District 9, Neill Blomkamp’s feature directorial debut, is proof that not every extraterrestrial who arrives in a spaceship has to be angelic, made of stainless steel, or have the obligatory eight limbs on display. This 2009 science fiction action thriller, based on Blomkamp’s 2006 mockumentary short film Alive in Joburg, examines the themes of societal isolation, xenophobia, and humanism. The film uses a discovered footage technique in part and includes fake interviews, news footage, and surveillance camera footage.
District 9 became a remarkable financial success after its debut by TriStar Pictures, making over 210 million dollars at the box office. Not only did critics praise the picture for its director, acting, screenplay, and themes, but it was also hailed as one of the best science fiction films of the decade. That is not all; District 9 received a total of 116 nominations, including four Academy Award nominations, and won close to 31 prizes.
You might be shocked to learn that the design for the aliens seen here went through numerous revisions and iterations before arriving on the final ‘Prawn’ concept. The aliens were formerly supposed to be massive beings with leathery skin and faces covered in tentacles. In actuality, it was envisioned that they would be portrayed by actors dressed in creature suits. So much so that the ‘Prawn’ monsters were designed to be the tentacled creatures’ masters. Thank goodness the idea was scrapped, CGI was introduced, and we all know how the final product turned out!
So, be ready for today’s video, in which we will discuss and explain the District 9 creature in great depth!
The Movie
The year is 1982 when a colossal alien spaceship appears and hovers over Johannesburg in South Africa. Very soon a population of over one million malnourished aliens, disparagingly addressed as Prawns, is discovered post a human investigation and that leads the South African government to relocate and confine them to an internment terrestrial camp called District 9. But with years passing by, the whole place turns into a slum and the local people start complaining about the aliens. Twenty years go by, the conflict between the locals and aliens becomes an escalating issue.
As a result, the government employs an enormous weapons manufacturer Multinational United (MNU) to relocate the aliens, this time at a new camp outside the premises of the city. Wikus van de Merwe is given the charge to lead the relocation by his father-in-law and MNU executive, Piet Smit. In the meantime, a trio of aliens – Christopher Johnson, his son CJ and one of his friends Paul, are on the lookout for some alien fuel in Prawn technology, something that Christopher has had them devote the last 20 years to, manufacturing enough to enact his plan.
They had just managed to store it in a small container when they are paid a visit in their shack by Wikus who has come to give Paul an eviction notice. While searching the shack for weapons, Wikus discovers the hidden container and inadvertently ends up spraying some dark liquid on his face while attempting to confiscate it. As for Paul, he is shot to death by the vicious leader of the MNU mercenaries, Koobus Venter.
Shortly, after Wikus’ exposure to the black liquid, a rapid transformation begins to take place. It all starts with his left hand which was initially taken care of with a bandage. But after experiencing certain symptoms such as headache, nose-bleeding, vomiting, loss of fingernail as well as tooth loss, Wikus becomes unconscious and is taken to an infirmary. His left hand has already transformed into a prawn claw.
He gets shifted to the MNU laboratory and with a horde of researchers carrying out brutal experiments on him, his chimeric DNA is discovered, one that gives him the power to operate Prawn weapons, something that humans are biologically unable to make use of. In the hopes of apprehending the human-alien hybrid before Wikus undergoes a complete transformation, Smit commands that Wikus’ body be vivisected as well as harvested to gain further profits. But, Wikus manages to get the better of the lab personnel and evades the procedure. Further with Venter’s forces pursuing Wikus, a smear story is played on the television, one that states Wikus is a hunted fugitive, who has apparently become infected with an infectious disease after copulating with the aliens.
Wikus hides in District 9 and accidentally chances upon Christopher and the mother spaceship’s hidden command module dropship, right below his slum house. This is when Christopher throws light on the importance of the confiscated fuel to Wikus, telling him of his plan of restarting the shuttlecraft. He also tells Wikus if the latter can somehow manage to get him in the dropship to the mothership, he can actually help Wikus out by curing him and getting him back to his normal self. As a result, Wikus tries acquiring weapons from the paralyzed yet psychopathic Nigerian arms dealer, Obesandjo, who believes that consuming alien body parts will not only give him alien skills but also enable him to operate their weapons.
Wikus is able to get hold of an alien weapon and upon being able to use it, flees with a collection of weaponry that he along with Christopher can use while trying to retrieve back the alien fuel. The duo is able to retrieve the fuel from the MNU lab but after witnessing the inhuman experiments that the MNU had performed on the aliens, that very much included a dissected Paul, Christopher informs Wikus that it’s pertinent for him to go back to his world as soon as possible to get as much aid as possible to help out the other Prawns and that he cannot reverse back the mutation of Wikus till he comes back in three years because of an insufficient supply of the fuel.
Of course, this makes Wikus exceedingly angry; he retaliates by knocking Christopher down and trying to fly the shuttlecraft but not before Venter’s forces destroy one of the engines of the command module, leading it to crash land. Both Wikus along with Christopher gets captured by Venter but they are ambuscaded by Obesandjo’s gang. Wikus is brought in front of the gang leader, who has made up his mind to chop off the former’s prawn arm.
