District 9...Good God!
Aug. 30th, 2009 12:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabid1stI am going to take this under a cut, just in case someone out there hasn't seen this movie, yet.
I suppose I should have been warned off by the comparision made between Torchwood: CoE and District 9...but no, I didn't wise up one iota. Instead, I bought into the hype, which was carried along to a pitched frenzy by the critics. One and all they lined up to give District 9 an A+ and rave about it's refreshing realism. I've heard critics call this film "brave"...really? BRAVE? There are brave things about Torchwood CoE...but not about this film. I suppose the distributor could be considered brave though...for letting this one out in the summer. But maybe not...because what this film does have going for it is contrast...it isn't a polished, committee-written vehicle from some twenty-year old starlet. It also isn't even remotely good.
Again, I must ask what hole the people who found this film "original" have been living in for the last decade. Docudrama is as old as the X-Cops episode of the X-files. Every television show has done one of these...House had the elephant boy episode, Supernatural had Ghostfacers...even Doctor Who had Love & Monsters. So, the idea of recording some lame jerk going about in clueless fashion is nothing new. Helping the alien escape is as old as E.T. at least...hello, The Day the Earth Stood Still, too. And, well, yes, people are dicks...especially in groups of ten or more.
So...it's not that new...or different. But that's not what is making me say, "Good God!" here. No, what is making me say that...is that it is just a really bad movie. We have the Robocop bit with a guy who doesn't in any way qualify as a protagonist. Yeah, I get that he sort of changes from a bigoted buffoon to a body-armored buffoon...but still...it's all magic, isn't it? His change, which is hardly logical, is based on him stumbling across something that a couple aliens are doing...that somehow dovetails neatly into a grand human conspiracy, but which has no real explanation. And he ends up running from people. He doesn't really seem to feel anything for anyone else or have any true moment of revelation. He's just reacting to being clueless and terrified.
And so, this is basically Jack deciding that the noise that killed Clem will kill the 456...because it is a different noise. Just because something different happens...that doesn't make whatever happened an answer to all of your plot holes. Oh, look, he got sprayed with something...and now he's going to change...because...alien fuel is biological...remember the weapons? Yes, I do...but that still doesn't explain anything. Yes, I feel sorry for the doe-eyed aliens, confused by humans and held back by living conditions that make very little sense...given the massive ship that should be salvaged by someone. That humans would just sort of give up on real communication with the aliens...and that we apparently didn't have metal detectors...both seem rather like GAPPING HOLES in this plot.
I am genuinely worried about the viewing audience at this point...because the fervor over this movie makes no sense at all. I am thinking the critics and others just can't see that there are no logical connections at work in these stories. It is almost as if vast numbers of people are no longer capable of using higher thought to reach conclusions. They seem to think that any conclusion is valid if someone in authority tells them it is. I mean, we have that with Fox News...don't think about what they say...don't try to follow it with logic...just repeat the mantra until you believe you understand things, then head out to a townhall meeting and disrupt the process. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this crap...but, honestly, the level of thought going into these "original epics" is miniscule.
District 9 wasn't even DARK...it was just dim.
I suppose I should have been warned off by the comparision made between Torchwood: CoE and District 9...but no, I didn't wise up one iota. Instead, I bought into the hype, which was carried along to a pitched frenzy by the critics. One and all they lined up to give District 9 an A+ and rave about it's refreshing realism. I've heard critics call this film "brave"...really? BRAVE? There are brave things about Torchwood CoE...but not about this film. I suppose the distributor could be considered brave though...for letting this one out in the summer. But maybe not...because what this film does have going for it is contrast...it isn't a polished, committee-written vehicle from some twenty-year old starlet. It also isn't even remotely good.
Again, I must ask what hole the people who found this film "original" have been living in for the last decade. Docudrama is as old as the X-Cops episode of the X-files. Every television show has done one of these...House had the elephant boy episode, Supernatural had Ghostfacers...even Doctor Who had Love & Monsters. So, the idea of recording some lame jerk going about in clueless fashion is nothing new. Helping the alien escape is as old as E.T. at least...hello, The Day the Earth Stood Still, too. And, well, yes, people are dicks...especially in groups of ten or more.
So...it's not that new...or different. But that's not what is making me say, "Good God!" here. No, what is making me say that...is that it is just a really bad movie. We have the Robocop bit with a guy who doesn't in any way qualify as a protagonist. Yeah, I get that he sort of changes from a bigoted buffoon to a body-armored buffoon...but still...it's all magic, isn't it? His change, which is hardly logical, is based on him stumbling across something that a couple aliens are doing...that somehow dovetails neatly into a grand human conspiracy, but which has no real explanation. And he ends up running from people. He doesn't really seem to feel anything for anyone else or have any true moment of revelation. He's just reacting to being clueless and terrified.
And so, this is basically Jack deciding that the noise that killed Clem will kill the 456...because it is a different noise. Just because something different happens...that doesn't make whatever happened an answer to all of your plot holes. Oh, look, he got sprayed with something...and now he's going to change...because...alien fuel is biological...remember the weapons? Yes, I do...but that still doesn't explain anything. Yes, I feel sorry for the doe-eyed aliens, confused by humans and held back by living conditions that make very little sense...given the massive ship that should be salvaged by someone. That humans would just sort of give up on real communication with the aliens...and that we apparently didn't have metal detectors...both seem rather like GAPPING HOLES in this plot.
I am genuinely worried about the viewing audience at this point...because the fervor over this movie makes no sense at all. I am thinking the critics and others just can't see that there are no logical connections at work in these stories. It is almost as if vast numbers of people are no longer capable of using higher thought to reach conclusions. They seem to think that any conclusion is valid if someone in authority tells them it is. I mean, we have that with Fox News...don't think about what they say...don't try to follow it with logic...just repeat the mantra until you believe you understand things, then head out to a townhall meeting and disrupt the process. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this crap...but, honestly, the level of thought going into these "original epics" is miniscule.
District 9 wasn't even DARK...it was just dim.