Thanks for watching guys! Remember, just because he's your alien bro, doesn't mean there's not some horribly contagious xeno disease waiting to ransack your meat suit Also Nitrogen is not a noble gas, Misspeak lol
The black fluid is actually supposed to be a nanite solution designed to fix things. When Wikus was exposed to it, the solution read his DNA as “broken” so it “fixed” it to Prawn DNA.
I always really liked how this movie subverts standard alien visitor tropes. I really like the idea that the aliens come here in desperation and end up needing our help. It's relatively unexplored
They probably figured the planet to be uninhabited or at least not Harbour sentient life. Cause of the way light travels when you look out into the stars you look out into the past. Course then they get here and find out not only is the planet inhabited but its completely covered in sentient life and they were probably thinking "Fuck ok, just... Stay quiet and hopefully they wont do anything." Course the humans did the same thing and it turned into a huge waiting match
Hey Roanoke. I'm not certain, but I think I know why Vickus doesn't fire the weapons willingly. He's being overlooked by his own species and treated like an item instead of a sapient being. He's frightened and wants his questions answered, so he's trying to exert what little control he can to get some information. That then changes when they bring out a live subject to test fire on, at that point he swings to the moral reason of not wanting to kill another living being. The whole movie, Vickus is just a frightened monkey wanting answers and a return to his old status quo. While everyone continues to sideline him for their own desires. Forcing him to be spiteful and sideline their desires for his own, even if they might actually be able to help him in the long run.
That was my take, too. It also explains the difference between then and later, when he took any method he had available to him if he felt he was going to be able to change back. He wasn't thinking any further about how he was going to escape with the item, or how his methods, on top of the misinformation, would basically kiss any chance of returning to his former life goodbye.
My headcannon is that most prawns are just everyday workers and only very few of them are scientists/engineers/doctors. Garrus wasn't just a smart prawn, he was basically part of the science team.
I'm with you on that. For all we know this was a mining vessel or prison transport or even a prison colony ship and all the weapons belonged to the guards. Garrus could have been a scientist in either event.
@@xerothedarkstarWhat are you getting at exactly? The United States Navy is actually secretly full of extraterrestrial aliens and they just magically forgot how to use their technology upon entering port?
This movie is no joke. Probably one THE top 10 Sci Fi movies ever made. Needs to be mentioned in the same echelon as Alien, 2001 Space Odyssey, The Thing, Intersteller etc. Disgustingly violent, incredible effects both practical and digital and a masterful storytelling. As good as cinema gets.
And more than anything it has such a deep message. Draws parallels to Apartheid, how we treat refugees and presents a whole new alien "invasion" scenario
@@diabeticalien3584I think the director said it was an allegory for anti-Zimbabwean xenophobia? Like some scenes are South Africans (non actors) talking about Zimbabweans? Around that time there were horrific xenophobic attacks (tire burnings and lynchings) in SA and it kinda makes sense as the aliens are coming into South Africa as refugees and get discriminated against rather that apartheid which would be aliens coming in, taking over, and then discriminating against the locals who were already there. It’s an art piece and can be looked at various different ways of course.
I love this movie because it flips the whole alien invasion bit on it's head. The aliens need our help and are basically refugees from their world. Most alien films play into the "alien discovers mankind and tries to destroy it" trope and it's been done to death.
I want a movie where Aliens come to earth seeking refuge from another species. Then they discover that we humans are a suicidal species..not as in killing ourselves but each other. Then they think "Maybe... We don't have to hide. Let these people do what they do best... War."
@@ventexovakon2178 Then they'll fund this war with "abandoned" alien tech. Humans will come to realize what's actually been happening but it's already too late as it'll cost way too many resources to retaliate, and said alien tech is flawed by design so that won't work either.
@@ventexovakon2178 While not a movie, season 1 episode 5 ("Second Soul") of the 1995 Outer Limits reboot does this exact thing. First contact with aliens except it turns out they've made all the same mistakes as humanity (plus a few extra) and the first contact fleet is actually the last remnants of their species looking for a new home after they wrecked their own beyond repair. Think District 9 if it were part of season 1 Stargate. Good luck finding it in anything better than potato quality though, as it never got a Blu-Ray remaster, to my knowledge.
Nah. A sequel to district 9 would be what? Just him getting cured and getting his life back? Nah, sounds boring. There only needs to be the one district 9 movie and that's it.
@@sportyjhf5Q I'm with you. It's fine the way it is. There for sure could be an interesting sequel but it's more likely to taint the original than to actually add to it.
The prawns are based on the tusked king cricket, a massive grasshopper like insect referred to as the parktown prawn. They are incredibly adaptive to their environment and can be found in many different biomes. They're omnivores that particularly like cat food and are known for being physically powerful in comparison to other similar species. There's a conspiracy theory that they aren't natural and were created in a lab somewhere in the 50s or 60s and that's what happens to Vickus in the film. It's worth pointing out that the parktown prawn squirts black fecal matter into the face of their attacker and if you look at what happens to Vickus, you see that he gets sprayed in the face with a black fluid. They're nice little touches that wouldn't be obvious unless you're familiar with the parktown prawn.
@@KrillWhisperer cat food is easy for them to get hold of when it's left out for pets and they seem to particularly like it over other meat sources they can get likely because of added flavourings.
This is actually a pretty interesting take. We know it's not the case, due to FAQs with the director and basically confirming that the prawns work similarly to Earth insects and the reason that the majority of Prawns are the way they are because they're from the worker/drone caste while Garrus being noticeable smarter is due to being from the scientist/leader caste. I think your latter theory about the canister having something capable of encoding Prawn DNA into whatever's affected by it holds far more weight. If we continue approaching the idea of the Prawns and their technology as the insectoid caste species the director intended, it would make sense that there's more to the genetic locks on their technology than humanity understands. It might not just be that humans can't operate Prawn tech, but that the tech is checking the DNA for a certain genetic marker present in the various castes, potentially natural or unnatural. It would make sense that the Prawn leadership wouldn't want the drones being capable of utilizing everything around them, as they seem pretty dull even by human standards, let alone Garrus and his kid. What probably happened was that something on the ship decimated the higher castes of Prawns, likely a disease or potentially even infighting. Garrus then booked it once they made it down to Earth, realizing that the situation was boned beyond attempting to salvage and that trying to fix it would result in his death; the drones would've been left onboard to either regress without their leadership or presumably perish under this hypothetical event. The canister Garrus was making probably wasn't fuel, but a bio-key carrying the genetics of a Prawn from a caste with the authority of piloting the ship and could be used to bypass the security measures in place to prevent lower castes from damaging the ship.
@@MartinFinnerup They had remote access to the mothership's systems after it was inserted. If they could always remotely access the controls, they wouldn't need to fly up there in the first place as they could've just unearthed the smaller ship and brought the mothership over to tracker beam it up like they did after being shot down. I admit, it's not a perfect theory. But given what we know from interviews and FAQs with the director/writer - they're a hive/caste species, the ship auto-naved to the nearest habitable planet (Earth) for repairs, etc. - it's the best I can come up for why a canister for a 'fuel source' would have enough concentrated or encoded Prawn DNA to transform somebody into one from mere exposure.
8:18 He doesn't want to pull the trigger during the tests because they're using him as a lab rat. He doesn't want to be a prawn and he hates being treated as one. It's not about refusing to comply with what they're telling him to do; it's about the who, why, and how.
Yup. There's no doubt he IS a coward, and he deserves what he got. Not as much as the Colonel, though. I get the feeling the wife called both times just so Daddy could track Wikus.
@ZoomerStasi he definitely is a coward and selfish. He is very desperate running on borrowed time so yeah a coward definitely would go into the hood and threaten mfs for his own health. Oh and he was about to leave garrus behind while basically kidnapping his son which is DEFINITELY coward behavior but due to character growth he sacrifices his own wants and needs for the chance of a cure.
@ZoomerStasiNah, that doesn’t warrant TRUE racism, and double-crossing the only people that could save you. He’s a coward, and it seems you’re insecure to the point you’re trying to justify the CLEAR acts of cowardice he’s done. If he had balls, he’d accept the reality of the situation to then be able to focus, but he doesn’t even have a grip on his head. He places himself above everyone else because he’s afraid to die, and doesn’t have strong morals, or even basic ones for that matter when shit hits the fan. Stop self-projecting, and accept the facts.
As interesting a theory as this is, it's biggest hole is the fact that the mech suit - and the small arms, to a lesser extent - is shaped to fit the Prawn's current physiology. The mech suit specifically is not only designed to accommodate their larger statures, but the "head" of it is shaped in the likeness of their current state of being.
I don't really see that as a hole, he said it would modify their DNA to a state that would allow them to use their tech however prolonged exposure would give negative effects, I'd imagine their tech would be designed with the modifications to their body in mind since they need those modifications to use it in the first place
You do realize the suit actually damaged him when he got in it because of his stature. It was only because of his changed dna did the suit even function for him.
