Q:Build a movie plot around this: Where does the command module depart from? home
A:
The film opens with a documentary-style series of interviews that introduce the story: twenty years prior, an alien ship arrives above Johannesburg, South Africa. It hovers above the city for three months without any contact; eventually humans take the initiative and cut into the ship. They discover a large group of aliens who are malnourished and sick. The aliens are later assessed as being "workers", with their leadership mysteriously missing (it is hypothesized that a plague may have wiped out all of the leadership-caste). Grainy footage shows part of the ship (supposedly a command module) falling to Earth, but nobody has been able to find it, leaving the ship still hovering but inoperable.The creatures are given permission to leave their craft and live on Earth but are housed in a squalid government camp. The alien race's true name is never learned; they are primarily referred to as "prawns", a derogatory term referring to the bottom-feeding sea creature they resemble or, more rarely, "non-humans". Overcrowding and militarization eventually turn the area into a slum known as District 9. A massive black market is set up between the aliens and a group of Nigerians primarily led by Mumbo, a paraplegic warlord. In addition to inter-species prostitution, the Nigerians exchange canned cat food for alien weapons, of which the cat food has an effect similar to catnip on the aliens.The present story takes place in 2010. Patience over the alien situation among the human population of Johannesburg has run out and control over them has been contracted to Multi-National United (MNU), a private company that shows little regard for the aliens' welfare. MNU's actual agenda is their interest in the aliens' advanced weaponry, but its integration with alien biology makes it useless to humans.An MNU field operative named Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is tasked with moving 1.8 million aliens to a new camp, District 10, located 240 km from Johannesburg, with help from private security forces working for MNU. MNU teams...