Another movie about aliens invading Earth?
Don’t be fooled – District 9 isn’t just another typical alien movie.
Part summer blockbuster, part mockumentary and part social commentary, Peter Jackson’s latest movie production by Neill Blomkamp, District 9, brings a wildly different perspective of alien-human encounters because it’s frighteningly realistic.
More on movies from tripatlas.com/new? Get more on aliens in Real Life X-Files: Alien Sightings I Want to Believe In! or discover ancient wonders of the world in Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen and Indiana Jones’ Adventure Destinations.
Up-close-and-personal in Soweto, Cape Town & Johannesburg, South Africa
Although District 9 seems to be a movie about aliens, in reality, it explores and exposes the history of humankind’s xenophobic tendencies, as seen most recently in South Africa.
Johannesburg, South Africa. In District 9, aliens land by mistake on Earth in Johannesburg, South Africa in the 1980’s. After breaking into the alien ship, the exploratory team find millions of aliens alive but malnourished and stranded due to a missing part of their ship. The film’s “mockumentary” style shows interviews and news broadcasts of a 1980’s culture reacting to the aliens.
Chiawelo, Soweto. While worldwide government bodies argue about what to do with the aliens, nicknamed “prawns,” they’re moved to District 9, an area on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Most of the movie takes place and was filmed in Chiawelo, a neighbourhood in the urban municipality of Soweto in Johannesburg. The importance of Soweto is the part it played in South African apartheid history, as a township where 60,000 were forcefully moved to, as part of the apartheid legislation in the 1950’s.
District 6, Cape Town. Similarly, later in the 1970’s, an inner-city neighbourhood named District 6 in Cape Town was also subject to apartheid laws. Deemed a slum, over 60,000 inhabitants, including Africans, Muslims, Malays and Indians were forced out of their homes and relocated to Cape Flats, a neighbourhood 25km away. It was then deemed a “whites only” area and all the buildings were destroyed.
The fictitious District 9, the “aliens only” district, quickly becomes a slum and almost 30 years since their landing on Earth, a private military contractor called Multinational United (MNU) step in to take over District 9 and care of the alien. With no good intent towards the aliens and every intent to make money from alien weapons, MNU issues the xenophobic motto, “keeping humans safe by keeping non-humans separate.” They begin by handing out eviction orders for relocation to District 10 when the MNU field leader, Wikus van der Merwe (played by Sharlto Copley) is compromised with a mysterious substance and slowly begins to turn into an alien. Wikus quickly goes from prawn-hunter to the hunted as his DNA becomes MNU’s key to gaining alien weapons.
Another kicker? The Parktown Prawn, nicknamed “prawns,” are a species of cricket which are considered a plague in South Africa.