Ahoy, squirts! Quint here fresh from the Sony panel where they didn’t prance out any guests, but gave us a good half an hour show reel of their summer slate.
I have to start with the biggie of the presentation: DISTRICT 9, directed by Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson… the director/producer team that should have been making a HALO movie.
You’ve seen Blomkamp’s HALO shorts and have probably seen his other short films. If you haven’t, I’ve embedded ALIVE IN JOBERG below because DISTRICT 9 seems like an extension of it.
Imagine that style of filmmaking, pseudo-documentary style, and the way he’s able to ground his effects in a real world setting, but on a higher budget and with some more experience as a filmmaker under his belt and you’ll get an idea of what DISTRICT 9 will be.
Basically the footage was presented like I imagine the trailer will be. We see South Africans talking to the camera, being interviewed, giving opinions on a segment of their population. Titles flash “They are not welcome,” more talking about how they’re dangerous and filthy and don’t belong here. “They are not accepted,” more unhappy people. Then. “They are not… human.”
We’re shown a shot of an alien ship hanging low in the sky. This caused gasps from the older theater owners behind me. The design wasn’t CLOSE ENCOUNTERS spectacular, but more Ridley Scott working, used ship, but the impact comes from Blomkamp’s ability to integrate effects. It’s bright daylight when we see this ship and it looks just as if you’d look out over the horizon one day and saw this thing in the sky.
It’s established that the aliens have been living among us, known to everybody, immigrants to this world and treated like such. Out of fear they’re essentially given one area to call their own, District 9. I got my first glimpse at the aliens themselves as a government agent serves an eviction notice to one of the aliens.
Again, Blomkamp doesn’t try to show off the effects or give the reveal a hero moment. The door opens and this bipedal creature maybe 8 feet tall walks out to meet the official and when served gets angry and slams the clipboard out of his hands, causing some craziness as he runs, jumping a great distance… his knees are backwards, like a dog’s knee.
Then we change focus a bit and follow a thirty-something reporter as he covers the mass evictions of District 9, saying that he believes the government’s only ever really tolerated these beings because they hoped to gain weapons technology from them and he believes the evictions are a sign of them looking. The guy is doing his report to camera and is showing a little canister with alien writing on it.
He holds it up to his face as he’s giving his report and a black mist sprays out of it onto his face, looking very much like an outtake on a regular news program.
We leave the camera as our POV, but keep the documentary style as the reporter goes about his life… but when he’s eating suddenly his nose starts bleeding. Black blood.
There are many flashes of him in the hospital and then in a (presumably) government research facility. Whatever sprayed into his face has changed him somehow. Not physically, but it’s clear something about his chemistry has changed and the government wants it.
So we get a little action as the dude escapes and flees to District 9, the only place he can find any sort of safe haven. We saw a bunch of aliens together, viewing this guy as an outsider still, I would venture to guess. Their eyes are strangely human, but on a very large scale.
Anyway, while there the reporter witnesses these creatures being abused by the authorities. He says to one of them something along the lines of “I had no idea this was happening to you” as we see police or army rifle butts striking alien faces.
There are also glimpses of the reporter in action, sweating black liquid, and firing a rather large gun at somebody, that doesn’t shoot a projectile it looks like, but rather energy that throws whoever he just shot back. I could be wrong on that, it was just a glimpse, but that was my impression. And yes, we do get the aliens putting on metallic battle suits, but they’re not as big or bulky as the ones in Joberg.
Alex Billington at FirstShowing.net loved the footage and has started comparing it to CLOVERFIELD, which isn’t super far off, but I don’t want the wrong impression. This is very much documentary style, but the whole movie doesn’t seem to be told from a cameraman’s perspective. Their wasn’t nearly as much shaky-cam going on and the production value was a bit higher than the consumer digital camera style of CLOVERFIELD.
Again, it was the grounded aspect I found most appealing. If this movie works or doesn’t, I think it’ll be unique, unlike anything else coming out this summer or this year. It looks to be a serious sci-fi flick with action and spectacle, but also carrying a heart and a brain.
Now maybe this one will blow people’s minds (like it seemed to do for the middle-aged theater owner lady behind me who gasped throughout the whole run of footage) and somebody will realize that a HALO series of films handled with this attention to effects integration and style could be a major franchise and everybody in the world will hold hands and sing the Coke song. I can only hope.
I’m posting this piece on its own and will write up the rest of the Sony panel as soon as this is posted. The only other bit of news regarding District 9 is that we can expect a trailer to hit in 2 weeks or so. Back with more Sony stuff in a few!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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