# District 9



## Fatality (Aug 14, 2009)

comes out tonight, in about 15 mins from this point in time

going to see it friday night.


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## KittenKoder (Aug 14, 2009)

I'm going to try to see that one in theaters, even my best friend wants to see it.


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## Diuretic (Aug 14, 2009)

I knew there was a film I had to see this week.  The trailers on tv look good.  I bet it's highly allegorical (even I worked out what _Alien Nation_ was about ) but I love sci-fi so this is on the list.


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## KittenKoder (Aug 14, 2009)

Diuretic said:


> I knew there was a film I had to see this week.  The trailers on tv look good.  I bet it's highly allegorical (even I worked out what _Alien Nation_ was about ) but I love sci-fi so this is on the list.



It does seem a bit more of a modern Alien Nation, only in Alien Nation they really didn't want to go home.


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## DiveCon (Aug 14, 2009)

Diuretic said:


> I knew there was a film I had to see this week.  The trailers on tv look good.  I bet it's highly allegorical (even I worked out what _Alien Nation_ was about ) but I love sci-fi so this is on the list.


the first trailers looked stupid to me the newer ones make it look much better
the early ones made it look more like a video game than a movie


and i only see a slight link to Alien Nation
in AN they were happy to be here and were being intergrated into the social networks
it seems like this one we are actually holding them against their will somehow
i'll likely wait for it to come out on DVD, but i will see it


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## Diuretic (Aug 14, 2009)

When it comes to parables and metaphors in film I'm hopeless.  The theme has to be just about sub-titled for me to get it - that's why I mentioned _Alien Nation_.  Even then it took me about a half hour to pick it up


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## KittenKoder (Aug 14, 2009)

Diuretic said:


> When it comes to parables and metaphors in film I'm hopeless.  The theme has to be just about sub-titled for me to get it - that's why I mentioned _Alien Nation_.  Even then it took me about a half hour to pick it up



D9 looks a bit more in your face with it. I like the fantasy tech they have in the previews, that's what caught my attention ... didn't expect much from the first few previews but then I went onto the website and got hooked. This could be the next great fad since ID4.


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## Fatality (Aug 14, 2009)

friend went to the opening, said it was bloody and violent all the way through. will see what peter jackson has pulled out of his hat.


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## Jon (Aug 14, 2009)

Going in an hour and 15 minutes. I'll put it this way: out of 1,300 votes on IMDb, it has an average rating of 9.1, higher than any other movie right now. We'll see tomorrow what the viewers really think about it when IMDb updates their ratings for the day. I could see this movie opening up in IMDb's Top 10, for sure.


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## Jon (Aug 14, 2009)

Abso-fucking-lutely 100% amazing. I thought at first the camera was going to make me nauseous a la Cloverfield, but it doesn't. There was just one scene where the documentary crew gets shaken up during some gunfire, but it actually adds to the film. Other than that the camera work is top notch.

The special effects weren't over-the-top, which I liked. There were enough to make the action exciting, but not so much as to make it seem like they were covering up for the story. Which brings me to the last point, the story is fantastic. They introduce the aliens as nothing but dirty, filthy subhumans. By the end of the movie, you will find yourself attached to the ugly creatures.

All in all, the best movie I've seen in a while.


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## Mr.Fitnah (Aug 14, 2009)

Mrs Fitnah  says she want to see it tomorrow ?


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## Fatality (Aug 15, 2009)

life under the fascist state. government run corporations are the bad guys in this film, boogey man politics,  aliens used in experimentation etc. good film, ending a possible set up for part deux.


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## KittenKoder (Aug 15, 2009)

That's it, seeing it on Sunday ...


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## Jon (Aug 15, 2009)

Fatality said:


> life under the fascist state. government run corporations are the bad guys in this film, boogey man politics,  aliens used in experimentation etc. good film, ending a possible set up for part deux.



While I think a sequel would be amazing. I don't see it happening, I think it was supposed to be left the way it was.

