District 9 is the long-awaited sci-fi drama from director Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame). It is inspired by the historical relocation of blacks in District 6 – a residential area in Cape Town in 1966, and adapted from the 2005 short film Alive in Joburg, directed by Neill Blomkapmp. In 1982 an alien ship appeared in the sky above Johannesburg and simply hovered over the city – it didn’t attack or do much of anything, but the impatient government finally broke into the ship and then imprisoned the aliens – somewhat derogatorily called “Prawns” because of their arthropod-like appearance. The aliens are brought down from the ship and are quarantined in a city slum called District 9. While the aliens are highly intelligent (they made it to earth with their technology), they are also highly discriminated against and treated poorly – an obvious parallel with the apartheid regime in South Africa. Over the next twenty years, the conditions in District 9 have deteriorated, and the general public, incited by the government-backed discrimination, begins to riot, fed up with the aliens and demanding them to leave. For the government, the land has now become more valuable than the aliens who live on it and they decide something needs to be done. The aliens would much rather go back on their mothership and go home, however a piece of the ship fell to the ground and without it, they cannot leave (a veiled reference to Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan where an alien civilization is waiting for earth to develop their technology enough to make a part for their ship so they can return to their planet). Flash forward to 2010 and the South African government hatches a plan to move the aliens to a concentration camp tent city a couple hundred miles outside of Johannesburg to diffuse the tension. The security of District 9 is now maintained by a shady Blackwater-esque quasi-government corporation called Multi-National United (MNU). MNU also happens to be the second largest weapons manufacturer in the world. Their main interest in the aliens lies in their highly advanced weaponry, which works symbiotically with the Prawns and can only be operated by someone with their DNA. Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a mid-level paper pusher at MNU, is promoted to oversee the relocation of the aliens. While on a raid of District 9, Wikus finds a canister of liquid in an alien’s shack and accidentally sprays some of the liquid on himself and then begins to fall ill. Later that night, his left arm transforms into an alien claw and MNU detains him and finds out he can now operate the alien weaponry. Wikus, now empowered with the alien strength, escapes his captors and a MNU is determined to catch him at all costs. As it turns out, the liquid was distilled from the parts of the mothership that fell to earth by an alien named Christopher Johnson in a secret lab below his District 9 shack, and this liquid is the key to fixing the mothership. If Wikus (now in an unlikely partnership with Christopher and his alien son) can get the liquid back from MNU, the aliens can return home as well as return Wikus back to normal. I found it hard to empathize with Wikus, an anti-hero if there ever was one, who only garners a respect for the aliens out of a self-interest to fix himself. The plot leaves many unanswered questions that also make it difficult to support the alien cause. If they are stronger and have better weapons then their captors, why haven’t they revolted? Why did they visit earth in the first place? Why did they stop over Johannesburg and not some other city? Despite these flaws, the CGI in the movie is impressive and does help to make the fantastical story somewhat believable. The small bits of alien technology that are shown (such as the controls on the mothership) are quite cool and will definitely appeal to detail oriented sci-fi fans (like me). Still, the movie is more drama than science fiction and ultimately doesn’t succeed on either front. The Transformer-like body suit in the third act is too rooted present-day action thrillers and is not necessary since Wikus is already augmented by his alien transformation. The transformation itself forces Wikus to sympathize with the aliens, rather than his character going through a genuine change of heart. While the movie brings to the fore some important issues like discrimination and the treatment of refugees, we are given so little information about the aliens that it is almost impossible to form a connection with them. We need more to like about these creatures, rather than just being faced with the fact that they are being treated poorly. Part of the reason that the world demanded the end of apartheid was the fact that the oppressed found strength in their unique cultural identity, and defended that with great fervor. In the end, we don’t know enough about the culture of the aliens in District 9 to want to support their cause.