Libby and I received and watched District 9 last night, and I have to admit that I was a little disappointed. She liked the movie more than I did. My issue is with the story. If you choose to watch that movie as an allegory for Apartheid then it works fine, but if you want to watch it as a sci-fi movie, then I feel like it kind of falls apart. Here are just some of my questions:
How did the aliens master interstellar transport but neglect to learn interstellar communication? It bothered me they could go back to the home planet, but couldn’t contact home.
Why couldn’t the mothership leave at any time? It takes those three aliens 20 to collect the fuel, but they brought the fuel with them, so they had the fuel to go home at any time.
Aliens landing on Earth would be the most world-transforming event in human history, and we’re letting a small country like South Africa take care of it? Scientists, philosophers, anthropologists would swarm the aliens as soon as we met them, and not one of them would think to ask, “So where are you from? Is there a way for you to go home?”
If the aliens need food, and they have advanced weaponry, including a giant robot, which would make the star of an anime jealous, why don’t they just take the food from the Nigerians. I understand they are sick and hungry, but they should easily be able to take them out with their attack robot.
Libby brought this one up, why didn’t they just take the fuel from the robot to fuel the transport ship?
Finally, unless this is the alien version of Lost, why didn’t their species come looking for them over the course of 20 years? Libby hypothesized that it could have been the equivalent of a prison ship, and the alien species were just trying to get rid of these beings, which I could believe. However, I can’t see any other explanation work. If two million people just disappeared, someone is going to get curious and come looking.
All of these questions don’t need to be answered if the movie is meant to be allegory, but they are pretty glaring omissions to a sci-fi story.
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