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[Asmodeus]

My thoughts: Interesting movie, but a lot more action-based than I expected. I would have appreciated more focus on the political and social situations surrounding District 9. Something explaining a little bit more about the aliens. I didn't need that much use of the AWESOME GUN THAT MADE HUMANS EXPLODE INTO A BLOODY CLOUD. Ok, that was pretty cool but seriously.

Why the fuck didn't they aliens just kick ass and take names with their mechs and weapons? More importantly WHY THE FUCK WERE THEY STRANDED ON EARTH?

Granted there will probably be an extended director's cut and a sequel answering some of these questions but still...

[HUGE_WALRUS]

You're told minutes in that the aliens are speculated to be some sort of hive species whose leader caste has died.  Without it, they lack any real initiative or coherent social system.  This has been confirmed by the creator himself.

[Asmodeus]

You're told minutes in that the aliens are speculated to be some sort of hive species whose leader caste has died.  Without it, they lack any real initiative or coherent social system.

Wait, what? How the fuck did I miss that? Is that in the really quick documentary style stuff at the beginning? And that still doesn't satisfy me given that one of them was obviously working towards a specific goal the entire time and many of them seemed to be stockpiling weapons. That just kind of scratches the surface.

Not to mention, there isn't a lot of elaboration. I dunno; I guess I could have missed that too somehow.

[HUGE_WALRUS]

The movie doesn't spoon-feed most of the info to you, but you can readily surmise it with even basic thought.  Yes, we're told in the documentary material about the "hive drone" hypothesis.

As to Christopher's intelligence, we're meant to surmise that he's a "lone survivor" of the brain caste and has been carefully plotting GTFOing so he can go tell the greater Prawn species about the giant cunts that humans are.  Blomkamp, however, has revealed his own explanation, which is canon, I suppose: Christopher, at some point in the 29 years on Earth, developed into a brain bug due to the hive's lack.  Presumably, it was 9 or less years, since he states he'd been collecting the nanofluid for 20 years.

[Asmodeus]

You can surmrise cursory info if you manage to catch certain things in a single viewing in the theatres. There still isn't a lot of development of a lot of these things. For example, I don't really find Wikus's schizophrenic mixture of betraying Christopher and then going back to help him terribly believable. I can't seriously believe that he didn't know when he abandoned Christopher that that was basically a death sentence for Christopher and somehow had to hear that on radio to change his mind, turn back, and save him.

And on a nitpicky level, I can except things like fuel turning you into an alien for the purpose of a plot device, but doctors vivisecting someone while they're alive and not even using some sort of anesthetic? That would be a horribly ineffective way to attempt to obtain various chunks of a person with them thrashing about and anesthetics aren't going to do jack shit to damage whatever organs or bits you're harvesting compared to what attempting to cut a moving twitching person with a scalpel.

And I'm not exactly buying there was enough info in the movie for me to surmise that Christopher had become a smart prawn in order to fulfill a deficiency in the prawn command structure. Your interpretation makes more sense anyways, yet apparently it's not canon.

I'm not saying all movies need tight plot coherence and to explain every event, but this movie didn't do enough for me on any other front to make up for the ambiguities and lack of resolution (both intentional and unintentional). A movie like The Fountain get away open endedness in my mind (despite the director and producer and such apparently having idiotic ideas of what went on in the movie) because they handle the subject matter and theme from multiple points of view and are clearly focusing on the multiple ways humans handle something and how they perceive it. District 9 doesn't get a free pass in my mind because it doesn't pull off the same level of handling any possible themes that well (xenophobia, identity, the evil corporation). I'm guessing something like 40 minutes to an hour of that movie was basically just action footage. That's fine, but I don't usually find that hardcore action type shoot-em-up stuff mixes well with any detailed character development or well-elaborated or interesting plot (at least, it doesn't work well when you're constrained to 2 to 3 hours of total time).

[Esau of Isaac]

You can surmrise cursory info if you manage to catch certain things in a single viewing in the theatres. There still isn't a lot of development of a lot of these things. For example, I don't really find Wikus's schizophrenic mixture of betraying Christopher and then going back to help him terribly believable. I can't seriously believe that he didn't know when he abandoned Christopher that that was basically a death sentence for Christopher and somehow had to hear that on radio to change his mind, turn back, and save him.

It's possible he believed that Christopher would have been spared or able to get away in the ensuing chaos from him leaving on the ship. Moreover, it may be that he just did so in an act of frustration and rage at all of the ridiculously dangerous series of events he just came out of.

It's somewhat believable, since Wickus was not a very balanced person in the first place, in any event.

[Asmodeus]

It's somewhat believable, since Wickus was not a very balanced person in the first place, in any event.

I'll give you that much.

[HUGE_WALRUS]

His mother literally calls him dumb in the opening minutes.

Wikus is not supposed to be Rambo - through most of the movie he's the stereotypical, self-interested petty bureaucrat.  Him leaving Chris to die (particularly after the fast one Chris seemed to pull) was fairly in character, and his guilt matched the fact that he had been forcibly confronted with the fact that the prawn weren't just bugs, but "people," too.

[Asmodeus]

Wikus is not supposed to be Rambo

He pulls it off pretty well at a lot of points you have to admit, which is kind of my problem. He switches between being horribly ineffective and helpless and being Rambo quite rapidly.

his guilt matched the fact that he had been forcibly confronted with the fact that the prawn weren't just bugs, but "people," too.

This is the part that is kind of "eh" to me. He hadn't shown much of this up until then.