I think they were implying in the film that Christopher Johnson and his kid were what remained of a sort of engineer caste in Prawn society, while all the other ones were some kind of menial worker caste that didn't need much intelligence when proper leadership was in place. With them being refugees, they were probably left without any kind of authoritative caste to rally behind, so the worker prawns were free to run around in an almost feral state. Only Christopher and his kid were intelligent and independent enough to carry out plans to fix the ship. As for why the fluid mutated Wickus, I think it harkens back to prawn weaponry needing a prawn genetic marker in order to be used. The fluid contained an unstable matrix of prawn dna that would act as an authenticator code or reactive catalyst to get the machinery and AI systems on the ship to reactivate. It just so happens to have the (potentially unintended) ability of mutating carbon based life into more prawns when it comes into contact with their meatsuits, as it was probably never intended for direct exposure on organic life, let alone terran organic life.
pretty much spot on! I believe that the caste system of the Prawns is similar to the one of the Indian Society, but with physiological differences as well. If there was a disease or an accident, in general, more complex organisms / systems are the first to fail/die. Thus explaining why the worker class survived in its entirety while the higher-uppers did not (with some exceptions).
Question: how plausible are these speculative evolution/biology ideas?: 1.) Chitin reinforced vertebrate skeleton. 2.) Wing feathers being modified into muscular claws. 3.) A bird with molar like structures to chew food. 4.) Being able to convert eDNA into usable junk DNA. 5.) Dontovory: behavior of feeding on teeth.
1) I doubt it would happen, chitin is more flexible than bone and would deform much easier, it's not really good to support weight as a spine or to reforce one with 2) Feathers wouldn't be that good of a blade, unless they move unbelievably fast or get coated on a material that can form a blade 3) Well, that one is probably complicated af, most reliable way we have to do stuff like that is with crisper and even that has it's limitations 4) Possible, but animals like that would have a taste for bone too, culturally they could focus on teeth Basically, your hellish tooth fairies aren't going create themselves, become a mad doctor already
1. it would need to have micro-structures & be mostly hollow to have the load bearing properties of bone. 2. wing feathers are modified scales, akin to hair - but if you mean adding a muscular claw to a wing, check out the Hoatzin. 3. There are birds that use ridged sections of their beak to chew food. 4. some bacteria do this - but I forget what the extra loop that includes foreign DNA is called 5. Hard one to do, but maybe on a symbiote/parasite that pairs with a species that regrows teeth.
I believe Wikus was adamant about not using the weapons because after he saw the dismembered prawns all around the facility, he has a thought that his DNA being linked to theirs makes him a Prawn in the eyes of the government, and a similar fate might befall him for research purposes, which, subsequently almost happens.
There’s a working theory that they function like an ant colony would, receiving orders from higher-ups and operating en masse based on their marching orders. However, their “superiors” were either killed off or lost contact with this portion of the colony which caused them to do a sort of death spiral wherein they functionally walk around in circles until they die of malnutrition, much like ants but more figuratively. District 9 is what happens when this process occurs and humans are there to muck about. Kinda like a child who sees ants death spiraling and decides to tamper with and gawk at them.
I’d also like to add that I think their anatomy is all-natural based on their tech resembling their basic anatomy. Similar to how humans design exo-suits to mimic and adhere to their basic anatomy. The reason it only works for them is their tech is genetically coded to their biology much like we see weapons in “Dredd” coded to their fingerprints, but taken a step further into genetics. Following this reasoning it would make sense that the fuel also possesses some sort of genetic coding if not THE genetic code with which their tech functions. I.E. their tech ONLY works with this very specific fuel which is also synthesized to only work when their specific genetics operate the tech.
we like to thinks humans are independent and stuff but we work on so many levels of hierarchies and command lines that we aren't too far from the prawns, hell, we literally spend our lives trying to specialize in something to fit in and the moment we end up leaderless in a position, we either don't know what to do or we take upon ourselves into filling that gap, keeping the system functioning and that's basically how a group civilian or specialized prawns wouldn't know what to do but to sit and starve
@@AndYouWillGiggle I think the "fuel" was actually the genetic code that would grant access to the mothership's controls. The alien probably did not find a word that would describe it so he called it fuel. The liquid probably changes your genes so that the ship would recognise you (just like the weapons do). I think the reason prawns aren't seen using the weapons is probably because they themselves don't have access to them as you need a specific genetic code to do that. Meaning the ship and weapons could only be controlled by an individual with a specific genetic code. That is the reason why the aliens were stuck on the ship, they literally didn't have access to control it.
@@draccondracul2082 I think you forgot several scenes showing other prawns shooting their weapons, and the one piloting the mech into the gang base. As for the ship, well, it could be more of a level of security access perhaps. Either by "purity levels" of the genetic code or just literal passwords/codes or a mix.
I believe one of the film staff revealed prawns are a eusocial species and the majority of the ship's inhabitants were drone caste. Only a few like "Garrus" and CJ were a caste that was actually capable of creating more of the fuel, which I think was meant to be more of an all purpose nanotech that pretty much took care of everything for them.
I love this movie because the months before it’s release there was a website that is no longer available. It gave diary entries of the main alien in its language. The website did give an option on how to decode it. The information on that website actually gave more information on what was going on in the movie. Little Easter eggs relating to the website were placed in the movie. I’ll have to look but the movie trailer would suggest to take a look. Because of all of this it was my favorite movie that gave you an adventure before seeing the movie. If anyone knows what im talking about or where to find that information again I’d be grateful.
I remember that! I loved it so much! I wish somehow they had put it into a book form. Like someone printed off the blog articles, the different stuff on teh website and archived it in print form before "shutting the site down" and have the cover look like a file folder that is considered classfied documents.
@@meme-bu8qu It’s sad how so many people still don’t know about that resource. Here’s the problem though - whilst it’s extremely easy to track down the archive of the promo site (the main promo site was “D-9” followed by the usual ending for sites, but YT won’t let us write a site in full anymore), *it was produced in Flash.* The Flash plug-in has since been discontinued and old versions won’t work on modern browsers and such, not to mention those types of Flash files don’t get saved in the archive, so the only people that would be able to enjoy that these days would be those that still have access to all the original site files (for instance, I used to work for Sony Music as a website designer a long time ago, and we made our sites in Flash too - I have a copy of all files for the sites I created because I needed them to create a portfolio of my work). Sony Pictures was behind the movie’s promotion sites, so they might have had their site designed in a similar manner as we designed artist/band sites at Sony Music. Meaning, there might be a non-Flash version available in the code on the archive (because we’d always create such a version, so anyone with a computer would be able to see it no matter what, w/o bothering to dl the Flash plug-in), but browsers have changed so much since 2008/09 that the Flash detection code doesn’t work anymore like it used to. One can still read about what the promotion was like though (very easy to find). There was actually more than just the “D-9” site... There was also a “multinationalunited” site, a “mnuspreadslies” site, and a “mathsfromouterspace” site (all had the typical ending for a site). Here’s something disturbing though (but what else should we expect from TinselTown at this point)... In the ads/posters/billboards/etc that Sony Pictures put out to advertise the movie, besides including a link to a website, they would include on it a number to “report” prawns: 866-666-6OOl. Figures they used the ol’ triple 6s, right? Sigh.
I always looked at the Prawns being more akin to ants and that's what we see here. The ship was probably a colony ship with a queen and a new colony on board. Something happened to the queen leaving the hive leaderless. This is rather evidenced by the carefree and aloof actions of the majority of the prawns. They are the workers. Mixed in we have some soldiers and that's evidenced by the prawn working with Gary. Gary would be a drone/scientist caste. I guess instead of ant, probably more similar to Tyranids with synapse creatures.
@@adamthaxton3157 yea when I saw the movie in the original release, that was the conclusion I came to. I also felt that the fuel source was more of like a super conductive stem cell fluid, hence when Vicus came into contact with it, his body tried to fight it off but it just overwrote his cell structure.
@@adamthaxton3157 Strange. I do remember a line somewhere in the beginning of the film, when there's clips from "interviews" with various people laying out exposition. Went something like "they're like social insects, they have workers and a queen. Without their queen they don't know what to do, they don't have initiative". I don't remember the exact wording.
Rewatched the beginning. Yep, it's there, though turns out I got false memories about it. No queen was mentioned. Maybe the scene just fused with the Blomkamp's commentary in my mind. Around 14:55 - "What we have stranded on Earth, in this colony, is basically the workers. They don't particularly think for themselves, they will take commands, they don't have initiative. They'd lost their leadership for whatever cause, we presume illness."
I keep thinking of the unbearable horror of this event from the perspective of the prawns. It’s such a disaster it’s really interesting to see how it happens
Neill blomkamp did such a great job establishing how evil and vile MNU is and their intentions. Wikus isn’t the most likable person either, you sympathize with him when he’s faced with becoming a prawn and battling all kinds of different groups. It’s a really emotional and sad and film about how humans are so hellbent on annihilation
Love the video. Some clarifications: 6:11 Kid threw a lolipop. Wicus tried to distract the kid with candy. Kid threw it at his head. Chris (yes that aliens name is literally Chris) and his kid don't do cat food. Hugs not drugs lol 7:05 The gangs eat prawns because they think it will give them the attributes of a prawn. The ability to use their weapons and have their super strength. Like a cannibal voodoo version of "you are what you eat." Yes it's crazy. 7:22 The father was mainly mad about prawns dying because it makes the relocation seem tyrannical 8:35 It's not that no one ever survived the harvest. Its that this type of event has never happened before. No human has ever become a hybrid of human and alien tissues. They want the samples to be of him in the middle stage of transformation because they already 31:00 The movie mentions that most, if not all, of the prawns we see are from a 'worker class.' The prawns apparently lost their leadership; maybe from disease or something else. Workers are described as aimless and can be directed or guided pretty easily if you know what you are doing. We even see the gangs mention that prawns will believe anything you tell them. They don't know what's going on because they don't need to know. The aren't the ones making decisions. They were malnourished because their leaders weren't feeding them. The only one who may have been from the leader class, or someone who worked with the leader class, is Chris. Implying that this classism is socially formed, not biologically. On the other hand
Thanks, its when people get little things like this wrong in videos (probably because they weren't paying attention to the movie/game) that really bother me.