In the meantime, CJ who had been hiding in the dropship all this while makes use of the command module controls and remotely manages to activate the mothership as well as the autopilot routine of a gigantic, alien mechanized battle suit situated underneath Obesandjo’s base. The suit simply slaughters the Nigerians; Wikus enters the mechanized battle suit and while he initially attempts to escape, he eventually comes back to save Christopher from the mercenaries. Guarded with tracking missiles, a lightning canon and a heavily powered machine gun, Wikus fights them all.
He even convinces Christopher to return to the shuttle without him while he stays back to fend off the armed forces. Christopher vows to come back after three years and cure Wikus before boarding the shuttle. The mother ship ultimately powers up and takes off. As for Wikus, he is heavily wounded. Post his battle suit getting hit by Venter, the suit ejects him out. Venter, being the solitary survivor of the MNU squad gears himself up to shoot Wikus. Instead, he gets attacked by the other prawns who end up dismembering him alive.
The movie ends up with another series of news broadcasts and interviews. The aliens are eventually moved to a new camp called District 10, which now boasts a population of over2.5 a million. MNU’s vicious experiments on the alien race gets exposed after one of the co-workers of Wikus hacks into their database. As for Wikus’s wife, Tania, she finds a small metal rose right on her doorstep, giving her hope that Wikus is still alive. The final scene shows a fully transmuted Wikus making a flower for his wife in a junkyard.
What Happens To the Aliens In The Movie?
While there’s no doubt that the movie is infested with aliens, the discovered footage film happens to primarily revolve around Christopher and his young son, CJ. Going back to the beginning of the movie, the viewers get to see Wikus serving what seemed to be more like an illicit eviction notice to Christopher’s friend, Paul. But he was completely unaware that Paul along with the father and son were actually working on their very own escape plan. With Paul being brutally slain by one of the mercenaries of MNU, the father-son duo carries on with their plan.
Later with Wikus starting to transmute into an alien, he takes shelter in District 9 and eventually chances upon Christopher and his son. In due course, Wikus helps them escape but sadly, it’s just the two of them who manage to slip out of Earth. As for the remaining alien population, they are eventually moved to a new camp called District 10. And, while the new camp is supposed to be a better version of the previous camp, the prejudice towards the aliens will inevitably continue even in the new camp thus proving the sole fact that when it comes to class inequality, it’s more like a vicious circle, one that’s kind of a loop which just keeps going and has no end to it.
Outlanders Creature from District 9
Also known as Prawns, Aliens, Non-Humans and Outlanders for that matter, the creatures of District 9 happen to be an extraterrestrial race of living beings, possessing spaceship manufacturing skills along with highly advanced technology. It’s still a mystery as to why they arrived on Earth and ended up settling themselves down here. The creatures are bipedal in nature; in fact, way taller than the humans, have thick, dark shell-like skin, possessing a mass of facial tendrils.
Notable for their large human-like eyes, three-fingered hands, two pairs of antennae, the creatures featured in the movie can understand human language but are not able to speak the same. The Outlanders can reproduce asexually, which means both the males and females are capable of self-reproduction. They are quite strong and their strength can be easily measured when they are seen grabbing a soldier’s arm, placing their foot on his chest and kicking him outward – leading to the soldier’s arm being simply ripped off and also tossing him several yards away. Another example of their strength shows when an Outlander is seen breaking a shotgun in two pieces just by striking it once.
They own an array of exceedingly powerful weapons, ones that can only be operated by them. The weapons that the flick has on display are majorly seen to be energy-based but many clips tend to prove otherwise. For instance, Christopher is seen using a weapon that is called AMR-B05, also called The Repeater. It is a fully automatic Prawn weapon but operates like an assault rifle. Wikus, while defending himself from the Nigerian gang, is seen using an AMR-B43, also called the Sonic Blaster. It is more like a repulsor-kind alien weapon, one that evens out sound and projects it at the chosen enemies. Last but not the least, how can one not talk about the Exosuit? The suit not only has a variety of alien weapon skills fused into it but also has this magnetic field generator, one that lets it catch enemy missiles and shoots it back at them.
Next, when it comes to their food habits, they not only appear as carnivores but are also observed to be devouring food that’s raw. They have this unique inclination towards cat food and it’s witnessed in many of their dealings with the locals that the creatures have not only bartered their armaments but also technology in exchange for cat food. One more bizarre eating habit of the creatures is their enjoyment of rubber; so much so that they have been seen literally fighting over car tires just because they love the taste and texture of the rubber.
Speaking of their home planet, it is stated to have seven moons and is a lot bigger than Earth. The fact that the Outlanders can breathe oxygen hints that their home planet has more or less parallel conditions as it is on Earth. But having said that, it is never revealed where their home planet is situated and if it is the only world that is populated by their race. By the end of the movie, one gets to see Christopher supervising a navigational system in his spacecraft, which shows a map of a multitude of galaxy-like structures, further indicating that their home planet might not be situated in the Milky Way.