***SPOILERS BELOW***


















We assume, because Christopher seemed like a genuine person, that he will keep his promise. But I want to know if Christopher and/or his son return to evacuate their people and cure Wikus, as they promised OR declare war on Earth for the treatment of their people. For a sequel to be possible, you would have to assume that it's the latter. Although it could be they return for an evacuation and the humans try to stop them from leaving, and then there's conflict.


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## KittenKoder (Aug 17, 2009)

Saw it ...


... it fucking rocks! The CGI techniques were flawless, the camera jitter only made the effects seem more real because of how well it was done. I could almost believe all that was real, even the alien CGI was done great. Special effects were not over done, they were just right. Great and very detailed story. The writers and producers really put a lot of thought into this one. I will see it more than once ... a very rare thing for me.


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## Dr Grump (Aug 17, 2009)

I wasn't going to see this one, but based on what you guys have said, must be worth it. Most things Jackson attaches himself to are reasonably good...


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## KittenKoder (Aug 17, 2009)

Dr Grump said:


> I wasn't going to see this one, but based on what you guys have said, must be worth it. Most things Jackson attaches himself to are reasonably good...



Jackson is a dreamer, and he tries to make his dreams feel realistic on the screen, which is why he is good at the movies he does. He didn't just see a big ape for King Kong, he saw a painting and a story ... them put them in action. It shows in D9 as well.


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## Fatality (Aug 17, 2009)

jsanders said:


> Fatality said:
> 
> 
> > life under the fascist state. government run corporations are the bad guys in this film, boogey man politics,  aliens used in experimentation etc. good film, ending a possible set up for part deux.
> ...



considering the the treatment of the prawns and the explicit reason christiopher left it would seem he may want to get even. I think more than just a rescue mission.


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## KittenKoder (Aug 17, 2009)

Fatality said:


> jsanders said:
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> > Fatality said:
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I would agree with that, they didn't seem interested in dealing with humans anymore nor did they seem capable of revenge. As they said, they just want to go home.


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## Jon (Aug 17, 2009)

KittenKoder said:


> Jackson is a dreamer, and he tries to make his dreams feel realistic on the screen, which is why he is good at the movies he does. He didn't just see a big ape for King Kong, he saw a painting and a story ... them put them in action. It shows in D9 as well.



Hmm...Jackson had absolutely very little to do with the making of District 9.

Jackson had hired Neill Blomkamp to direct the movie for the Halo video games, and the studios never picked it up. They did not want such a big name film from a first-time director. Prior to that, Blomkamp had only directed a few short films of his own (including a short film "Alive in Joburg" which laid the foundation for District 9) and some commercials. Jackson felt bad about Blomkamp's being rejected, so he basically gave Blomkamp the money to make an original film. He allowed Blomkamp to use his special effects studios for dirt cheap (which is why this film has only a $30 million budget, that and the fact that there are no big name actors). Thus, District 9 was born.

During the shooting of some test footage Blomkamp put together for Jackson, Blomkamp asked his friend producer friend Sharlto Copley to get in front of the camera. Blomkamp and Jackson were so pleased with Copley's portrayal of Wikus that they hired him for the lead role, in spite of the fact he had never acted before.

Anyway, the point is...Jackson was barely involved in District 9. He paid for it to be made. Once it was made, he was so pleased that he pushed out the viral marketing campaign.


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## Mr.Fitnah (Aug 17, 2009)

Fatality said:


> life under the fascist state. government run corporations are the bad guys in this film, boogey man politics,  aliens used in experimentation etc. good film, ending a possible set up for part deux.


Hope not.Amazing effects but hardly worth the time, better to sit and watch a fire and smoke a cigar.


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## wvulax (Aug 17, 2009)

I dunno if I just missed it, but did they ever explain why/how the aliens were stranded here?  If they do make a sequel, I hope they expand on that.


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## Jon (Aug 17, 2009)

wvulax said:


> I dunno if I just missed it, but did they ever explain why/how the aliens were stranded here?  If they do make a sequel, I hope they expand on that.



They didn't go into detail, but wasn't it obvious? They ran out of fuel.

