I liked District 9, but it's turning out to be one of those movies with more loose threads the closer you look at it.
- If the Prawn have such awesome weapons, why do they let themselves get pushed around for twenty years?
- Soooo... the spaceship is completely turned off, right? How the hell does it manage to keep hovering? Did the Prawns set cruise control and then forget how to turn the rest of the ship on?
- A great deal of the plot centers on the command module that broke off of the ship. The reasons the CM broke are never explored, but that's a fair thing to chalk up to coincidence. What ISN'T a reasonable coincidence is that the CM crashed in exactly the same area where District 9 is established. Pretty convenient, no?
- Along the same lines, it's a little weird that no one surveying that area for District 9 ever noticed some kind of impact crater from the ship's crash.
- It's implied that the fluid is only necessary to make the Command Module fly, not to turn on the computer. (The young Prawn is ordered to "initiate the start sequence" before the fluid is input, and it appears that the computer is active at that point.) This is significant because when the CM is grounded, the Young Prawn uses the on-board computer to turn on the Mothership remotely and activate a tractor beam. This begs the question - if the fluid isn't necessary to activate the computer, and it's possible to activate the tractor beam remotely, what do the aliens need the fluid for in the first place?
I enjoyed much of the film, don't get me wrong. On top of that, I'm delighted to see the audience embrace a movie that wasn't based on an 80's that was marketed as a cartoon show of questionable quality. Hopefully the success of District 9 will help usher in a trend of studios taking a chance on original ideas over optioning products based on familiar branding.
After all, that trend has to stop before Play-Doh: The Movie.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
- If the Prawn have such awesome weapons, why do they let themselves get pushed around for twenty years?
ReplyDeleteMost weapons confiscated, or sold for food. Most Prawn are stupid drones, not the leaders.
- Soooo... the spaceship is completely turned off, right? How the hell does it manage to keep hovering? Did the Prawns set cruise control and then forget how to turn the rest of the ship on?
You're asking how a technology that doesn't exist can work? Anti gravity metal? Hey, how do the ships go so fast in Star Wars!
- A great deal of the plot centers on the command module that broke off of the ship. The reasons the CM broke are never explored, but that's a fair thing to chalk up to coincidence. What ISN'T a reasonable coincidence is that the CM crashed in exactly the same area where District 9 is established. Pretty convenient, no?
It fell to the ground under the ship.
They build the refugee camp directly under the ship.
You really didn't get that one?
- Along the same lines, it's a little weird that no one surveying that area for District 9 ever noticed some kind of impact crater from the ship's crash.
It fell into a dump? It had some juice left and buried itself? Either of these totally make sense.
- It's implied that the fluid is only necessary to make the Command Module fly, not to turn on the computer. (The young Prawn is ordered to "initiate the start sequence" before the fluid is input, and it appears that the computer is active at that point.) This is significant because when the CM is grounded, the Young Prawn uses the on-board computer to turn on the Mothership remotely and activate a tractor beam. This begs the question - if the fluid isn't necessary to activate the computer, and it's possible to activate the tractor beam remotely, what do the aliens need the fluid for in the first place?
The computer can work, but the juice sent out power waves all around. (Remember the windows in town exploding? The robot fighting suit coming to life?) It also sent power to the mothership.
Director Neill Blomkamp said that the Prawn are a race of hive aliens who have lost their queen, essentially, and are without leadership. They therefore don't know how to function (hence their confused huddle); they don't understand their own technology, and will respond to orders when they are given just because they're looking for structure. That's why they ultimately give up their weapons. They're confused.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Blomkamp, Christopher Johnson is the result of the Prawn race "resetting" itself over many years. Like those frogs switching from male to female to fill a void, Johnson is a drone who has moved up to a higher leadership nature.
Interesting questions. For me these weren't loose ends, but I am more forgiving of sci-fi than most other genres.
ReplyDelete- If the Prawn have such awesome weapons, why do they let themselves get pushed around for twenty years?
To me the bulk of the Prawns seemed like "workers", not a trained military group. It would be like dropping off a group of human salesmen or IT workers on another planet and expecting them to battle it out to the death. It's unlikely. Plus the bulk of the weapons would have been confiscated immediately. I would not doubt that in the early stages of the compound there were a few drones that fought, but due to sheer numbers the human forces could easily put down a small uprising.
