1. Real Fiction

One of the things I liked best about the movie is that it is truly believable. For nearly 2 hours the audience is held in a state of suspended disbelief, and I never felt like I was watching just “another science fiction flick”. You don’t see Humans treating the aliens like gods, nor are these aliens a benevolent all-knowing species. Instead you see humans abuse and mistreat their wards, while the aliens scavenge and steal whatever they can get. The main protagonist isn’t a hero of some sort, and it is easy to relate to him emotionally. In the end, you truly feel that the events you see in the movie could very well be reality, if aliens do arrive on Earth.

2. It’s not perfect

The plot suffers a little at some points, though these are just some minor pickings. There is not much explanation from the aliens’ point of view; where did they come from, why did they arrive on Earth and so on. Early in the story it appears that the aliens were unable to depart from Earth, due to some unfortunate incident (for example, the loss of a command module which turned out to be a small flying craft instead). However, at the conclusion of the film, an alien manages to pilot the Mothership out of the planet without much trouble. I cannot find any possible explanation for this, and as such, this seems to be a gaping plot hole. Furthermore, there is not much explanation about how the humans and aliens are able to communicate at all, though that seems to be one of those things which would be too troublesome to explain.

3. It’s pretty graphic

The film is definitely not one for the kids. Dismembered body parts, mutilated corpses, and exploding bodies feature prominently throughout the movie.

4. It’s pretty too

District 9 has very nice special effects too. While on a meager budget of $30 million, a major proportion of it seems to have gone into the special effects department. However, the effects never seem over the top and you aren’t bombarded with pretty lights at every turn. Exploding body parts are always enjoying to watch, and the weapons feel alien yet realistic at the same time.

5. Don’t make a sequel.

I do not have high hopes for a sequel. For such a story, where much of the background plot is left to the viewer’s imagination, a sequel leads to a temptation to explain away gaping plot holes left by the first film. Furthermore, it is hard to present the same message from the same source material without the whole thing feeling like its all happened before. The documentary style story-telling would not work again, for sure. For District 9, the best ending is the one invented by ourselves.

Did you like the movie, or do you think it was pretentious? Would you like to see a sequel, and what do you think will happen in it? What do you think about the plot holes? Are they left by Neil for us to fill in the blanks, or are they just oversights in the writing department?

All your comments are welcome!

Update: dear reader Dim suggested I put the trailer in this post. Here it is!

While starting off as rather innocent, the advertising gradually became more and more risque, and people started taking notice (mostly by laughing) the ridiculous attempts to attract their main target market to play their game. Mainly by sticking a woman on the image, showing a bit of flesh, and adding a few “insinuating” taglines. Just see for yourself how hilarious these ads have evolved.

Ad Images were taken from Coding Horror.

Whoa! Admittedly, they are trying to promote their product by causing a stir in the online sphere. But that’s not why I’m writing this post today.

I’m here to advertise the just-as-exceptional (and even better) game Plants vs. Zombies, by the good people at PopCap (of Peggle, Bejeweled fame). These guys obviously have a great sense of humour on par with the great guys of Valve, as is evident in these ads.

Images found via Google Images.

This is some free advertising from me. The game is great, so if you have not played it already, I suggest you do so (my Lord). And for the guys at PopCap, keep up the good work.

By the way, no you do not get to see any zombie breasts. Thank goodness for that.

Here’s another article I came across today, about the Electronic Arts process for creating new IP (something which they have been pushing for a few years) which I think ties in very nicely with that discussion.

For the past year I have been mainly focusing on Java, PHP, C, and C++. This meant that I didn’t have alot of time to play around with AS3.0, which is unfortunate, since I have great hopes for the Flash platform. Furthermore, I felt like I wanted to take this blog into a new different direction.

New Direction

One of the main problems with the structure of this blog is that it is focused exclusively on Flash and Actionscript topics. This resulted in a lack of material to post, since I had my work cut out for me. Thus, I have decided to post more about the work I am involved in, rather than exclusively Flash. The problem, however, is the age of this blog itself.

When I created this blog, there was no native “tagging” system; posts were separated by categories. I would like to abolish this obsolete system, which will take a bit of work. Once that is done, however, I will be able to expand the scope of topics I discuss.

Topics

As part of my degree, I am required to fulfil a year’s worth of industry work experience. I hope that this experience would be fruitful for the development of my skills and I would like to take this opportunity to share my experiences with others on this site as well.

Additionally, these are the kinds of topics I aim to cover:

• Work related topics (current projects, problems)
• Epiphanies and discoveries
• Technology/Industry news and issues

Other Problems

If anyone views and remembers my blog, they might remember a vastly different theme to the default theme currently in use.

I am ashamed. I accidentally deleted my blog by mistake. I reinstalled WordPress, which retrieved my posts, but unfortunately I lost my themes and plugins. However, this makes it a good opportunity to refresh the blog, together with the much put-off launch of my main website. So, restoring my plugins, as well as a new theme for my site is next on the agenda.

Then you can put talking animals in your blog, your mySpace, like you see below.

Give it a whirl!

Very excited (first convention I’m attending) so anyway, be sure to RSVP at their site if you are interested as well else you’ll miss out!

Note: don’t ask me how old my country is. I am pretty sure it is 42, but don’t expect me to actually get this sort of things right.

Again, of course, the library is still currently in Beta status. So it is probably not perfect. However these are the kind of things I’m hoping they will iron out as time goes along.

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to grasp 3D Rendering techniques, and I won’t be making my own engine anytime soon! There goes my Rubik’s Cube idea…

Some people really need a life… No I don’t need a new ToyAta or a Lexus give me a break!