The alien fluid was supposed to be fuel. But like everything else with the prawns all their tech binds with their DNA. When Wikus gets sprayed by the Alien fluid it enters his bloodstream and most likely the prawn DNA and their technology within it starts to bind with his DNA and change it. Turning him into a prawn. Allowing him to use their weapons and technology. I love this movie. I love how Wikus really grew some balls and fought back at the end even tho he was turning into a monster. I'd love to see a part 2 and have CJ come back and actually fix him.
The war mech contradicts what you think is the back story. It’s design is that on the prawn body type, meaning they didn’t just mutate in the ship during their trip.
There's no point building tech you can't operate, and this disease completely changes your physiology and DNA. If you're already an advanced civilization it makes complete sense you'd design new tech to use with your new bodies as you already understand the physics and engineering to build the mech/spaceship/space gun
I am wondering. Maybe there is another species out there that look like the prawn and initially created their tech; because all of their tech is designed for their physiology and DNA. What if another species figured out a way to mutate other living species into their species. I will note though that the mech that Vickus pilots at the end fits his still human frame perfectly. Now I'm not saying I believe the suggestion I put above; just wondering. I mean the fact that their "fuel" causes Vickus to mutate into a prawn and that the prawn are aware of this and supposedly have a cure is odd; but it's for the story.
I think possibly the ship is a generation ship where something went horribly wrong causing the the population to starve on the ship and earth may not have been their original destination.
@@hamsterwolf I suspect you are probably right about Earth not being their destination or more ships would have arrived. But I suspect something else went wrong with something in the ship that forced them to land someplace habitable while the ship was repaired. Possibly it had a self-repair function; though it seemed really poorly maintained for something like that. I suspect that the crew being starving had to do with them being not especially bright without the command staff: IE: Christopher and Paul; to tell them what to do and they weren't even smart enough to seek food without somebody to tell them. I didn't realize until I read the Wiki for the movie that the dismembered prawn that Christopher finds in the weapons base was Paul. I wonder if the pair weren't mated and CJ was their child. It would explain why Christopher was so upset about seeing Paul.
From the wiki: "According to David Meng of Weta Workshop, the vast majority of the aliens are worker-class "drones", explaining why they were so lost and ineffectual. Christopher Johnson is one notable exception to this rule."
Work smarter not harder. Which is what Christopher took to heart. Made him smarter. /s would be hilarious and sad if this was true thougj. Would be neat if it ended up being a mix of two genetically different prawns which is why some have more vivid colors than others. Like the darker colored ones are workers or fighters. And the brighter ones are more intelligent and "beautiful". Kinda like some species here on earth. Not my preferred world. But could make a little sense. But seems kinda contrived and filled with tropes. My suggestion. Not the movie itself.
It could be indicated by color. Christopher and CJ are both green and very smart. But the other colors are not very smart. I bet green ones work as overseers or something for the workers.
I really like how human the Prawn’s expressions are. It helps gives a visual on the fact that even though these beings are vastly different to us, even though they are not humans, they are still people. *Just like us.* The human like expressions allow our brains to connect with the Prawns easier, allows us to understand better.
I like how those "small insects" are just unsubtly altered flood combat forms that were left over from bloncamp's halo movie he was working on before this.
Man I truly wonder how they would have made the flood infection scenes and transformation/mutation on the original movie, I ever wonder how chief armor looked since some stuff did look like stuff infames but had some altered parts on the designs, if I'm not mistaken there was a photo recently of how shangeilli would have looked like on the cancelled movie
My take: The fluid caused genetic restructuring to adapt the aliens to better deal with space travel, microgravity, radiation. The carapace of insects isn't "alive" in the same way as bones, replacing bulky muscles with long, lanky tendons means far less squishy tissue to potentially irradiate/mutate. Maybe a low, medicinal dose caused just enough alteration to provide protecion, but some overexposure, viral/bacterial infection, or autoimmune response (or failure) caused much more severe changes, altering/destroying whatever processes "resisted" the effects.
The battle mech does still look reminiscent of their current form, having the kind of droopy mandibles if I'm remembering this movie right. Also, imagine the feeling of having your endoskeleton turn into an exoskeleton. 🤣
Interesting theory, but I highly doubt the filmmakers intended the prawns to be the result of some kind of disease that turns you insectoid. The intent was the prawns have always been an insectoid species, but the transformation Wikus undergoes is less a disease, and more a very unfortunate side effect of exposure to the pure, distilled DNA-based fuel the prawns use to power their technology, in this case rewriting one's genetic code to that of the prawns causing a transformation into one. I believe some behind-the-scenes information and interviews explained that their species has different castes like bees or ants, with higher caste members essentially acting as "queens", being more intelligent leaders giving direction to the otherwise aimless "drones". The premise behind the ship that arrived at earth is that the ship's leadership died, possibly due to accident or illness, so the ship automatically travelled to the nearest habitable planet, in this case Earth. But with the ship now solely occupied by aimless, directionless drones that don't fully comprehend their own technology, the ship just sat there for 3 months with the trapped aliens wallowing in their own filth, becoming malnourished and ill until humans cut their way inside. As for why Christopher and CJ are more intelligent than most other prawns, this is explained that the "colony", in this case the refugee population on Earth, needs some kind of leadership to function, so a drone eventually developed higher intellect to fill the role of leadership caste, with Christopher being the lucky one to do so, and this likely passed on to his son CJ as well. How exactly this happened isn't clear, tho its possibly similar to how bee larvae are fed royal jelly to become queens. One final tidbit, I believe the insectoid creatures in the "cockfighting" ring are likely just another insectoid species native to the prawns homeworld that they had aboard their ship. As an aside, if you notice the creature's design is very similar to that of Flood infection forms from Halo. I suspect this may be a holdover from director Neil Blomkamps involvement with the Peter Jackson produced live action Halo film from 2007 which sadly fell apart in production and never saw the light of day. And yes, according to Blomkamp a sequel is being worked on, still in early stages tho.
I think this actually makes the most sense. Except I do think Chris was already apart of a more elevated caste which is why he was already in the main cockpit of the mothership. The rest I agree with 100%
How soon after they arrived on Earth was Christopher's ship ejected? Maybe he was going to get help, but got held up because he didn't have energy to get ship back up to the mothership.
So a couple of things: they’re not building the guns on earth, they brought them with them. And two, the aliens were named similar to how slaves were named, so double first names was common. Also if you look at the sides of their heads is their identification painted right on their exoskeleton. Oh, and the child alien threw a lollipop at Vickes. A can of cat food chucked even by a little insectoid would leave a bump. And his boss was mad that too many aliens got killed, not peacekeepers. They were mad about the bad optics of killing aliens. Final edit, I promise: You know how in the start of the movie, the news talks about how their might be a caste system at play with the Prawns? Well, you’ll notice how there’s only three green Prawns, Garrus, CJ, and Prawned Vickas. Every other alien isn’t green in exoskeleton.
Yeah that's also why they're so much smarter, because they are part of some higher caste, they have at least human level intelligence which all the other prawns lack. They are no quite eusocial like ants or bees since all prawns can reproduce and all have some level of free will but they are closer to that than humans are, who are pretty much all equal in intelligence and capability. I think that it's likely the caste is divided into three groups, the worker drones (almost all prawns seen in the movie), a middle caste which perform technical jobs run businesses etc, and then a leader class who are probably highly intelligent and good and processing large ammounts of data at once.
Ur right with the slave thing thrown into ghettos treated like shite and literally alienated then made addicted to a “substance” the identification could b reference to how slave owners literally branded slaves to know they “owned” them what race of ppl does that remind u of? It could be good social commentary or coincidence Great movie tho, good take too nun off this aliens coming here to invade it’s like they became stranded here or maybe they were a slave race and their masters left them here cuz they didn’t have anymore use for them District 10 is coming soon the director confirmed it I can’t wait
I know a person who was in production with the film. Said the second film was going to be Vickes leading a revolution on earth as turning into an alien made him smarter and feel more connections to the aliens.
I love this movie, the gritty 'realistic' sci fi nature of it, the amazing design of the prawns, the weapons, the sound design. Criminally underrated imo. Really wish there had been a sequel.
which tl;dr a common cold can even kill them without proper preparations and slow methodical adaptation since they lived in ships with no exposure to natural environment
Yet back on Rannoch their bodies carried seeds of plants and stuff like that? Which explains that their Immune system was more of a symbiotic one? I am grasping at straws here 🤷♂️
I had my own little theory that wasn't too far off from this one. That the Prawns used *a* fluid as a way to alter their DNA to be more compatible with the planet they're about to land on, and their tech only responds to that fluid to keep other species from using their own weapons against them. It was never originally a fuel, but there was some cross contamination upon arriving at or on the way to Earth. Like maybe a fuel cell was damaged for any number of reasons, and mixed with the genetic fluid, causing the Prawns to experience deteriorating intellect after prolonged exposure. The fuel that was gathered, was contaminated by the genetic fluid but was still usable as fuel. Only reason I'd be hesitant to call it a proper disease is that it's not exactly the most contagious thing in the world. Humans are in constant contact with Prawns, and are even sometimes coated in their bodily fluids. Some are definitely having sex with them, and others are eating them (possibly even raw). If it was slightly contagious, there'd be more cases of humans turning into Prawns but our protagonist seems to be the first. Which is why I believe they purposely "infect" themselves to quickly adapt to the environment they're about to be in, but something went wrong with this batch in particular.
