A brand new official website for the intriguing Peter Jackson-produced Sci-Fi film ‘District 9′ was launched earlier this week, and we have some new information on the plot and it’s mysterious alien creatures from the latest issue of Empire Magazine.
If you are not already aware of the fairly large scale viral operation in progress to promote “District 9″, you should head on over to the brand new official website and play around with the very cool interface and various websites that have been setup to give you an introduction into the kind of world we’ll get to see come August 14th when the film is released in The United States and September 4th in The UK.
Empire Magazine featured a new interview with director Neill Blomkamp in their latest issue and he had some new information on the origins, look and hardware/technology on the “non-human” aliens that are the focus of the film.
We already know that the film is about an alien race that lands in Johannesburg, South Africa and that they are then quickly rounded up by a shady governmental group called the MNU (Multi-National United), separated from Humans by being placed into restricted access ghettos/slums, and then forced into working as what may as well be slaves with little or no civil rights. An MNU bureaucrat named Wikus, whose job it is to investigate whether The Non-Humans are paying their taxes (haha, a hint of some obvious satire to come), gets inadvertently infected with the Alien DNA upon a visit to the District 9 colony, and things take off from there as Wikus’s perspective on the situation changes completely.
Humans may have the upper hand at the start of the film, but Blomkamp told Empire they are far from non-resistant to their situation; “These aliens are like ET - if he hijacked your car! Actually they’re not so much malicious as accidentally destructive. I think of them as magpies: they’ll steal something because it’s shiny. But they tear up the city and it makes Joburg’s citizens more and more angry.”
The MNU seems to be very interested in exploiting the technology, biology and engineering of the creatures, as is suggested by various references to “reverse-engineering” on the viral websites and Blomkamp’s own comments regarding their motivations “If aliens did arrive here with all crazy technology, the first thing humans would do would be to set up something like MNU to milk them for every last cent.”
Talking about the origins of the aliens Blomkamp says “It was really fun to come up with a big geek backstory for the aliens. The main thing is that they have a very different society to us. It’s structured like an insect hive. There’s a Queen at the top and drones make up 90% of the population.”
Their hardware: “They’ve got amazing weapons. We have thousands of pieces of artwork created by the Weta Workshop and 400 are just of the guns. I like the idea of that on their ship they have this mass armoury, stuffed with the most insane weapons we’ve ever seen.”
Their look: “There is a lot of 80’s-style gore prosthetic work in the movie, but the aliens themselves are generally digital.”
The film is produced by “The Lord of The Rings” director Peter Jackson and Blomkamp credits Jackson’s complete support as the reason why it is even being made. “Peter has complete creative control, not the studio, and is like ‘let it be what it is’, so I’m in a very lucky position of being able to make the film I want to make.“
Jackson originally penciled in Blomkamp, most well know as a commercials director, as his director for the scrapped video game adaption of “Halo” but after that collapsed, Jackson’s wife and creative partner suggested Blomkamp adapt his short film ‘Alive in Joburg’ into a feature length summer sci-fi, which is how they arrived with “District 9″.
I’m very excited to see this film, and although expectations are rising to a fairly worrying level, I’m as confident in it now as when we first showed you the teaser trailer on May 1st that this could be the best sleeper hit of the summer. I’m not sure what kind of box office potential it has, and I would estimate average at best, but it could certainly be the best film to be released over the summer.
