It took 21 years to make a movie this much better than Alien Nation

Rating: 9/10 (16 August 2009)

If you were utterly disappointed that 1988's Alien Nation turned out to be a very uninspired buddy-cop movie about aliens who get high on Liquid Tide laundry detergent, then this is the movie you've been waiting for.
Actually, I've been waiting for a movie like District 9 for a long time: it's a gritty, realistic, and compelling science fiction blockbuster that addresses serious issues. It injects some much needed gravitas into the genre in the same manner The Dark Knight did for the superhero movie.
Rating this thoroughly thought-provoking and entertaining movie is tough. In many ways, District 9 is a better film than other new classics like Iron Man, The Dark Knight, and Star Trek. However, it does have its flaws, and I'm not sure I am compelled to see it again immediately, as I was with those others. I don't feel like I missed any part of its message or action the first time - but that is more likely because it was so well directed, photographed, and presented than because it lacks depth.
I don't think District 9 deserves a perfect rating, but I can understand why anybody would put it on their list of all-time favorite films. I can't decide between 9 or 8, so I'll give it an 8 just to balance the number of 10s it has already received on IMDb.
After you've seen the film, come back and compare your list of positives and negatives with mine. Don't read any farther before you see the movie - it deserves to be seen unspoiled.
**** SPOILERS BELOW ****
Positive: The documentary style is very well done; it does not obscure or distract from the action in any way. Even those scenes that are clearly not meant to be from a tag-along cameraman's point of view have a documentary-like quality, but it is not really fair to call it shaky-cam. Comparisons to The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield are way off base.
Negative: The stereotypical badness of both major ethnicities in this movie lacks subtlety, and makes you feel like you've been clubbed over the head with the movie's moral. The blacks were brutal, heartless, and primitive, while the whites were brutal, heartless, and well-organized. Is this the reality in Johannesburg? Is it OK to present things this way because both groups got their collective asses kicked by alien technology?
Positive: The alien effects are astonishing. This is a new high-water mark for the intermixing of computer animation and live action. The aliens themselves are a disgusting-looking mix of insectoid and humanoid, but at least they aren't slimy.
Negative: Since the aliens are so creepy-looking, it is somewhat hard to believe that humans would interact with them so nonchalantly, and treat each one as just another warm body with a government issued ID number that needs to be managed by the welfare state.
Positive: Many sci-fi movies with pretensions to epic scope start on a global scale but quickly devolve into very localized, small-scale encounters in a few claustrophobic sets. District 9 flips this formula on its head: it intentionally focuses on one small area of land in a city most Americans know little about (Johannesburg). Yet the production values, wide camera angles, and frequent city shots make it feel much more epic in scope.
Negative: Even considering what I said above, the idea that the world's superpower nations would allow an entire race of aliens to be managed by the government of South Africa along with a private security corporation is preposterous (more preposterous than a spaceship full of aliens). Still, every film has to limit its scope somehow...
Positive: The alien weaponry is awesome. This movie out-transforms the Transformers, and out-terminates the Terminator. 'Nuff said.
Neutral: The anthropomorphification of the aliens is a bit silly and applied inconsistently. Behind closed doors they have the same familial relationships as humans, and they know exactly how they should interact with the government, yet most of them come off as tire-chewing, hive-mentality insects. To be fair, this type of dichotomy is necessary to make any sci-fi aliens interesting, so I'll call it a neutral, not a negative.
Positive: Plenty of cool armored vehicles and helicopters. From MRAPs to Super Pumas to EcoStars, the fuel costs must have been a big part of the film's budget.
Biggest negative: The various and sundry other hard-to-accept premises peppered throughout the film, such as "Wikus can intuitively operate alien weaponry and vehicles just because he has the necessary claw", "The prawns would allow themselves to be subjugated when there is so much alien weaponry still in working order lying around", "Nobody could find the mother ship command module for 20 years even though it is buried just below one of the shacks and there was video of where it fell", and many, many more. The preponderance of absurdities - even after allowing for the "fiction" in science fiction - is the reason I could never rate this movie a 10.
Biggest positive: The transformation of Wikus from a sniveling, uncaring government bureaucrat to a self-sacrificing, heroic victim of inter-species prejudice elevates District 9 to a much, much higher level than that of ultimately meaningless films like Alien Nation and Independence Day.
Sure, the moral was telegraphed without subtlety throughout a significant portion of the film. Still, the penultimate scene, which reverted back to footage of the "weakling" Wikus fawning over a photo of his wife - forcing the audience to consider that his internal transformation was nearly as startling as his external transformation - was masterful film making and powerful, powerful stuff.
To Peter Jackson, I say: This totally makes up for what you did to King Kong!
And to Neill Blomkamp, I say: Bravo!