It´s interesting that he fled from the shootout in the mech, terrified for his life, so this implies that his fear took over his body, so he first ran away. Then later he realisedd that he had the power and the ability to fight. So in this regard it´s rather realistic I think and a legit behavior for his character.
Combining the "ant workers without a queen" theory that seems to be the consensus of most places discussing this movie, and Roanoke's that the rest of the prawns are actually altered like Wikus: I would make the case that perhaps the alteration is not unintentional, but the "prawn" form is bioengineered for interstellar travel/exploration/colonization. In addition to the point that their mechs seem to be designed to look like their current form, the increased strength, exoskeleton, and their third pair of limbs may be engineered to help them survive in the hostile environment of an alien world or being stuck on a ship in deep space. Similarly, structuring a crew like a colony insect (the major of the crew being basic worker drones who we see the most of, big CJ and little CJ being an officer/engineer caste, and their leadership caste allegedly being destroyed) may help them maintain cohesion and limit social drift out in the far reaches of space.
It's possible that the stuff that sprays wikus is the stuff that makes a particular caste to begin with. If they've got a few castes then there'd need to be some way to pick which caste a particular person is. Then you use that same stuff as part of the tech to restrict some tech based on caste and it would make some amount of sense that getting sprayed by a canister would alter you. This would also line up well with the theory that the canister is for a leadership caste and was needed to activate the ship itself. Also would explain why wikus appears to be just as smart as he used to be, the thing isn't making him a worker it's making him a higher caste, or at least trying
Unfortunately only the creators know (or even they don't know) the truth behind these species. I mean, who would create anything new without imagining some backstory for it?
@@1braincellwhm the alien ship being controlled by prawns is a mystery. Just a theory, dude. But yeah, maybe the og tech is not prawn specific, and the current alien weapons were built by prawns to have a dna lockout.
Actors do not want to walk around in space suit props so they enter an alien enviroment, check the air with some instrument, notice that it is breathable and remove their helmets. I would love for that to be subverted by someone STOP you idiot! When the new crewman begin to unlatch the helmet.
@@michaelpettersson4919 i would be okay with it if that very act of taking off the helmet didnt lead to them dying of alien diseases which always happens.
@@Narko_Marko You haven't seen much Star Trek then. It is rare for them to face more ill effect then to comment on the smell. The SHOULD contract something nasty, or more precisely Crewman Stupid should.
Crossing to another galaxy (plus stopping to restock before coming back to Earth) and back within 3 Earth years sounds like pretty efficient travel to me…
It's too bad that it is at it's core a piece of genocide propoganda, Given that this movie specificallly portrays white south africans as the bad guys, and whats happening to the white south africans now.
Love this video! My theory was always that the fluid was used to create a sort of warrior class among the species (hence why all the weapons are bound to their dna) improving durability and survivability and increasing aggression but over exposure causing brain damage. It could be engineered as a portion of the fuel mixture and as a fail-safe, administered to a ships passengers in case of emergency to better adapt to adverse conditions on an unfamiliar planet. It was intentionally administered in this case but there was some failure to release the passengers leading to the state they were found in. Otherwise very much the same as what you said here, great work!
I like this theory more, because having a decease in fuel seems wierd to me and the idea that the passingers would be so exposed to it in the ship (if it was a decease in the fuel). If it was a decease it should also have evolved to spread, but there doesent seem to be much that would indicate that.
@@tatuvarvemaa5314 hey, not to be a dick but more of a heads up. The word you’re trying to write is disease, the word you are writing decease means death
@@tatuvarvemaa5314 It doesn't necessarily have to be a disease in the fuel. I think it's just a byproduct of the fuel. Think about it, our fuel pretty much carries a disease (it being a carcinogen and all.) It could just be that. I like to think they were something else, and on their way to take out earth, but either before or when they got here, there was a fuel spill on the ship which turned them all into shrimps. The ship went into lockdown to prevent them getting out (which is why they just hovered over earth with no opening) meaning they know the dangers their fuel can be to them and to other lifeforms. Also, this is why the main prawn needed to make his own fuel from their batteries/tech to power the ship. I also think his ship was meant to be an escape pod, heading back to their original planet where they have a cure for the fuel poisoning, or to bring more of their own for the invasion, cleanup of their ship cause they know it could cause a hazzard for the planet (basically like us cleaning up the BP oil spill,) or whatever they had planned, though it malfunctioned and just dropped because of the fuel malfunction it wasn't gassed up.
Ey! I thought the same. Copying my comment here: What I think is that the prawns are all soldiers modified for war. They were not like that originally, but were muted to have better capabilities in combat. This also explains why humans can operate their weapons when muted. The weapons are for super-soldier use only. This also explains their lack of knowledge, because they are basically guinea pigs. The intelligent one is a scientist that has to be in control of this failed experiment. Also explains why most of the tech we see is weapons and not replicators or a juicer, a washing machine, etc.
I always thought the obsession with cat food was because it's established that humanity basically isn't feeding the Prawns. Once humans realized they couldn't get anything out of the prawns they basically just left them to die and it was only the black market dealers who were interested in their tech who brought cat food into the mix as "payment" that created the great desire for catfood. Since other than eating other prawns or eating a human and risking retaliation eating cat food was the safest method of obtaining food. When law enforcement realized the prawns weren't just going to die off like they'd hoped they would go on to switch over to using cat food too.
You can see multiple meat booths were humans are handing out meat to prawns though. It's more likely that some chemical in the food reacts with their brains in a way similar to how some drugs react with ours, or that it contains some vital nutrients that they are otherwise lacking.
@@MartinFinnerup Well again, I always figured it was being used as either payment or rations. It didn't HAVE to be cat food, that just happened to be what the black market had on hand and since it proved effective that's what they stuck with. The black market or government gets the Prawns "cooperation" and the Prawns get food. You'd eat damn near anything if they put it in front of you too. It is after all shown that the Prawns will eat any sort of meat given the chance. They could very well have stuck with cat food simply because it's cheap and the Prawns know they have it. I mean, if they started to bring in Wagyu beef cattle or something do you think the Prawns would be content knowing they've been getting fed literal animal food for years?
@@Goldenkitten1Maybe but the fact that the black market started it. Makes me think that the drug theory holds some weight. Honestly it could be both simultaneously even when you consider. That dark beers and wine have at least some nutritional value. While also being intoxicating and addictive,plus it would be well hilarious. I mean just imagine Meow mix being the Prawns equivalent of smoking a blunt.😂😂
This movie still fascinates me to this day because of all the mystery surrounding it I’ve always wanted to sequel, and tbh it’s not too late for one, a prequel would probably be the easiest to make work
I like your theory, but i would like to add this, the prawns were clearly escaping in desperation, a lot of them were probably just civilians, if they put you in a ship, escaping from earth, of maybe just your country, would you be able to know everything about that evacuation ? No, so i guess that most of those prawns are just civilians that want to go home but they simply can't fix their ship, they just don't know how And the movie is filmed like a documentary, clearly biased against the prawns, so most of the prawns acting violent footage is probably there to make them look more like those animalistic beasts, however they must be a lot more like us, but living in extreme poverty, hunger, in stress for being in another planet with an hostile species that treats you like shit and literally abducts your people to make experiments while always going into your house pointing a gun to your face while talking bureaucracy bullshit with an itchy finger just waiting for the moment to kill you I would be kind of pissed too tbh
Do you know how long space travel takes? They didn't mention anything about FLT (if they had it, I would imagine humanity would be in an uproar about reverse engineering it), so let's just assume they get as close as you can. You're still talking about tens of thousands of years for travel from areas near the Milky Way, or if they're really from another galaxy entirely, that's a couple million years, at the minimum. It's more like putting you on a ship, then your descenadants so far from you that you might even consider them a different subspecies arrive at a different planet, only ever knowing the ship they were on and whatever else was taught to them
I think it’s fairly possible the prawns are more of a confederation of multiple alien species brought into one species by the alien juice. Or possible a kind of slave caste with some subspecies holding higher levels of intellect.
^^ The clue for me is that the heavy armour is in the form of a prawn's body, at least signifying that their race is supposed to mainly look as they appear in the film. I would then guess that the DNA-altering substance is used to assimilate intelligent species they encounter throughout their interstellar travel.
I want to believe that the prawns in the movie were the lower class/undesirables of their civilization, and the elite just grouped them up on a ship and hoped for the best, maybe because of overpopulation or just plain sadism. I mean nearly every prawn in the movie seems to be lazy, misguided, or just plain dumb.
If the point of the fluid inside of their tech, is part of the system to prevent non-prawn from operating their tech, then the fluid is likely the mechanism that is recognizing prawn biology, and non prawn biology. If your species wants to keep it's technology safe from being stolen by other species, then a mechanism that converts creatures that are tampering with your technology (trying to steal it ) into your species, achieves that to a dramatically effective degree. "You want to know about prawn tech? Ok, you prawn now"
@@sneedclavehere8918 it's because the movie is a metaphor for human refugee situations, and slums with other races or "aliens", and how poverty, ghettos by the government, social non acceptance, and being separated from your roots, can make anyone or any group "dumb and lazy" that would have otherwise been a hyper intelligent society, at least when talking about mass groups. Edit: and then be percieved as inherently undesirable by even benign and regular people such as the ones in these comments. And the movie ofc. I mean cmon they even have a racial slur for them which is the default that everyone knows them by.
