Is "District 9" an All-Time Great?

In my opinion, "District 9" is not a great movie, but let me clarify what I mean by that. A movie with a premise that clever and innovative can go one of two ways when it is forced to introduce a plot into its universe: it can rise to the occasion and execute well enough to keep the momentum alive or it can be dragged down by the artificial introduction. Movies that are all-time great, execute with precision and don't feel forced. You allow yourself to forget you are watching a movie and get lost in the action, suspending your disbelief. You can allow yourself to feel emotionally attached to the characters and their destinies.

The ones that fail ride well-worn trails of cliches, Hollywood schlock, and contain cheesy, gimmicky plots that insult your intelligence. Style over substance. We've all seen Michael Bay's sorry excuse for character development and movies that never had a real concept in the first place. "District 9" is by no means a failure, it's a very good movie, but it sputters and ultimately fails to deliver on its promise. I felt there was no momentum left by the end.

WARNING SPOILERS BELOW: you may want to stop reading if you haven't seen the film

I loved the first 30 minutes. Loved them. The documentary style, the Office-like humor, the incredible detail and seamless special effects, visually stunning but understated. The set-up was perfect and the commentary was evident without overwhelming. Then the plot hit. In and of itself, Wikus turning into an alien wasn't necessarily a bad idea; however, the way it came to fruition was. Blomkamp himself said in an interview he tried to pander to a popcorn level to avoid being too serious. Instead of creating what could have been all-time great, he settled for well-worn action cliches.

There are directors who can get away with applying a formula without getting called on it. Spike Lee comes to mind. In Blomkamp's first picture, he shows promise but is not quite deft enough to completely pull it off. I think I've seen the oppressor-gets-alienated-by-his-kind-and-teams-up-with-one-of-the-oppressed plotline about 100 times. I'm sure this isn't true, yet I feel like I have heard the exact line Wikus utters when he stays to fight the bad guys, heroically knowing he will probably die. I thought the "Training Day" ending was OK, but we can hardly call it original. The metamorphosis is straight from "The Fly." It's hard not to draw comparisons to "Robocop", "Aliens", "Alien Nation", and basically every other science fiction film you've ever seen. When he's making the flower for his wife as a full-on Prawn, I felt sick to my stomach.

Furthermore, the commentary didn't quite work when it became an incoherent rant against multinational corporations (the preeminent generic sci-fi cliche, as Slate can tell you better than I: http://www.slate.com/id/2225285/). Where was the documentary aspect after about 30 minutes? If only both halves were of similar quality. Frankly, the 6 minute "Alive in Joburg" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlgtbEdqVsk) it's based on is better. With alien interviews where they're pleading for necessities and gritty news footage, it does more in 6 minutes to effectively illustrate the allegory to apartheid than the feature film did in 2 hours. It evokes more feeling too. If you want to see an amazing movie where monsters bring out the monsters in men, watch "The Host." Amazing movie.

Anyway, where does District 9 stand in the halls of science fiction? I'm going to make an informal list with Rotten Tomato Tomatometer %. Rotten Tomatoes tracks the % of critics that would recommend seeing the movie, thumbs up or down. Please note that I'm doing modern era, so I'm not putting "Metropolis", "The Day the Earth Stood Still", or anything like that. I'm also excluding comic book movies (not graphic novels) and comedies like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" or "Ghostbusters." Straight sci-fi. I will also admit I haven't seen any other "Star Trek" movies, "Serenity", or "District B13". I am exempting animation because I know virtually nothing about it.

All-Time Greats:
2001 (96%)
Alien, Aliens (97%, 100%)
A Clockwork Orange (91%)
Terminator, T2 (100%, 97%)
Star Wars (93%,) <-- I'm only putting one, so deal with it.
The Matrix (86%)
Blade Runner (94%)
Brazil (98%)
ET (98%)

Still Great, But Clearly Tier II:
Solaris (98%)
Road Warrior (100%)
Minority Report (91%)
The Host (92%)
Children of Men (92%)
Gattaca (78%)
The Fly (91%)
WALL-E (96%)

Tier III:
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (95%)
Planet of the Apes (88%)
Twelve Monkeys (85%)
The Abyss (84%)
Donnie Darko (91%)
Sunshine (75%)
Scanner Darkly (67%)
The Thing (77%)
The Fountain (51%)--> I love this movie, I don't care if it got mixed responses. It's moving and beautiful, gets me every time. Total success, sometimes obscurity can be rewarding.


The Best of the Action Packed, Not Too Serious Flicks
Robocop (88%)
District 9 (89%)
Total Recall (79%)
Escape from New York (81%)
Predator (76%)
Fifth Element (70%)

Highly Flawed, but Strove for Greatness:
AI (73%)
Dark City (77%)
Matrix Reloaded (76%)

Pretty Good, but Don't Quite Deliver on Premise:
Star Trek (2009) (95%)
V for Vendetta (73%)
Cloverfield (77%)
I Am Legend (69%)
War of the Worlds (73%)

Dumber Action Films:
Starship Troopers (60%)
Independence Day (62%)
I, Robot (58%)
Event Horizon (21%)
Equilibrium (36%)

Total Failures:
Alien 3 (34%)
Stargate (43%)
Armageddon (41%)
Matrix Revolutions (37%)
The Island (40%)
Godzilla (2000) (26%)
Doom (20%)
Alien vs. Predator (22%)