The whole premise of the movie was to be different from other alien movies. Usually aliens show up to start a war, or just to communicate with other lifeforms. These aliens showed up by mistake, and clearly, they had no intentions of interacting with the humans. Upon arriving, they did not come out looking for help, they chose to stay on the ship and starve. And even though the aliens had superior technology and easily could have won a war, they chose not to fight. I think that was one of the many social commentaries present in the film.

Also, this movie wasn't about what happened when the aliens arrived on earth. All of those events took place two decades prior, and being a landmark event in the life of the earth, it would go to reason that everyone on earth already knew the details behind that. This movie followed Wikus's story (which was highlighted by the fact that they were filming a documentary about him), and it explained what happened when MNU appointed Wikus to lead the relocation of the prawn from District 9 to District 10. The backstory about the aliens was irrelevant to this story. We didn't need to know anything about their past in order to understand that they were being treated poorly. In fact, the humans actually led the viewer to believe that the aliens were nothing but subhuman scum, apparent by the commentary from the interviewees in the early part of the film and by Wikus's early treatment of the aliens. But through telling Wikus's story, we see that these are actually intelligent and nurturing creatures. In spite of knowing nothing about them, and in spite of what we were led to believe early on, we are able to feel sympathy for them. That's pretty good storytelling, if you ask me.


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## Jon (Aug 17, 2009)

Mr.Fitnah said:


> Amazing effects





The effects weren't that amazing. This wasn't really meant to be an action flick. The effects were never meant to draw in the audience. If you were looking for a movie with good effects, go watch a no-brainer like Transformers or GI Joe. This movie was about the story, not the pretty pictures on the screen.


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## Mr.Fitnah (Aug 17, 2009)

jsanders said:


> Mr.Fitnah said:
> 
> 
> > Amazing effects
> ...



The prawn effects were off the hook, The story was multidimensional but not particularity  original. Something akin to an old outer limits cautionary tale.


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## Jon (Aug 17, 2009)

Very few stories these days are original. It's the most original story I've seen in a movie in a long, long while. It was refreshing, for sure.


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## KittenKoder (Aug 17, 2009)

jsanders said:


> Mr.Fitnah said:
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> 
> > Amazing effects
> ...



Actually, if you understood CGI, they were extremely amazing, almost revolutionary. Only one other movie has used such a standard, Cloverfield. Just because there isn't a ton of fancy stuff, doesn't make it less amazing. Watch the camera jitter, the CGI moves with it almost perfectly, that's the amazing effect.


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## Mr.Fitnah (Aug 17, 2009)

KittenKoder said:


> jsanders said:
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> > Mr.Fitnah said:
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Very few people understand the first thing about CGI  High and low res models  and the rendering process.The Prawn were superlative.


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## KittenKoder (Aug 17, 2009)

Mr.Fitnah said:


> KittenKoder said:
> 
> 
> > jsanders said:
> ...



The parts that amazed me was the machinery, especially the ship. The details they included while including them in the scenes you expect them to cut corners. It felt so real it was almost impossible to tell when they were using models instead of CGI. Not to mention the prawn's costume details when they had them. Working with full CGI is hard enough, but to include it in the way they did for D9 ... just wow. I want to see the DVD so I can find out (hopefully) what they did to track the camera jitters, if they used a formula or just manually rendered the images. Movies like (the new) Transformers they just overlay them really, that's why almost all the camera movements are smooth. D9 has really set a new standard, one that Cloverfield created. When that module dropped from the mother ship ... the whole scene felt almost too real.


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## Mr.Fitnah (Aug 18, 2009)

As far as camera movement  it would not be to hard to program a computer controlled  camera with the same parameters of a Mel script of a CGI sequence .


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## GHook93 (Aug 18, 2009)

I know people hate critics reviews around here, but the critic seem to love this movie!. Rotten Tomatoes at 88% positive rating. Yahoo critics give it an average of -A!

District 9 Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes
District 9 (2009) - Critics Reviews - Yahoo! Movies


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## GHook93 (Aug 18, 2009)

Like Passion of the Christ, D9 had a $30 mil budget and made $600 mil. I think D9 will have some great success also!