I would like to mention that falling into the cooling tank of a nuclear reactor is not explicitly dangerous as long as you remain near the surface. the water diffuses the radiation so you would only be affected if you went to deep into the pool
One of the best movies of all time. What I like about it especially is that this movie basically turns the Humans and our behavior towards the Prawns into what we normally see from the Alien Species im such movies, meaning trying to inslave and overpower a seemingly harmless Culture
@@JJM8043 They are hypercarnovires with serious brain degradation causing them to get violent extremely easily. They are the only ones that can operate their advanced technology even with the brain degradation. They breed through egg clutches so their population can expand much faster than humans. In a few generations they would have depleted the earth of most life if humans allowed them.
I always thought it was weird that he turned into a prawn but the idea that the aliens were never like that and got infected the same way he did I feel like I just put on glasses for the first time again. I've always loved this movie so much and I like it even more now tbh.
Man, once I discovered your channel I was hooked, I love the fact that you can break down so easily the scientific part of the movies and explain them to us in a way that we "non scientific" people can easily understand, I love movies, sci-fi are my favourite, and you make it possible to view the plot from a different perspective and give us insights about what's happening, and why, the things that we see are happening. Keep up the great work man. Love your channel.
While your theory regarding Prawn creation is interesting, I have a different and simpler one: Christopher and CJ come from a "royal caste" of Prawns who are more intelligent and independent. Eusocial species of insects are actually fairly intelligent and independent at an individual level, more so than previously, thought, but they're still very collectively-minded overall. If you notice, the other Prawns or "workers" are quite social and intelligent in some regards, but lack the level of independence or rational thought that Christopher and CJ do, almost like they've no purpose. It could be that this colony was forced to evacuate, but Christopher or his predecessor was one of the only royal caste members of the species to make it. He focused on trying to get back to the ship and thus didn't have as much incentive to manage the rest of his worker caste. However, the worker caste still display some collective behaviours like forming militant groups or defending royal caste members with greater mental faculties like Wikus.
@@julianswinton5355 Now see, I don't think they actually have major physiological differences the way normal eusocial insecy species do. Their powerful weaponry is likely an equalizing factor in that regard. Instead, I think caste differences are more psychological and in overall rational processing capabilities. It could be that this supposed "royal caste" that Christopher and CJ hail from have enhanced intellectual capabilities to act as guides and develop the technologies of the species and are the ones who have actual understanding and introspection. Normal Prawns do have their own individuality, but they seem to be lacking a bit in comparison.
I've always thought of the "fuel" as being like a royal jelly and contains the dna of various levels of castes, or could give the next generation it's needed boost. Sure it could be some enzyme based catylst for engines of some sort. I just thing with all their dna synched technology, this fuel would be dna or similar.
I have the District 9 artbook and they confirm this theory. "In colonial insect societies, such as ants or termites, there are casts within the species with specialized anatomy to fill specific roles. For the time during the development of D9 story this was the case for the alien refugees as well.." "..there were going to be two species of prawn in the movie and also two types of evo suits. each tailored to that subspecies specific anatomy..." Those ideas were dropped or never used, but who knows if it is going to be used in an (hopefully) sequel or prequel of the District 9 movie.
When I was a kid I always assume that the reason why garrus was different to the other prawn was because of two things. It was either a prisoner ship and he was one of the very few wardens who survived, with his friend being a chill prisoner who at the very least understood what was going on. Or because they were like insects most were probably a class of workers. And the others who didn't survive were the intelligent class.
My first guess was the prawns left behind were lower level worker bees with no direction and our red vest loving boy, Chris, and his son were just exceptional. But I'm really loving your theory too and it could make sense. I wish we could get a sequel. I've only been waiting 84 years. It's one of my all-time favorite sci-fi films and I need closure.
I absolutely loved your video here. District 9 is one of my most liked movies, and seeing such an in-depth look into what we could never know normally is just such a treat. Thank you
So I always figured the 'fluid' wasn't really fuel or diseased, but a catalyst for the fuel in the ship. You put the catalyst into the actual, usually inert fuel in the ship in controlled bursts. An enzyme reaction causes a release of massive amounts of stored chemical energy and then the ship flies. The enzyme is present is small amounts in the waste products of the fuel which is how the enzyme was filtered from other sources over years. And some prawn DNA and the enzymes super fast actions caused Wicus transformation into a prawn.
I have long wondered whether a District 9 sequel is languishing in funding-hell but there has been talky-noise of it having been green-lit last year (2021), with the script currently being fleshed out. I love Blomkamp's films but I do recognize why some people, particularly those with hundreds of millions of dollars to throw at movie production, would be leery of Neill Blomkamp. He routinely makes most humans, and the privileged rich in particular, appear to be horrible, selfish, greedy, and amoral AF. While I suspect quite a few of us, your audience that is, have similar views, it seems to scare off most studios that would otherwise be interested in Blomkamp's style. EDIT: Neill Blomkamp grew up in SA during the waning years of Apartheid, when the violence was at its worst. He was sympathetic to the black majority being oppressed but he also witnessed a small number of people of all color and creed being completely evil to those they felt were below them. It clearly affected him on a deep level and we see it in his writing and films. For example, the Prawn Ghetto of District 9 is depressingly similar to the IRL shantytowns that surrounded Johannesburg and other large cities in South Africa from 1940s, and only started to replaced real houses and apartments going into the 2000s. The vile and disgusting attitudes of the MNU and their mercenaries toward Prawns, and even poverty-stricken humans, is another.
You're right, but you're missing one thing. Plenty of fiction with a budget does that. Blomkamp takes it a step further, with the fetishization of said elite's violent destruction.
People aren't bad at all. We fell into a trap a long time ago making us servants of the few elites. We would have started phasing oil out years ago if it wasn't for them. They will not allow us to be free.
It was pretty clear the mnu were evil as shit when you notice that every prawn had "property of mnu" stamped onto their bodies mostly their heads/faces. As sad as I am we never got district 10 I did still really love how this film was made. John the pawn was the best character, vikus didn't deserve him, but at least he did do right by him in the end. Funny that the s called savage alien was the one teaching the human about humane treatment and mercy
Thank you for reviewing my favorite movie! I always watch your videos when I'm feeling down or just need something to watch, it's always nice to see you post because it lights up my day. Keep being amazing Roanoke.
I wonder if the cat food thing might be somehow related to the presence of particular proteins in canned cat food? I know that cats are completely incapable of making taurine, and it's also super important for cats to have it or else they can develop dilated cardiomyopathy which is life-threatening. Maybe these aliens need some other kind of protein for that same reason? It's something they're dependent on that their body is incapable of producing on its own?
Hang on, Nitrogen is not a Noble Gas. It it special because it has an extreme affinity for itself and forms diatomic triple bonds, but Noble Gas has a very specific definition of having fully-realized “electron shells” and being chemically inert on their own, not because they’re sharing strong bonds with another atom.
I always assumed it was a simple refugee ship. I saw them as normal, average people that got stuck on an alien world and just go about being confused, scared, lost, and just reacting to the situation.
You made my day with this cult classic! Can you make one about the French horror film "Mutants" it's covers the hole turning process and also is pretty good
You have to wonder what level of reality of aliens being treated would be like, is this an accurate representation or projecting ral life scenarios onto sci fi? Anyway well in for doing this film its class
District 9 was so weird but eventually become one of my favs, nothing better than aliens and mutations. That leak analogy reminded me of Pandorum (2009).
Personally, I rather liked that Wikus was by no means an action hero. He was scared and confused, and his survival instincts overrode a lot of his common sense and personal honour, right up until the end when he finally decided to complete his journey from corporate stooge to underdog hero. I think that many of us would not have had the cajones to do even that! It helps to make him look human, rather than a larger-than-life ideal hero, like the wisecracking hunks of the 1980's. To be clear, I love those kinds of movies, I'm just saying that it was nice to see the protagonist go from a spineless weakling with a poor moral fiber to a more compassionate and heroic person! The less human Wikus got, the more humane he became. I am also perfectly fine with there being no sequel. It lets us imagine things for ourselves, and at this point in time, I don't trust the movie industry not to ruin the whole thing with tone-deaf virtue signalling, a dead-on-arrival expanded universe, and "funny" comedic relief that butchers any mood that the movie would otherwise try to establish. With some poorly conceived political messaging on top that will age about as well as milk with polio.
I've always wanted a sequel but damn, you're probably right about how it'd be ruined nowadays. I'm picturing a Disney-fied sequel filled with poorly animated CGI action and constant wisecracks and want to die (even in a best cased scenario it'd be about as "good" as Independence Day: Resurgence)
Man I love you talking about gravity having an influence on the species and their older biology coming from older years, I wish u did more of these, hell even create your won
One big flaw in your theory that something changed them while on the ship into the appearance that they have now. Their language. If they didn't always look like they do now, or at least for a very long time. Then they wouldn't have a language to communicate. If something did change them quickly while on the ship, then the way they talked would of changed too. And since they have a language that they all understand, then that means they've had the same bodies for a long time. I hope that make sense.
Well, there's some argument that the language is a thing like mors code or short hand that everybody is taught and with their altered appearance they all started speaking in that.