What Is The Real Purpose Of the Prawns?
It is established that all the Prawns in the spaceship are a mix of both the worker as well as the warrior caste. While there’s no denying that they are fast and strong, they do lack severe motivation and, in this case, their leader is dead and without a leader, they are pretty much without any direction. The Prawns possess a massive store of powerful weapons and the Prawn technology contains biological sensors, which means that it will work only for Prawns. Then comes the black fluid, which Christopher was seen gathering. While it seems harmless on the surface, let’s not disregard the fact that it’s also something that lets the Prawn technology work. So, when Wikus gets exposed to the liquid, it just shows how the fluid is capable of taking a species that it has never met before and eventually transforms it into a Prawn.
Now, if you put all the points together, it becomes quite clear that the ship was a slaver. In fact, the aliens who were locked inside were not even the original Prawns for that matter. Guess, it would not be wrong to say that they were like some third species altogether that the real Prawns had ambushed, enslaved and transmuted into more Prawn workers with the help of the black fluid. If we look at a few of their attributes, their naivety or say the inability to help themselves hints that they were primitive species before they got transformed. This is precisely why they could not take control of the ship. Furthermore, it would again not be wrong to theorize that the ship was on its way to Johannesburg to imprison even more slaves.
Coming back to the movie, two of the Prawns are shown in detail. Christopher and his son seem more like exceptions to the norm established. Not only is Christopher highly motivated and educated, way above the other Prawns, he is also shown working to get the command module repaired so that he can go back to his home planet and get further help. The same goes for his child, CJ, who is in fact much more energetic, motivated and intelligent. It would only be fair to regard Christopher as a pureblood Prawn, one who definitely wasn’t a slave converted by the fluid. It only makes sense that he began breeding a new leader, his son of course! After all, it was only his son who could fly the mothership back home.
What Was the Black Liquid?
While no one really knew what it was, what was known to most was the fact that the black liquid was needed to make the spacecraft travel to wherever the Prawns originated from. Many have interpreted the liquid to be some kind of fuel but given its limited source, it seems very unlikely to be one. Considering the properties of the liquid, it is either DNA-based and if it’s not, then it is capable of influencing the DNA of an organism.
Going back to the movie, there’s a scene that has Christopher telling Wikus at one point that the trip would take longer as the latter had already wasted some amount of the fluid by accidentally spraying it on himself. This could to an extent mean that the ship is now not able to equip the same amount of energy as expeditiously as it did before and therefore, it will travel way more slowly. It could also mean that the ship is not able to circumnavigate hyperspace with as much accuracy as it did before and as a result, it was needed for it to travel slowly.
Where All The Prawns Human Before?
Apparently, there were forerunners, who wanted to make a slave race. And, it is a lot easier to take an intelligent race and turn them into slaves rather than search the whole universe for it. The race of forerunners discovered the means to transform warm-blooded earthly vertebrates into what in reality, are insects to control. Therefore, there is a high possibility that the spaceship which appears in the movie, did not really run out of fuel. In fact, ancient human beings were actually altered into these insect slaves. Additionally, the planet that these Prawns speak of was not even theirs. It’s a planet where human beings were possibly ‘farmed as something as expendable as shellfish’ and confined later.
Are The Prawns Likely To Invade Earth?
If one’s to believe that the Prawns are more like some Hive-minded race, then it does point out the fact that their species tend to be naturally invasive in nature. We already know that they are quite technologically advanced. We have Christopher and his son, both boasting this perennial devotion towards their race. Christopher’s primary goal is to rescue those on Earth as a whole, something that brings us to the point where he promises to return back to Earth and help out Wikus. Also, the fact that Wikus’s empathy for the Prawns triggered when he started transmuting into one. After all, in the end, Wikus is shown to help out Christopher.
Next, comes their weapons, which kind of speak for themselves. Right from volatile electrical storms, impactful blasts to literal missiles of body destroying power and alien exosuits, the weapons are nothing but pure armaments of war. And, let’s not forget that all of these weapons can only be operated by a Prawn. This just shows how these creatures just don’t want any other form of life to be able to use their weapons against them, hinting at their superiority.
Why Did Neill Blomkamp Want The Aliens Of District 9 To Be As Disgusting As Possible?
It’s reported that a lot of the alien designs were different from the end result. As mentioned before, there were a lot of changes and iterations in terms of designing so by the time the final design was settled upon, the early designs were already out of one’s sight as well as mind. If you are wondering why the aliens especially in the early concept art feature human eyes, then that’s because they were initially planned to be actors wearing make-up.
In fact, it was Blomkamp who literally encouraged his crew to make the aliens not only unpleasant to look at but also equally gross. He wanted to have the aliens look absolutely revolting, especially when they were eating. So much so, that you will be surprised to know that genitalia-Esque aliens were also created but as we all know the end result, this particular illustration didn’t really make it into the final alien design. Thank God for that!