Saw this last weekend, and I was pretty well floored. The movie is phenomenal. The story and concept is stunningly original, and there was enough action and alien guts to keep folks who aren't into the story so much, interested.

Has anybody else seen it?

Isn't District 9 what they call your mom?

There's a band named "Puzzlegut" that has a song called "Room 9" (I think!).

Has anybody else seen it?

Apparently and unequivocally not.

Movies tonight. Choice of District 9 and Inglorious Basterds.

I'm thinking Tarantino...

good choice, zooms!

By the way:

Sasha is a such little girl! 

Has anybody else seen it?

Yes.

Potential Spoilers in commentary below.  You've been warned.
I hated hated hated Wickers.  I came out of the movie thinking "what a lousy hero!"  There are so many times when he does completely stupid or irrational things.  Why didn't he get rid of the phone?  Why didn't he stop hitting people that could help him?  Why didn't he level the fucking ghetto when he was getting mowed down?

Then I realized:  he wasn't the hero!

Yes, he was the focus of the film.  But the real hero was the alien scientist.  If you forget the movie as you saw it, and re-tell it to yourself from his perspective, you actually end up with an extremely traditional struggle against oppression story!

Nonetheless, I fucking hated Wickers.  Douchebag.

Meh.

Why are science fiction people so bad at science... or any resemblance of credibility?

Why can't science fiction be more fiction than science?

There was a time in science fiction literature as well as film where the fiction (ie - story) was more important than kowtowing to a geek's lust for technical accuracy.

I was pretty glad to see a movie that didn't have 10 minutes of Jeff Goldblum attempting to explain why something could actually be happening.

 or narration by Morgan Freeman....

Peter Jackson should be the King of New Zealand. Seriously, he'd put that hunk of dirt to better use than those lazy Maori ever did.

All you whiteys have done of note is propagate sheep and let PJ make movies there. And make bad movies about man-eating sheep.

The original LOTR screenplay was about two short Maori guys trying to get to a BBQ.

Hahaha!

I think the best science fiction treats science with broad strokes - the authors try get enough right for things to be in the realm of possibility, but don't concern themselves too much with the details.  That run of books about the science of Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. was probably a pretty bad thing for sci fi by putting too much focus on details.

I think one of the best things about science fiction, other than people telling good stories, is that the best writers are good at anticipating the trends in where we're headed in terms of technology, how we relate to it, and how we use it.

Sweet, now I get to post 6 pages about William Gibson.

For me, the best thing about the 'science' in Star trek was how close they got with the CGI -> reality of nebula.

Exposition makes for terrible story telling, eitje, and I am offended that you would suggest that I was asking for more of it.

 The weapons in the film looked like something a 9 year old would draw, as has been pretty standard in sci-fi for decades. Clunky, ridiculous crap.

 The idea of a race that can travel the stars being stupid enough to make their weapons use some sort of DNA reading grips in place of a safety is ass. This would make the weapons useless to themselves if they were wearing any sort of protective clothing (like, you know, a space suit), while all all it would take to turn their weapons against them would be a few scraps of their own flesh. The plot element, that the weapons were rendered useless to humans, could have been done much more elegantly by simply having the weapons require the proximity of some sort of bracelet to fire. Something the alien leadership would have issued only to its security personnel. Something that might be stored, say, in the lander. This would also have covered the gaping plot hole of the aliens never using their own weapons in self defense, despite some of them being willing to tear people's arms off.

 And the lander, a trans-atmospheric skiff, running of a little canister of brown goo? That turns you into an alien?

 This kind of stuff isn't the work of a greater imagination, it's the work of a lazy imagination.

Haven't seen the movie yet, but Fallout 3 and STALKER Clear Sky are very similar in many ways.

Exposition makes for terrible story telling, eitje, and I am offended that you would suggest that I was asking for more of it.

I think the discrepancy is that I assumed you were coming at this from a more flexible - alien - frame of reference.  I'll cover some of your points below, and hopefully we'll be able to come to a mutual understanding.

The weapons in the film looked like something a 9 year old would draw, as has been pretty standard in sci-fi for decades. Clunky, ridiculous crap.

what should they have looked like?  alternately, why don't we have triangular rifles barrels?

i think your first invalid assumption is that form would not be driven by function.  what do we know of lightning-throwing cannons, and how they need to be arranged to work?  we do, however know that rifle barrels are rounded due to the physics of the situation.

so, when overlooking the fact that lightning guns exist in the first place, i'm also willing to believe their form is beyond my disdain.

The idea of a race that can travel the stars being stupid enough to make their weapons use some sort of DNA reading grips in place of a safety is ass. This would make the weapons useless to themselves if they were wearing any sort of protective clothing (like, you know, a space suit), while all all it would take to turn their weapons against them would be a few scraps of their own flesh.

again, you're assuming it was a choice, and not a requirement of the technology.  i was willing to believe that function was again leading form, and that goo-powered biological energy weapons would simply have a side-effect of not working with alien pysiologies.  in other words, perhaps it wasn't a safety system at all; maybe they had NO safety.

This would also have covered the gaping plot hole of the aliens never using their own weapons in self defense, despite some of them being willing to tear people's arms off.

the aliens we saw were plainly not the brains.  out of 2 million, only 1 was working on a solution, and even his helper was effectively incompetent.  they never used the weapons because they were drones lacking a queen.  ripping off limbs was never strategically or even tactically done; it was always an emotional reaction.

And the lander, a trans-atmospheric skiff, running of a little canister of brown goo? That turns you into an alien?

just a point, but theres no evidence that it was transatmospheric; the mothership was still in the atmosphere, as evidenced by the sonic boom.

so, while i see where you're coming from with many of your points, i think i'm okay with sticking with my opinion that the science was handled well in the movie.

I hope they make ringworld into a movie

I hope they make ringworld into a movie

the sequels would be better...

Hey! Fuckheads! Trekkie convention is thataway.

Thats 'Trekker', noob.

I don't speak Ozzer, melanomahead

Correct answer.

.....I thought Peter Jackson and Nick were the only people from NZ  o_0

I wish that they would make a movie out of the book "The Clans of the Alphane Moon."  I read it a couple of years ago and couldn't believe it was written decades ago.  It is timeless like Brave New World.

Apparently they've scrapped plans to make a movie out of Ender's Game. I'm kinda bummed cuz I love Ender's Game. But I'm also glad because it was Orson Scott Card who pulled the plug, saying it wasn't worth making the movie if it was just gonna be an action film.