The mech suite which was clearly not built on earth looks like the prawn body type. So no I do not believe they somehow mutated in route. They are insects. They have a class system. If the leaders died off for whatever reason the drones wouldn't know what to do and the ship was just programmed to land on the nearest inhabitable planet. Either through AI or a last ditch effort by the last surviving leader drone.
@@JL-el9kb We don't know since how long they exist, or how long and how far they were travelling. Maybe even for thousands of years. It is possible, if they have the technology for a spaceship that can travel that far. And so if they were travelling even just for a hundred years, they adapt to their current selves, they teach their own history, and what happened to them if it is a mutation, create a language, they understand it, they accept the situation. They get used to it, so they build the mechs in a way to make it look familiar to them (like humans imagine humanoid walkers (Gundam, Arbalest, etc.)). On the other side of the argument: Humans build robotic dogs! Or look at an AT-AT! If alien species look at those, will they think we looked like that before? And I don't think that mech the Prawns used looks like a Prawn (the alien lifeform itself) (apart from the mouth tentacles). More like it was just an effective mecha that can walk, shoot, jump, punch, etc. equipped with heavy armour and an intelligent AI assistant. It can be only just effective with a design familiar to them. They gave in some of themselves. I doubt it was built before they boarded the ship, but if it was, they might have modified it. At the end I've got lost in my own thoughts... dang. I hope you know what I tried to say with this long monologue
Yea, but this wasn’t a big budget movie lol. It was actually a low budget movie, costing only $30 million to make. Other movies in its class cost 100s of millions whereas this $30 million dollar movie was created on a very small budget, something Neil Blomkamp is very famous for doing.
@@NeckPUNCHattack Wasn't aware of that, shows that Neil Blomkamp successfully pulled it off. However, I just googled, low-budget seems to be everything below $5 million, so we could consider this a mid-budget movie :D
@@musicbyoakly That’s all well and good, but It seems that you’re trying to find a “I’m not right but neither are you” middle ground response. I wasn’t trying to school you in my other comment btw, but I feel I should point out that if you simply google “district 9 budget” without using any words to try to sway the search (like “high or low” budget), 3 of the 5 top returns will show in their headlines that in this genre of movie, the $30 million budget is considered a low budget film (compared to their AAA counterparts that cost 100s of millions to make) You’re trying to interpret it differently, but like I stated in my original comment, I said $30 million was called low budget for “this class of movie.” Middle budget films are a more recent term of classification in media and you’re trying to apply a more recent term (that is just media being silly tbh; it’s either a big or small budget in the industry) to something that just doesn’t apply. Fact is that, like I stated, his film is considered a “low budget” film. That’s how the industry sees it, so I’m not trying to interpret it any other way.
For some reason I never picked up on the fact this was a virus despite being called fuel and i assumed as a kid it was just had a mutation side effect. Saying that the prawns are possibly not naturally a species, and that their changes are comparable to a fuel breach, god that revelation just thoroughly mindblowed me
Because it's not a freaking virus. It's multi-purpose nanites they extracted from every piece of their scrap over the years. The nanomachines attempted to "fix" Vickus after getting into his system, deeming his human anatomy being some sort of horrifying, diseased malformation.
Well if its a virus or some kind of infection. Why havent other humans changed? I mean prawn and humans do interact alot. Some one defently doing the freaky with them. Not to mention the experiments. Hell they eat prawn. Yet the virus doeaent spread. It only spreads in the fuel.? This virus or altered mind set is also passed down to there children. So if its a virus its clearly still going around changing them? Always bugged me that the so called bad guys. Have no idea what is going on or how to duplicate it.
i mean its possible because most of their tech are bio coded a bio code that allow specific prawn to access certain equipment like the war mech might be need, a virus overriding dna isnt far fetched idea. at this point its possible the fuel is more a "key card" or activation requirement for the mother ship.
I mean, why should they take the risk and use a Virus infected fuel and not just normal one? I really think it's just highly concentrated Prawn DNA for some kind of Bio Code to use the tech.
District 9 was such a good movie, was heavily influenced by the xenophobic attacks that had been happening in South Africa and was also supposed to be a Halo movie
Agreed... the way (Christopher)he stood over his fellow prawngs in the human labs... You know it really messed him up for a second, seeing his fellow prawngs experimented and cut one like that.... Even though he was in a middle of a firefight... You can feel what he felt... I also feel like honor is very important to them and he knows his rights and what I wrong and right and even what's illegal... Christopher and the kid is very inteligent...
I always thought it was more a class system, with true prawns like the main scientist prawn being fewer and captured races transformed Into less intelligent worker prawns. Eventually the true prawns almost entirely dying out leaving a ship of technology they were bioengineered to use, but not mentally equipped to.
there's a theory that the prawns are a slave race to a higher tier species (think like the grunts in halo) and they actually captured ancient humans and bred them to then gene alter them with the goop then once they got the gene altering right they just turned all the humans and got the prawns to asexually reproduce
I have the District 9 artbook and they confirm this theory. "In colonial insect societies, such as ants or termites, there are casts within the species with specialized anatomy to fill specific roles. For the time during the development of D9 story this was the case for the alien refugees as well.." "..there were going to be two species of prawn in the movie and also two types of evo suits. each tailored to that subspecies specific anatomy..." Those ideas were dropped or never used, but who knows if it is going to be used in an (hopefully) sequel or prequel of the District 9 movie.
Rather than a disease that makes them dumber, I think it's funnier to think that the prawn homeworld was just rounding up the dregs of society and shipping them off to other planets to get rid of them. Christopher was smarter because he's the pilot, and the only one supposed to make the return trip.
This man really just said if there's anything I've learned from Mass Effect, then proceed to forget the Quarians and Turians literally have there own side quests/mini stories explaining on how careful you have to be with "Interspecies Relationships".
I think a sequel would involve a full scale war. With Christopher taking to the home planet the news about Earth and the atrocities done to the species by humans. Humanity atoning for their crimes now have to deal with the repercussions.
I could see how humanity would treat a species in need. I honestly think this film showed us how we would really act if something like this really happened.
When I was a kid I saw this movie on a flight to thailand. I've never seen a movie like this and I got intrigued and kinda scared. The whole semester I couldn't stop thinking about it. My child brain couldn't make sense of it.
I always thought that the prawns seemed like they could be humans from the future, this alien disease having warped their physiology to the point of being unrecognizable. It seems like they were trying to return to earth, which they managed to do, but so far in the past that they are only recognized as aliens themselves. It would explain why Vikkas' transformation was possible, his DNA being compatible with their tech and his final transformation being identical to the other prawns
Roanoke, Not only does the water spend several decades cooling the fuel rods, but it also affects their radiation. The water essentially acts as a biological shield with hydrogen absorbing and deflecting the radiation bouncing against it. This makes it completely safe for you to stand near the pool with no ill effects. You could swim in the water and be perfectly safe. WhatIf did an entire video on it.
The impression I got from the movie regarding their relative intelligence and the disparity between some of the Prawns was an ant-like caste system (albeit one where each caste can reproduce on its own rather than relying on a queen to do all the breeding). It's been a while since I saw the movie, but I recall them saying that their leaders and scientists had all died, and what remained were the workers. Had the upper castes been self-segregating, then a disease might not have spread to the lower castes in the lower decks, but without leadership or guidance they began to starve as we saw them in the start of the movie when the humans broke into the ship. If the smart one and his kid were remnants of the scientist class, they might want to keep that quiet to avoid being interrogated and/or dissected.
There is one problem with the theory explaining the strength of the prawns: life invests the least amount of resources that is required for survival. A very spectacular example of that are astronauts who spent a larger time in space and lost the majority of their muscle mass and bone density. When they come back to earth, they require a prolonged rehabilitation to regain much of the lost mucle mass and bone density. So, along the laws of biology, prolonged exposure to the weaker gravity of earth should make the prawns loose much their of the skeletal and muscle mass, hence they should not be much more stronger then a human, considering the very similar base biology (similar within the context of an extraterrestial species).
Their strength is probably a matter of the exoskeleton biology An endoskeleton is pretty neat, but exoskeletons can get you a lot of strength by bundling the muscles together, instead of wrapping them around a bone
This is more so just some observed life on Earth, wouldn't necessarily be the case across varying planets with different evolutions taking place. There's also the possibility they're engineered to not weaken, or the exoskeleton thing mentioned above
You don't need to be that deep and complex to reason this. Life is adapted to it's local environment, but that doesn't mean an alien species would be physically the same as us after a while on Earth because they can stay either frailer or sturdier than us. As we can see here on Earth the other animals are either frailer or sturdier than us, and they live in the exact same physics/gravity as us.
@@left4twenty Exoskeletons also have mechanical advantage. Muscles can only pull in straight lines. If you flex your arm your biceps pulls from below the shoulder, over the top of the bone against the forearm on the opposite side the elbow. With an exoskeleton the same muscle would pull diagonally to under the armpit.
I genuinely hope that Wings gets better. He clearly has struggled for most of his life, while a lot of his struggles are his own doing he does deserve stability in his life
Fun fact, swimming in a cooling pool of nuclear reactor ist pretty safe, you would need to practically dive up to arms length to the reactor to quickly absorb a lethal dose of radiation
Thanks for watching guys! Remember, just because he's your alien bro, doesn't mean there's not some horribly contagious xeno disease waiting to ransack your meat suit Also Nitrogen is not a noble gas, Misspeak lol
Hello
Hype
Big Bug people!
