I watched District 9 last weekend. Overall, it was interesting, with some interesting ideas, but, in the end, I felt frustrated with the wasted potential. It could have been so much better. It is shocking how little attention is given to the quality of the script these days. It is supposed to be a movie made by professionals.
I can't help but believe that they chose a stupid guy as the main character to justify the plot holes and some bad plot decisions. Maybe the plot holes were just laziness, which is even worse. I can ignore the mother ship parked above the city, it might be solar powered. There are some more intriguing things that deserve an explanation.
- Why did the aliens exchanged weapons instead of using or selling them?
- Does it make sense that among more than a million aliens there was a single smart one?
- Don’t they have sedatives? Why where the medics and the MNU people discussing all they were going to do with Wikus in front of him? Why they went to extract his heart with him alive?
- Why did Wikus hit the alien, his only chance to become normal again, and stole the ship? Where was he going?
- Does it make sense that after smelling the ships fuel and being scratched Wikus started to become an alien? That is some strange fuel.
- Wasn’t it a little silly that Wikus opened the canister so carelessly?
- Why did Wikus had access to the deep levels of MNU when he decided to get back the canisters? Did he have clearance to go anywhere? Shouldn’t they restrict his access once he was on the lam?
- Why didn’t Wicus get rid of the most threatening people like the guy in the wheelchair and the military commander?
Many of these nonsense happenings can be explained by the fact that Wicus wasn’t really smart which also helped in creating tension like in the end when he leaves Christopher (the smart alien) to be killed and changes his mind later.
In the end, I left frustrated because the movie had so much potential.
