District 9

District 9 (from Weird and Wonderful II: Fifty More Cult Films by George Hughes, available from www.freefall-productions.com)

2009 / South Africa / 112 minutes

“What, for an alien, might be seen as something recreational- setting fire to a truck or derailing a train- is of course, to us, a very destructive act…”

Director: Neill Blomkamp / Screenplay: Terri Tatchell & Neill Blomkamp / Director of Photography: Trent Opaloch / Music: Clinton Shorter / Production: Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham for TriStar Pictures / Cast: Sharlto Copley (Wikus van der Merwe), Jason Cope (Christopher Johnson), David James (Colonel Koobus Venter), Vanessa Haywood (Tania Smit-van der Merwe), Louis Minnaar (Piet Smit).

Appearing in the summer of 2009 and opening against the likes of Terminator: Salvation, J.J. Abrams’ first “Alternate Reality” Star Trek and Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Neill Blomkamp’s unique South African Sci- Fi film District 9 gave the Hollywood Blockbusters by Numbers establishment a much- needed boot up it’s overly CGI- reliant arse. Largely practical effects- driven, daringly different and refreshingly clever, District 9 represented both a return to ’80’s- style action and the independently- minded SF of ideas.

   Opening in an parallel present Johannesburg where aliens arrived thirty years previously, Blomkamp’s film initially employs a fake documentary structure to explain it’s world. The aliens (named “Prawns” by the South Africans) that left the mothership hovering over the city were quickly identified as low- skilled, unintelligent “Workers” seemingly unable to operate their spacecraft or the mysterious biotech weaponry that came from it and were housed in the Johannesburg slums.

    The documentary begins by following buffoonish bureaucrat Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a low- level employee of a dodgy corporation called Multinational United (MNU) as he leads a mission to evict and relocate the Prawns from their now unmanageably overcrowded ghetto, District 9 into the newly built District 10. But after being exposed to an unknown alien substance that begins to alter his genetic structure, Wikus meets unusually intelligent prawn “Christopher Johnson” (amusingly, the aliens have all been assigned human names) and eventually uncovers an MNU plot to finally work out and monetise the extraterrestrial weapons.

   At times playing like a very surreal and dark comedy, District 9 is of course a metaphor for the country during the Apartheid era (the film never addresses whether the rest of recent South African history occurred as it did in reality or not but does depict several black characters in senior positions).  As Wikus begins to transform into a Prawn himself, he’s immediately shunned by his own kind but he becomes more humane as he becomes less biologically human.

   The film engages in very deliberate “Mood Whiplash” with sudden and shocking tonal shifts throughout. Copley (a non- professional until Blomkamp had cast him in an earlier short) has great comic timing and completely sells not just his character’s physical transformation but a psychological one too. With nothing left to lose and time running out, Wikus becomes desperate enough to stand up to the district’s Nigerian gangsters and his own bosses at MNU.

   The brilliantly unpleasant thug Colonel Venter (David James) referring to Wikus as a “Half- Breed” and Wikus himself telling a young Prawn fascinated by his transformation that “We’re not the same” now bring to mind mixed race South African Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime” material.

   In the final act, Christopher Johnson does manage to get the alien spacecraft going again but is forced to leave Wikus behind rather than “Fixing” him as promised. The faux documentary comes back in at the end, with the official line being that everything was the fault of Wikus, although his wife doubts this and at least one of his co -workers has tried to expose MNU’s role.

    All this leaves things wide open for a sequel, but a decade later it’s still yet to happen. Blomkamp’s gone on to have a successful Hollywood career but, like his long- held ambition to make an Alien film, “District 10” seems to have been constantly thwarted. But in many ways, District 9’s influence has been everywhere since.

    When James Cameron’s Avatar finally came out a few months later, it looked like a very expensive cartoon in comparison to the relentlessly real feel Blomkamp’s film had perfected even in it’s most outlandish moments.

   District 9 was immediately loved by production designers and special effects technicians (my brother Tom, a prop maker on Guardians of the Galaxy and some of the more recent Transformers and Star Wars projects, counts it among his favourite films of all time) and is largely responsible for the welcome return to in- camera technology for effects- driven features. And for that reason alone, it’s impact and legacy cannot be overstated.