Ah well, for my alien bro I’ll tank it
Can you do the “thing” from NOPE? I’d love to know the biology of it lol
The black fluid is actually supposed to be a nanite solution designed to fix things. When Wikus was exposed to it, the solution read his DNA as “broken” so it “fixed” it to Prawn DNA.
I like that idea. 👌
Is that black fluid the same as that fluid on Prometheus
that is so cool
@@HesoRello different movies bruv
@@HesoRello lol
I always really liked how this movie subverts standard alien visitor tropes. I really like the idea that the aliens come here in desperation and end up needing our help. It's relatively unexplored
and we then fuck them up
@@weybye91 and we then fuck them
@@weybye91 primarily out of xenophobia, letting the instinctual fear of the unknown and different get the best of them
They probably figured the planet to be uninhabited or at least not Harbour sentient life. Cause of the way light travels when you look out into the stars you look out into the past.
Course then they get here and find out not only is the planet inhabited but its completely covered in sentient life and they were probably thinking
"Fuck ok, just... Stay quiet and hopefully they wont do anything."
Course the humans did the same thing and it turned into a huge waiting match
@@granmastersword Why wouldn't we be, especially after they started manufacturing weapons that would blow us into bits.r
Fun Fact: Based on recent reports, a sequel is being developed by the same producers. Hopefully we get to see what happened after the first.
I hope so. I really liked this movie and felt so bad for the prawn aliens
i hope this is true , this movie is a great movie.
Hope it has some mention or something about it being more than 3 years.
I heard that like 5 years ago though, its like how the Australian government is "considering legalizing recreational marijuana" every 5 years
@@P.Subaeruginosa *Sad but true.* Been on the waiting line for a "District 10" or something for TEN YEARS since I watched this! 😭
Hey Roanoke. I'm not certain, but I think I know why Vickus doesn't fire the weapons willingly. He's being overlooked by his own species and treated like an item instead of a sapient being. He's frightened and wants his questions answered, so he's trying to exert what little control he can to get some information.
That then changes when they bring out a live subject to test fire on, at that point he swings to the moral reason of not wanting to kill another living being. The whole movie, Vickus is just a frightened monkey wanting answers and a return to his old status quo. While everyone continues to sideline him for their own desires. Forcing him to be spiteful and sideline their desires for his own, even if they might actually be able to help him in the long run.
Makes sense to me
That was my take, too. It also explains the difference between then and later, when he took any method he had available to him if he felt he was going to be able to change back.
He wasn't thinking any further about how he was going to escape with the item, or how his methods, on top of the misinformation, would basically kiss any chance of returning to his former life goodbye.
Yeah, that was all clear to me. I'm not sure how Roanoke didn't get it.
@@NicholasRodriguezN7 Our dear Roanoke might've just had a slightly off day.
@@GenlennialEntertainment Happens to the best of us.
My headcannon is that most prawns are just everyday workers and only very few of them are scientists/engineers/doctors. Garrus wasn't just a smart prawn, he was basically part of the science team.
@rulieteite2634 Garrus doesn't need to be patronized. He is a highly trained professional!
Headcannon? It's been a while but I thought that was actually the case, or at least characters in the movie speculated that.
I'm with you on that. For all we know this was a mining vessel or prison transport or even a prison colony ship and all the weapons belonged to the guards. Garrus could have been a scientist in either event.
Y'all don't live where USN fleets make port calls, do you?
@@xerothedarkstarWhat are you getting at exactly? The United States Navy is actually secretly full of extraterrestrial aliens and they just magically forgot how to use their technology upon entering port?
This movie is no joke. Probably one THE top 10 Sci Fi movies ever made. Needs to be mentioned in the same echelon as Alien, 2001 Space Odyssey, The Thing, Intersteller etc. Disgustingly violent, incredible effects both practical and digital and a masterful storytelling. As good as cinema gets.
This is facts
totally agree. it's brilliant film.
And more than anything it has such a deep message. Draws parallels to Apartheid, how we treat refugees and presents a whole new alien "invasion" scenario
Budget shocking too for its cgi, storytelling, and etc.
@@diabeticalien3584I think the director said it was an allegory for anti-Zimbabwean xenophobia? Like some scenes are South Africans (non actors) talking about Zimbabweans? Around that time there were horrific xenophobic attacks (tire burnings and lynchings) in SA and it kinda makes sense as the aliens are coming into South Africa as refugees and get discriminated against rather that apartheid which would be aliens coming in, taking over, and then discriminating against the locals who were already there. It’s an art piece and can be looked at various different ways of course.
I love this movie because it flips the whole alien invasion bit on it's head. The aliens need our help and are basically refugees from their world. Most alien films play into the "alien discovers mankind and tries to destroy it" trope and it's been done to death.
I want a movie where Aliens come to earth seeking refuge from another species. Then they discover that we humans are a suicidal species..not as in killing ourselves but each other. Then they think "Maybe... We don't have to hide. Let these people do what they do best... War."
@@ventexovakon2178 Then they'll fund this war with "abandoned" alien tech. Humans will come to realize what's actually been happening but it's already too late as it'll cost way too many resources to retaliate, and said alien tech is flawed by design so that won't work either.
@@ventexovakon2178 isn't that kind the ending plot of independence day resurgence
Still better than what kind of mess that Home is doing, Virgin oh home vs Chad district 9 prawns
@@ventexovakon2178 While not a movie, season 1 episode 5 ("Second Soul") of the 1995 Outer Limits reboot does this exact thing. First contact with aliens except it turns out they've made all the same mistakes as humanity (plus a few extra) and the first contact fleet is actually the last remnants of their species looking for a new home after they wrecked their own beyond repair.
Think District 9 if it were part of season 1 Stargate. Good luck finding it in anything better than potato quality though, as it never got a Blu-Ray remaster, to my knowledge.
There needs to be a sequel to District 9. You cant change my mind.
Agreed
@@RoanokeGaming Just googled it! Apparently there's supposed to be one in the "near future"
And a Tron Legacy sequel
Edit: also Chappie
Nah. A sequel to district 9 would be what? Just him getting cured and getting his life back? Nah, sounds boring. There only needs to be the one district 9 movie and that's it.
@@sportyjhf5Q I'm with you. It's fine the way it is. There for sure could be an interesting sequel but it's more likely to taint the original than to actually add to it.
The prawns are based on the tusked king cricket, a massive grasshopper like insect referred to as the parktown prawn.
They are incredibly adaptive to their environment and can be found in many different biomes. They're omnivores that particularly like cat food and are known for being physically powerful in comparison to other similar species.
There's a conspiracy theory that they aren't natural and were created in a lab somewhere in the 50s or 60s and that's what happens to Vickus in the film. It's worth pointing out that the parktown prawn squirts black fecal matter into the face of their attacker and if you look at what happens to Vickus, you see that he gets sprayed in the face with a black fluid.
They're nice little touches that wouldn't be obvious unless you're familiar with the parktown prawn.
You know quite a bit about the parktown prawn
@@callumduckworth7490 I have a background in forensic science with a specialisation in entomology. I've loved bugs since I was a kid
pls pls pls explain the cat food....
@@KrillWhisperer cat food is easy for them to get hold of when it's left out for pets and they seem to particularly like it over other meat sources they can get likely because of added flavourings.
So it is about black people?
This is actually a pretty interesting take. We know it's not the case, due to FAQs with the director and basically confirming that the prawns work similarly to Earth insects and the reason that the majority of Prawns are the way they are because they're from the worker/drone caste while Garrus being noticeable smarter is due to being from the scientist/leader caste.
I think your latter theory about the canister having something capable of encoding Prawn DNA into whatever's affected by it holds far more weight. If we continue approaching the idea of the Prawns and their technology as the insectoid caste species the director intended, it would make sense that there's more to the genetic locks on their technology than humanity understands. It might not just be that humans can't operate Prawn tech, but that the tech is checking the DNA for a certain genetic marker present in the various castes, potentially natural or unnatural.
It would make sense that the Prawn leadership wouldn't want the drones being capable of utilizing everything around them, as they seem pretty dull even by human standards, let alone Garrus and his kid.
What probably happened was that something on the ship decimated the higher castes of Prawns, likely a disease or potentially even infighting. Garrus then booked it once they made it down to Earth, realizing that the situation was boned beyond attempting to salvage and that trying to fix it would result in his death; the drones would've been left onboard to either regress without their leadership or presumably perish under this hypothetical event. The canister Garrus was making probably wasn't fuel, but a bio-key carrying the genetics of a Prawn from a caste with the authority of piloting the ship and could be used to bypass the security measures in place to prevent lower castes from damaging the ship.
Yeah, this makes more sense to me than Roe's "radiation" idea.
Man, thats a great take
One problem with that last part: They never used the canister to bypass any security like you suggest.
@@MartinFinnerup They had remote access to the mothership's systems after it was inserted. If they could always remotely access the controls, they wouldn't need to fly up there in the first place as they could've just unearthed the smaller ship and brought the mothership over to tracker beam it up like they did after being shot down.
I admit, it's not a perfect theory. But given what we know from interviews and FAQs with the director/writer - they're a hive/caste species, the ship auto-naved to the nearest habitable planet (Earth) for repairs, etc. - it's the best I can come up for why a canister for a 'fuel source' would have enough concentrated or encoded Prawn DNA to transform somebody into one from mere exposure.