- Soooo... the spaceship is completely turned off, right? How the hell does it manage to keep hovering? Did the Prawns set cruise control and then forget how to turn the rest of the ship on?
I think you would find a question like this in almost any sci-fi film. It is an alien technology, the viewer must assume it's part of the charecteristics of the build/design.
- A great deal of the plot centers on the command module that broke off of the ship. The reasons the CM broke are never explored, but that's a fair thing to chalk up to coincidence. What ISN'T a reasonable coincidence is that the CM crashed in exactly the same area where District 9 is established. Pretty convenient, no?
I assumed that the CM was purposely released. Was it explicity said that it broke off? I assumed it was released and that the Prawn would have taken steps to conceal it as soon as he could. It was not a huge CM, so I could easily buy this as going unnoticed.
- It's implied that the fluid is only necessary to make the Command Module fly, not to turn on the computer. (The young Prawn is ordered to "initiate the start sequence" before the fluid is input, and it appears that the computer is active at that point.) This is significant because when the CM is grounded, the Young Prawn uses the on-board computer to turn on the Mothership remotely and activate a tractor beam. This begs the question - if the fluid isn't necessary to activate the computer, and it's possible to activate the tractor beam remotely, what do the aliens need the fluid for in the first place?
The young prawn certainly seemed special. Certainly the humans underestimated it as being just a rodent. But he definately had abilities and it seemed he did things that even surprised his father, so I felt that he was mastering the system to a level that none before him were able to, and he was able to start the tractor beam remotely.
Dang it. Now I hate this movie.
ReplyDeleteI jest. We've had the same discussion and I agree, I hope this opens doors for future prospects.
The surprise I continue to support, is that I wasn't expecting as much humor it presented.
Conjecture:
ReplyDeleteOnce a ship's gravity drive separates it from a local gravity well, it's a self-sustaining reaction requiring little/no power. It also requires little power to move something that is, in effect, weightless (depends on the inertia at that point). Whatever unobtainium their technology runs on, they probably have automatic fission/fusion reactors on board for emergency power too.
Actual interstellar propulsion requires more power, hence the need for liquid McGuffin.
Other points:
I don't think the command module required fluid (or at least, not much of it) - but there's little point in taking off without any fluid for the bigger ship.
Also, if the aliens have tractor beam technology, what makes you think the CM left a crater?
As for location, if the CM dropped straight down into the nearest open area (to dig in and hide), and the humans herded the prawns into the nearest open area, that's not a plot-breaking coincidence.
The real plot-breaking question is, why does interstellar Chevron rewrite human DNA?
Wow, some good discussion here.
ReplyDeleteRyan - I appreciate the explanation, but I hate having to go outside the movie itself to explain plot holes. If that truly was Neil's rationale, I wish he'd have found a way to explain it in the film, or at least more explicitly hint at it. His explanation fits the on-screen facts but I'm not sure it's reasonable to assume that most viewers would make that leap on their own. From where I sit its a big deal that the aliens simply give up these hugely powerful weapons and never attempt to use them. It makes them look insanely dumb
The Spaceship hovering while fully turned off still bugs me, but you guys have at least fought me to a draw on that one. (I still feel like it should be like cutting the engines on a 747 midflight, but I'm not going to be labor the point.) I like Scot's answer, though.
Global, I assumed the CM was released accidentally. The Prawn doesn't really behave as if it was intentional. It seems like his plan is to get the ship going so that he can head home for help, so it would be odd if he deliberately stranded it and the ship.
To that point, Jeff, I'm not totally sold that the camp was deliberately built underneath the saucer. There are shots where the ship appears to be hovering over a portion of downtown, and other shots from District 9 itself where the saucer is hovering almost off to the side. There's an overlap, but it's not as if they said, "Let's put this camp right below the saucer." To that end, I find it a little convenient that the piece that falls off just happens to be on the one area of the ship that's also hovering over the barren area later made into the camp.
Scot, I hear you on the interstellar Chevon issue. Yeah, I don't really buy it either, but for me that fell under the Blake Snyder rule of "you can get audiences to buy one piece of magic per movie." It's a little ridiculous, but it's necessary to the entire story so I'll give him that plot point over the few nitpicks I've got listed above.
My best stab at that one is that since there's clearly some kind of biological link between the Prawn and their machines, maybe there's something in their fuel/oil that facilitates that symbosis? That's total conjucture, though.
