A massive alien spaceship breaks down at Earth in District 9, leaving its occupants stranded (Image: Sony Pictures)

In films like War of the Worlds and Independence Day, aliens dominate us with their superior technology – or at least try to. But a new movie called District 9 turns the tables by asking, what if humans had the upper hand and aliens found themselves at our mercy?

The movie paints a disturbing picture of the scenario, suggesting we would be just as prone to abusing our galactic neighbours, given the opportunity.

In the film, fear and intolerance lead humans to isolate 1 million shipwrecked aliens in a squalid camp, where the aliens subsist on cat food and are treated horribly by human authorities. With “no aliens” signs posted in human neighbourhoods bordering the camp, District 9 evokes memories of apartheid – and indeed the film is set in South Africa.


The science begins promisingly enough. Credit must go to the film’s creators for making the aliens look truly weird – they resemble bipedal grasshoppers – rather than like humans with pointy ears or bumpy foreheads, as the Star Trek franchise has tended to do. It seems unlikely that aliens would resemble us that closely.

And there are a few other nice touches, science-wise. In one scene, aliens work with a special fluid that forms itself into funky shapes, and the filmmakers must have been inspired by the visual antics of real-life ferrofluids, nano-scale magnetic particles suspended in a liquid that create dynamic sculptures in the presence of a magnetic field.

DNA mixing

Also, one character straps into a mechanical exoskeleton to fight bad guys – a type of device that was a central feature in the film Iron Man. The design in District 9 is over the top in terms of its abilities, but is nonetheless inspired by real technology.

And when an alien tractor beam is employed to lift a heavy object, nearby clods of dirt are levitated along with it. Anti-gravity tractor beams don’t exist as far as we know, but if they did, it seems logical that other stuff near the target object might be accidentally affected – a detail that adds realism to the scene.

But the science of District 9 takes a nosedive when alien and human DNA intermingle, which makes a human suddenly grow a claw in place of a hand.

It’s hard to imagine alien biochemistry being so compatible with ours by chance, and absurd to think it would lead to overnight changes in someone’s gross anatomy. (Human-animal hybrid cells have been created in real life, but the results are not as dramatic.)

One-liners

At about this point, the creativity and imagination in the first part of the film give way to a pretty standard action flick, with lots of gun battles and explosions, but little to whet viewers’ appetite for science.

“The real focus, as it has been from the beginning, is weapons,” says a fictional expert interviewed in the film. He’s referring to the motives of the human authorities in their dealings with the aliens, but it is an apt description for the latter half of the film.

Humour also declines in the film’s second half. Earlier on, there are some memorable one-liners, like “Don’t point your f**ing tentacles at me!” The disturbing backdrop of cruelty makes it hard to laugh much, though – even at these lighter moments.

If you’re looking to get your geek on, you may find the film worth seeing just for the early parts, which are thought provoking. But after that, be prepared to slip out early or turn on the part of your brain that is happy just watching things go boom.