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## KittenKoder (Aug 18, 2009)

Mr.Fitnah said:


> As far as camera movement  it would not be to hard to program a computer controlled  camera with the same parameters of a Mel script of a CGI sequence .



Depends on the software they used as well. Tracking the jitter is the hard part if it's held by hand instead of planned on a tripod, and a lot of the shots were.


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## Mr.Fitnah (Aug 18, 2009)

Maya is the industry standard , nothing is more flexible or deeper.
The special effect crew were largely grads
Autodesk - Television - Vancouver Film School ups its Maya and MotionBuilder Instruction from VFS
The hand held  could be a computer controlled dolly cam.
Pure speculation on my part of course I wasnt there.


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## KittenKoder (Aug 18, 2009)

Mr.Fitnah said:


> Maya is the industry standard , nothing is more flexible or deeper.
> The special effect crew were largely grads
> Autodesk - Television - Vancouver Film School ups its Maya and MotionBuilder Instruction from VFS
> The hand held  could be a computer controlled dolly cam.
> Pure speculation on my part of course I wasnt there.



Actually, Blender is in direct competition with Maya really, just Blender is free so a lot of people don't use it. The Prawns however looked a lot like Blender's built in renderer results. Blender is also more appealing to game designers because of it's Python scripts that allow exports to almost all other formats.

I haven't played with Maya ... not spending a few hundred dollars on something that's a new hobby, so I don't know how it would be done in there, also I don't know if Maya has a Linux version even. In Blender I would use a sync script, but no matter how you do it, you would need some manual adjustments for any software, there is just too much variation in hand held camera shots to do it all automated.


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## Mr.Fitnah (Aug 18, 2009)

I think  you would go the other way, not a  true hand held  but a  computer controlled camera  mimicking one  that is synced to the animation.


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## Mr.Fitnah (Aug 18, 2009)

If  you dont object to torrents Maya is a blast to play with .
try it out.


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## KittenKoder (Aug 18, 2009)

Mr.Fitnah said:


> I think  you would go the other way, not a  true hand held  but a  computer controlled camera  mimicking one  that is synced to the animation.





Mr.Fitnah said:


> If  you dont object to torrents Maya is a blast to play with .
> try it out.



Yeah ... but if they did go that way it was very convincing.

As for Maya ... meh, I love Blender honestly, and all my current models are in that format. 

Here's my work: YouTube - KittenKoder's Channel


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## Mr.Fitnah (Aug 18, 2009)

Very nice  You have a great deal of patience .
And  a funny vision.
CGTalk - Blender to Maya model transfer


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## KittenKoder (Aug 19, 2009)

Mr.Fitnah said:


> Very nice  You have a great deal of patience .
> And  a funny vision.
> CGTalk - Blender to Maya model transfer



Thanks. For now I'll stick to Blender though, as I said, I am a newby to modeling, just never thought I had an interest in it until I played with it for a new avatar ...


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## Mr.Fitnah (Aug 19, 2009)

Im looking for an avy i made with maya   found  this  from way  back  dont know i  the gif will run


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## KittenKoder (Aug 19, 2009)

Mr.Fitnah said:


> Im looking for an avy i made with maya   found  this  from way  back  dont know i  the gif will run



Coolies. I'll be updating my avatar soon, with the newer model, and Midnight Marauder will have one with his character to (the wombat in pink in the vids).


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## Mr.Fitnah (Aug 19, 2009)

This one was made with famous faces, a program  that synce text with animated speech


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## KittenKoder (Aug 19, 2009)

Mr.Fitnah said:


> This one was made with famous faces, a program  that synce text with animated speech



Cool ... I do lip sync manually myself ... not very well yet, but getting there, mostly computer limitations hold me back.


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## PixieStix (Aug 20, 2009)

Fatality said:


> life under the fascist state. government run corporations are the bad guys in this film, boogey man politics, aliens used in experimentation etc. good film, ending a possible set up for part deux.


 
I saw it today, and your review of it is dead on


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## Zona (Aug 20, 2009)

Without reading too much about it, how did an advanced race get here from another world, and then be held captive by an inferior race of people?

