Well, now I am getting into the 21st century films, ainna? To be honest, I guess I was into films into something like 2005, after which my movie-going days ended pretty much when we had children, at which point our movie going went to child films, sometimes, but not too often and an occasional movie night, but I’m pretty sure that ended when we saw Iron Man 2 and MacGruber on our anniverary in 2010. That we had an anniversary in 2011 is a testament to a good woman’s love, I reckon. Oh, where was I? Oh, about to tell you that I bought this film “just” a year and a quarter ago, and I immediately watched it (after Funny Farm, Grumpy Old Men, Meet Me In St. Louis, Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm, and White Men Can’t Jump, but not everything I bought that day).
So.
Well, this was an event film, a thing, back then. Do you remember? I think I do, which will do for now. It was called a commentary on apartheid because it was set in South Africa, and it came at the tale end of the George W. Bush era (Obama having only been in office a couple of months), so no doubt the press seized on it as a comment on the bad thinkers of the era, but…. Well, it’s just a retelling of Alien Nation, but the aliens are more insectoid (better computer effects here in the 21st century).
In an alternate past, an alien ship has appeared over Johannesburg. Humans eventually break into it and find a seemingly starving set of aliens, and humanity, or at least the Seffricans, welcome them. But 28 years into the future (which is about now), they’ve been living in a refuge camp for a generation and tensions have arisen between the neighboring humans and the aliens. So the humans decide to relocate them to a camp outside the city. Which is where the movie begins: A nebbish office drone, Wikus, is by-the-bookishly leads a group of mercenaries to serve notice on the prawns. He finds a contraband substance in a container and accidentally gets sprayed with a bit of its contents. Which starts turning him into an alien/human hybrid. His company, a military-contractor-munitions company, takes him to the lab where he is forced to use the alien technology which is DNA-locked from humans and to kill an alien slave/prisoner/innocent (presumably). He breaks out, turning a bit into an action hero, and is forced to hide in District 9. He then hooks up–well, not that way contrary to what the authorities have presented to the populace–with the person who had the contraband substance. It’s the fuel he, the alien, has been distilling for 20 years to power the command module of the ship to return to the mother ship and to go home for help. He offers to help cure Wikus, and…. Well, gunplay, action, a mech suit, and then an eventual ending that does not resolve everything.
So: I mean, it’s the kind of thing I would have watched over and over on Showtime in the 1980s (as I did Enemy Mine which one could argue also had some influence on the film). But it’s not a massive event or masterpiece of science fiction. They couldn’t even get the sequel made, for cryin’ out loud. And its setup leads to too many unresolved and, frankly, not even presented questions such as why was the ship stopped there in the first place? The command ship dropped off, the mass of aliens were still aboard the ship, but they’re distilling the DNA-mutagenic fuel from bits of native technology brought down to the surface by the aliens? Eh. Just watch it as a bit of popcorn film and not as anything more, and you’re probably okay.
Until they make the sequel 20 years later, with or without overt political messaging but still seized upon as representative and recriminative of What’s Bad Now by the media. And probably not made in South Africa.