You apparently missed the line in the film where they explained that all the Prawns left on Earth were of the "worker" class - unintelligent and unsophisticated, and that the elite Prawns had abandoned the mothership (for some unknown reason. Though it isn't unreasonable to assume that "Christopher" might have been one of the few non-workers, perhaps of the "scientist" caste. This should address your first two points.
ReplyDeleteAlso when the humans found them the Prawns were malnourished and desperate, so overpowering them (despite their advanced weapons) shouldn't have been hard.
And since we're nitpicking, "to beg the question" (used in your 6th paragraph) is a logical fallacy in which the proposition being advanced is assumed in the premise. It is not synonymous with "raise the question."
As for your last point, maybe I'm forgetting the details, but I don't see what's inconsistent. The computer in the CM doesn't require the fluid in order to be "on." Okay. But the fluid could still be necessary in order for advanced functions like turning on a tractor beam in the mothership, switching on the mechwarrior, and flying.
ReplyDeleteI consider myself a stickler when it comes to plot holes but none of the things you mention bothered me. In fact I don't really consider them "holes." The thing that came closest to annoying me is Scot's point - why the hell would the fluid turn humans into Prawns?
Here's an 'out of left field' theory on the strange fluid.
ReplyDelete-say the prawn's home planet is full of it, and only a small amount on earth (20 years to gather enough).
-inhalation/swallowing/exposure causes humans to change into prawns (morph/evolve).
-So if humans inhabited the prawn's planet maybe they would transform over time.
-underlying theory human and prawns are the same...?
Random Drunken idea, but it's a blog... hehe
I wondered why an international conglomerate of corporate interests would care about weapons technology. This is one of those plot devices that works when it's one country with the ability to snatch a big lead on another, but it seems kind of moot when everyone would be getting handed the same weapons.
ReplyDeleteOne of the conventions of scifi that bugs me is the alien's total lack of ability to monitor their inventory. How does something that big get lost? Are there no concerned taxpayers on planet prawn? Is there no GPS on board? Or like in Independence Day, they dock a 50-year-old alien fighter craft on the mothership and the alien's computer system simply integrates it without any kind of VIN number there to set off some red flags.
As far as the liquid and the ship, I guess in the end it's like that stuff the Doozers were laboring over on Fraggle Rock. None of us can understand what they where constructing or why, but its existence as a technology helped sustain tension between the two species.
I loved this movie and didn't have as many suspension of disbelief problems as many people. However, since this was an alien race that was lost because they lost their queen, I think it would have been cooler if Christopher Johnson had a very smart daughter instead of a son.
ReplyDeleteLike Emily, I too LOVED this movie, though all your points/complaints the bitter script reader raises are valid ones.
ReplyDeleteRyan H, GREAT job bringing up the director's explanation of the hive race. Wish they had made that a LITTLE clearer in the movie. I sure didn't get it, think many others were left scratching their head at the aliens overall demeanor. Could have used that explanation in the exposition at the beginning of the movie.
ABSOLUTELY loved the Vickers character. He was the show for me. Very strong sci-fi lead protagonist. Agree or disagree?
Thought a better ending might have been if the aliens used the "fuel" and air dispenced a mist over Johanusberg at the end of the movie, then hinted that many members of the human population were starting to go through the same "metamophasis" that Vickers was. Would have left the show with an edge, rather than the warm ending of the now alien Vickers making a flower for the wife he's now forever seperated from.
- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA
Emily, love your suggestion. That would have been neat.
ReplyDeleteE.C., I agree that it could/should have been clearer about the hive race in the film. Seems like it was an easy detail to miss, and one shouldn't have to rely on an interview with the director to make sense of a film - at least not for such a significant point like that.
For what it's worth, I like the ending we got, so much that I'm wary of the inevitable sequel.
My out there theory is that the fluid was some kind of genetic key or password for accessing the mother ship. Once it turned on, the mother ship was accesible.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the queen prawn would have genetic markers and just as humans couldn't use prawn weapons, the workers might not have had access to all of the ships systems.
Christoper may have in essence been working on hot wiring the mother but that would also mean that Wikus might be a little different from other prawns.
Did the prawns have gender? They seemed have a radically different approach to reproduction than humans. Then again if humans can mutate into prawns, is it possible our two races share a common history?
Why were the aliens so helpless despite superior weapons? Because cat food is a strange and relentless mistress.
ReplyDelete