District 9 (2009)
Probably the best science fiction film you will see this year. As long as you agree that good a good science fiction film doesn’t require things to appear and explode every few seconds, or possibly to take a book full of great ideas, strip all of those ideas out and instead make a CGI filled action film and add some horribly mawkish sub-plot and a happy Hollywood ending that bears no resemblance to the original book beyond the name. That’s not to say there isn’t any action here, it has plenty and the effects are pretty seamless which is helped by the documentary style filming a mix that was used to good effect in Cloverfield.
The film has more brains than the usual scifi film fodder and even though the residents of South Africa in the film seem completely oblivious to the irony in segregating and hating an alien race it’s still an interesting idea and makes a change from all alien invasions happening in large US cities.
Hi! I know I’m late to comment but I really didn’t like it. The whole alien DNA thing was a joke. For me it was a good initial idea let down by bad science at the end. I’m in a minority here I know, but for me it was actually a very typically brainless blockbuster movie in everything but budget.
“and instead make a CGI filled action film and add some horribly mawkish sub-plot”
Which is exactly what they did with District 9, except they didn’t base it on a book.
You know what, I preferred Hancock to this. Honest to god, Hancock…
Hi,
I’ve since had to time watch again and whilst the faults are more obvious, I still think it’s better than the vast majority of brainless blockbusters.
The ending is overly sentimental but as for the rest of the film I don’t find it so, the relationship is pretty ‘normal’ by movie standards and the main character isn’t even particularly likeable. The science is laughable but then I find it hard to think of any decent hard sf films of note which is probably part of the problem. Science fiction hasn’t fared to well as cinema, I can’t think of many films that come close to a good SF novel, and the vast majority are completely brainless without even much in the way of character development beyond “the one who lies guns”, “the nerd who hacks computers”. I’ve mostly given up hope of truly great SF cinema but in the meantime this one did seem to raise it’s head above the rest.
Each to their own though.
Interesting blog by the way, I might stick some of your fiction on the ereader.
Jay
Thanks for the comments re Blog!
I’m reading Peter F Hamilton’s Commonwealth books right now, so my tolerance for bad science is low… can’t see a film ever approaching SF in a way that books do. (and one of the reasons I hardly ever write SF – research sucks!)
I just finished Dan Brown’s new book, if you want bad science look no further. I quite enjoyed a few of his others as entertaining fluff but I’m not sure why I even finished this one.
Fantasy writing is clearly the way to go.
One day I’ll write one of the many ideas in my head but I probably need to do a little work on the mechanics of writing before I inflict my brain upon the world.
I’ve not read the Commonwealth books yet, I’ve been trying to read less epic slabs of books as I was getting a little bored of them. Seems nobody likes editing any more.