took place in South Africa. This could have been a much better movie had they been concerned about the quality of the story as much as they were the quantity of the political statements.
I don't want to say it is a total loss though. The overall concept was interesting. And the amount of different alien weapon types obviously took some time to come up with. I'll even go as far as to say that I still somewhat liked the main character, but just not all the time. I could also comment on the quality of the special effects, but today that should be a given in a modern motion picture. I guess the upshot is, see Distrct 9 for the fun of it, but don't take it too seriously. You'll just end up with a list of questions that should have been answered.