I don't get that.  I could be wrong on this, but this is what I know of this film thus far.


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## PixieStix (Aug 20, 2009)

Zona said:


> Without reading too much about it, how did an advanced race get here from another world, and then be held captive by an inferior race of people?
> 
> I don't get that. I could be wrong on this, but this is what I know of this film thus far.


 
I suggest that you go see the movie 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6PDlMggROA]YouTube - District 9 - Official Trailer 2 [HD][/ame][ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYBRFJ9RArc"][/ame]


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## Zona (Aug 20, 2009)

PixieStix said:


> Zona said:
> 
> 
> > Without reading too much about it, how did an advanced race get here from another world, and then be held captive by an inferior race of people?
> ...



Fair enough. I probably will.


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## Jon (Aug 24, 2009)

Zona said:


> Without reading too much about it, how did an advanced race get here from another world, and then be held captive by an inferior race of people?



Ran out of gas. That's all I'll say.


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## EMGhb (Aug 24, 2009)

I wasn't expecting to, but I really liked the movie.  I wasn't even planning on seeing it.  For some reason the trailers just had me shaking my head.  Anyways, it was a pleasant surprise.  Good action, and a nice storyline.  Wickus was kind of disappointing though.  My friends and I kept yelling at him/the screen.


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## KittenKoder (Aug 24, 2009)

EMGhb said:


> I wasn't expecting to, but I really liked the movie.  I wasn't even planning on seeing it.  For some reason the trailers just had me shaking my head.  Anyways, it was a pleasant surprise.  Good action, and a nice storyline.  Wickus was kind of disappointing though.  My friends and I kept yelling at him/the screen.



Glad I wasn't in the same theater as you.


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## Fatality (Aug 26, 2009)

EMGhb said:


> I wasn't expecting to, but I really liked the movie.  I wasn't even planning on seeing it.  For some reason the trailers just had me shaking my head.  Anyways, it was a pleasant surprise.  Good action, and a nice storyline.  Wickus was kind of disappointing though.  My friends and I kept yelling at him/the screen.



he was a bit of a self centered out for himself prick all the way up to the end until he finally started to help christopher.


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## GHook93 (Aug 31, 2009)

I saw this over the weekend! Love those bootlegged copies! I thought it was pretty good! The sequel will be interesting! The producers state that if the first one is a hit then then they will produce a sequel. D9 already exceeded $90 mil in the states, once it fully goes national this movie should easily top $300 mil! On a $30 mil budget I think that is safe to say its a hit! I digress! What will happen in the sequel. I think its more than plausible to see the aliens return with an army! I don't see a Indepence Day like war, since D9 was a gigantic metaphor for the evils of apartheid and the exploitation of minorities by corporations. Rather I think they will try to go into more meaningful plot lines!

But great movie all around! Too bad the aliens didn't land in America! They would have been much better off! South Africa doesn't even treat its humans well, so they wouldn't be able to treat their aliens well at all!


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## random3434 (Aug 31, 2009)

Saw it last night with the 14 yo. She hated it, I liked it, her 14 yo friend liked it. 

I see Christopher coming back with more aliens to save the ones he left behind, and they will get their revenge on their captors. 

The human/alien dude will help them, maybe have Christopher turn his wife into an alien too!


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## GHook93 (Sep 1, 2009)

Echo Zulu said:


> Saw it last night with the 14 yo. She hated it, I liked it, her 14 yo friend liked it.
> 
> I see Christopher coming back with more aliens to save the ones he left behind, and they will get their revenge on their captors.


I see that also! It won't be too fun in South Africa at the point! Hell it might not be to fun on Earth at that point!

I don't see the plausibility of this movie. I guarantee no matter where aliens landed, America and NATO would be taking the lead and not a 3rd world government!


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## tigerbob (Sep 1, 2009)

Saw it last week.  It was OK I guess, but I don't know why everyone's gone apeshit for it.  It's not good enough to be great (like Aliens) and not bad enough to be great (like Starship Troopers).


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