District 9

This weekend, I went and saw District 9. I have to admit that I went into the movie with fairly high expectations, and even then, the movie exceeded my expectations. Don't worry, no spoilers.


I think the director did an excellent job of portraying this story as realistically as possible. I'm often skeptical when I see science fiction movies showing humanity suddenly cleaning up its act when it makes first contact with aliens; on the contrary, District 9 shows a very ugly side of humanity. The movie does an excellent job of highlighting some very real problems that humanity still struggles with such as racism, corporate greed, corruption, war, black market trade, trafficking, unaccountable private military, media control, etc.

I also appreciate that the movie didn't require any big name actors to carry the movie. The story is just so immersive and rich that you really don't need big actors. It was reported that this film cost $30 million to produce, and most of that went into the visual effects which were absolutely stunning. This was considered a small budget film especially when you consider Terminator Salvation, and Transformers 2 cost $200 million each. For $30 million, District 9 has a lot of bang for the buck. By the end of the movie, I found extremely satisfied even though they've barely scratched the surface of the story.

I am declaring this the best movie of the summer. Two thumbs up, way up. Definitely go see it in theaters. I'm glad that there are already talks of a sequel.