SDCC First Impressions: Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp's 'District 9'

Last night Comic-Con was put on pause while we attended a screening of the Peter Jackson-produced District 9. We were prepared for massive amounts of CGI, but we were definitely not prepared for the huge amounts of awesome that were dumped into our eyes and brains. Honestly, I haven't been this moved by a film or a performance in quite some time. Lead actor (and relative unknown) Sharlto Copley brings such a dynamic human performance to the role while going through an extremely satisfying character arc. And in a sci-fi movie to boot.

This movie has flown under the radar for a lot of people, and Jackson himself said that no one contacted them during filming to try and get interviews and set visits, so they just quietly worked on churning out a movie that you'll definitely want to see when it opens on August 14.

Read on for some impressions, and expect a full review from us closer to the opening date.

District 9 was born out of the Halo movie that shuddered to a halt due to "internal politics between Universal and Fox," according to Jackson. Both studios were co-financing the film, and apparently they didn't make for very good bedfellows. But Jackson and his producer/writer partners knew they'd found a special director in the unknown, young Neill Blomkamp, and they wanted to keep him on-board with something. So, they based a feature film around Blomkamp's Alive in Joburg short film, which in turn was roughly based on the documentary District Six, Cape Town. You can check out Blomkamp's Alive in Joburg right here.


That short just provided the idea nugget for the movie, but the basis of the story is the same: back in the 1980s, a massive spaceship hovers over Johannesburg, Independence Day-style. While the city braces for an attack ... nothing ever happens. Eventually military forces cut their way into the ship, and they find a million aliens inside in deplorable conditions, sickly and dying. They're brought down to the city and housed in a slum (District 9), and the ship continues to hover over the city.

During the raid on the ship, a vast array of alien weaponry is found, but none of the guns work in human hands despite the best efforts of the government. Flash forward to 20 years later, where the government and the people have grown increasingly uncomfortable with District 9, which continues to swell in size. Like any slum, it has its own black market dealing in alien weaponry, despite its inability to fire, and aliens trade with humans for cat food (the aliens crave it like crack), raw meat, and sexual favors. They decide to relocate the aliens to a new center filled with tents and surrounded by barbed wire, 20 kilometers outside the city.

This effort is spearheaded by the Multinational United (MNU) arm of the government, with newly appointed and nebbishy Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) in charge of the eviction and relocation. He's definitely not someone you'd consider to be an action hero, and he's roughly on the same level as Gareth from the BBC version of The Office. He's stuck an a realistic situation, despite the alien presence in the film, and we see how truly racist humans can be. Although the aliens (called "prawns" derogatorily) are presented as animals at first, the audience definitely empathizes with them through the second half of the film.

The film is short documentary-style as the relocation effort is starting, but then switches to a more traditional style as things go awry, as they always do in these types of films. And if you would have liked to have seen a Halo film because of all the advanced weaponry, you won't be sorry when you watch District 9. But even if you aren't a fan of things that go boom, Copley is a real treat to watch, and the CGI aliens are extremely well done. They even made some of us in the audience forget about James Cameron's Avatar. When you can illicit an emotional response from a tentacled alien, that's impressive.

District 9 opens on August 14.