🤮🔫
8:18 He doesn't want to pull the trigger during the tests because they're using him as a lab rat. He doesn't want to be a prawn and he hates being treated as one. It's not about refusing to comply with what they're telling him to do; it's about the who, why, and how.
Ye this guy seems a little goofy. Big silly goose energy
Exactly what I thought, he didnt want to be an experiment
Yup. There's no doubt he IS a coward, and he deserves what he got. Not as much as the Colonel, though. I get the feeling the wife called both times just so Daddy could track Wikus.
@ZoomerStasi he definitely is a coward and selfish. He is very desperate running on borrowed time so yeah a coward definitely would go into the hood and threaten mfs for his own health. Oh and he was about to leave garrus behind while basically kidnapping his son which is DEFINITELY coward behavior but due to character growth he sacrifices his own wants and needs for the chance of a cure.
@ZoomerStasiNah, that doesn’t warrant TRUE racism, and double-crossing the only people that could save you. He’s a coward, and it seems you’re insecure to the point you’re trying to justify the CLEAR acts of cowardice he’s done. If he had balls, he’d accept the reality of the situation to then be able to focus, but he doesn’t even have a grip on his head. He places himself above everyone else because he’s afraid to die, and doesn’t have strong morals, or even basic ones for that matter when shit hits the fan. Stop self-projecting, and accept the facts.
As interesting a theory as this is, it's biggest hole is the fact that the mech suit - and the small arms, to a lesser extent - is shaped to fit the Prawn's current physiology. The mech suit specifically is not only designed to accommodate their larger statures, but the "head" of it is shaped in the likeness of their current state of being.
hey, gundam head was designed after samurai helmet with vaguely human shaped face.
its biggest hole
Maybe the suit can adapt to the pilot's stature
I don't really see that as a hole, he said it would modify their DNA to a state that would allow them to use their tech however prolonged exposure would give negative effects, I'd imagine their tech would be designed with the modifications to their body in mind since they need those modifications to use it in the first place
You do realize the suit actually damaged him when he got in it because of his stature. It was only because of his changed dna did the suit even function for him.
I think they were implying in the film that Christopher Johnson and his kid were what remained of a sort of engineer caste in Prawn society, while all the other ones were some kind of menial worker caste that didn't need much intelligence when proper leadership was in place. With them being refugees, they were probably left without any kind of authoritative caste to rally behind, so the worker prawns were free to run around in an almost feral state. Only Christopher and his kid were intelligent and independent enough to carry out plans to fix the ship. As for why the fluid mutated Wickus, I think it harkens back to prawn weaponry needing a prawn genetic marker in order to be used. The fluid contained an unstable matrix of prawn dna that would act as an authenticator code or reactive catalyst to get the machinery and AI systems on the ship to reactivate. It just so happens to have the (potentially unintended) ability of mutating carbon based life into more prawns when it comes into contact with their meatsuits, as it was probably never intended for direct exposure on organic life, let alone terran organic life.
This is brilliant deductive reasoning
And today I learned there are more than one movie
@@gouachepottwo7537 wait, there's another?
@@moeman5122 no they meant a sequel was planned on scrapped
pretty much spot on! I believe that the caste system of the Prawns is similar to the one of the Indian Society, but with physiological differences as well. If there was a disease or an accident, in general, more complex organisms / systems are the first to fail/die. Thus explaining why the worker class survived in its entirety while the higher-uppers did not (with some exceptions).
Question: how plausible are these speculative evolution/biology ideas?:
1.) Chitin reinforced vertebrate skeleton.
2.) Wing feathers being modified into muscular claws.
3.) A bird with molar like structures to chew food.
4.) Being able to convert eDNA into usable junk DNA.
5.) Dontovory: behavior of feeding on teeth.
Are you trying to make tooth fairies?
@@rootsnootthnute8598
Yes. And I want IN.
Let me help
1) I doubt it would happen, chitin is more flexible than bone and would deform much easier, it's not really good to support weight as a spine or to reforce one with
2) Feathers wouldn't be that good of a blade, unless they move unbelievably fast or get coated on a material that can form a blade
3) Well, that one is probably complicated af, most reliable way we have to do stuff like that is with crisper and even that has it's limitations
4) Possible, but animals like that would have a taste for bone too, culturally they could focus on teeth
Basically, your hellish tooth fairies aren't going create themselves, become a mad doctor already
1. it would need to have micro-structures & be mostly hollow to have the load bearing properties of bone.
2. wing feathers are modified scales, akin to hair - but if you mean adding a muscular claw to a wing, check out the Hoatzin.
3. There are birds that use ridged sections of their beak to chew food.
4. some bacteria do this - but I forget what the extra loop that includes foreign DNA is called
5. Hard one to do, but maybe on a symbiote/parasite that pairs with a species that regrows teeth.
I believe Wikus was adamant about not using the weapons because after he saw the dismembered prawns all around the facility, he has a thought that his DNA being linked to theirs makes him a Prawn in the eyes of the government, and a similar fate might befall him for research purposes, which, subsequently almost happens.
There’s a working theory that they function like an ant colony would, receiving orders from higher-ups and operating en masse based on their marching orders. However, their “superiors” were either killed off or lost contact with this portion of the colony which caused them to do a sort of death spiral wherein they functionally walk around in circles until they die of malnutrition, much like ants but more figuratively. District 9 is what happens when this process occurs and humans are there to muck about. Kinda like a child who sees ants death spiraling and decides to tamper with and gawk at them.
I’d also like to add that I think their anatomy is all-natural based on their tech resembling their basic anatomy. Similar to how humans design exo-suits to mimic and adhere to their basic anatomy. The reason it only works for them is their tech is genetically coded to their biology much like we see weapons in “Dredd” coded to their fingerprints, but taken a step further into genetics. Following this reasoning it would make sense that the fuel also possesses some sort of genetic coding if not THE genetic code with which their tech functions. I.E. their tech ONLY works with this very specific fuel which is also synthesized to only work when their specific genetics operate the tech.
we like to thinks humans are independent and stuff but we work on so many levels of hierarchies and command lines that we aren't too far from the prawns, hell, we literally spend our lives trying to specialize in something to fit in and the moment we end up leaderless in a position, we either don't know what to do or we take upon ourselves into filling that gap, keeping the system functioning and that's basically how a group civilian or specialized prawns wouldn't know what to do but to sit and starve
@@AndYouWillGiggle I think the "fuel" was actually the genetic code that would grant access to the mothership's controls. The alien probably did not find a word that would describe it so he called it fuel. The liquid probably changes your genes so that the ship would recognise you (just like the weapons do). I think the reason prawns aren't seen using the weapons is probably because they themselves don't have access to them as you need a specific genetic code to do that. Meaning the ship and weapons could only be controlled by an individual with a specific genetic code. That is the reason why the aliens were stuck on the ship, they literally didn't have access to control it.
@@draccondracul2082 I think you forgot several scenes showing other prawns shooting their weapons, and the one piloting the mech into the gang base. As for the ship, well, it could be more of a level of security access perhaps. Either by "purity levels" of the genetic code or just literal passwords/codes or a mix.
@@D0NU75
not all of us are drones..
Oh my god, thank you so much for going over this movie, used to watch it a lot and loved it so much
Hopefully they’ll one day have its sequel
We *NEED* a sequel, its non-negotiable 🤣
A sequel would be cool.
A sequel would be amazing
More bugs, mechs, and explosions
The director said he’s been working on it and a sequel is not far away earlier this year.
I believe one of the film staff revealed prawns are a eusocial species and the majority of the ship's inhabitants were drone caste. Only a few like "Garrus" and CJ were a caste that was actually capable of creating more of the fuel, which I think was meant to be more of an all purpose nanotech that pretty much took care of everything for them.
I love this movie because the months before it’s release there was a website that is no longer available. It gave diary entries of the main alien in its language. The website did give an option on how to decode it. The information on that website actually gave more information on what was going on in the movie. Little Easter eggs relating to the website were placed in the movie.
I’ll have to look but the movie trailer would suggest to take a look. Because of all of this it was my favorite movie that gave you an adventure before seeing the movie. If anyone knows what im talking about or where to find that information again I’d be grateful.
I remember that! I loved it so much! I wish somehow they had put it into a book form. Like someone printed off the blog articles, the different stuff on teh website and archived it in print form before "shutting the site down" and have the cover look like a file folder that is considered classfied documents.
The movie Nine did something similar. The scientist had created a Facebook page
@@msajidsarker that's what I was going to say.
@@meme-bu8qu
It’s sad how so many people still don’t know about that resource. Here’s the problem though - whilst it’s extremely easy to track down the archive of the promo site (the main promo site was “D-9” followed by the usual ending for sites, but YT won’t let us write a site in full anymore), *it was produced in Flash.*
The Flash plug-in has since been discontinued and old versions won’t work on modern browsers and such, not to mention those types of Flash files don’t get saved in the archive, so the only people that would be able to enjoy that these days would be those that still have access to all the original site files (for instance, I used to work for Sony Music as a website designer a long time ago, and we made our sites in Flash too - I have a copy of all files for the sites I created because I needed them to create a portfolio of my work).
Sony Pictures was behind the movie’s promotion sites, so they might have had their site designed in a similar manner as we designed artist/band sites at Sony Music.
Meaning, there might be a non-Flash version available in the code on the archive (because we’d always create such a version, so anyone with a computer would be able to see it no matter what, w/o bothering to dl the Flash plug-in), but browsers have changed so much since 2008/09 that the Flash detection code doesn’t work anymore like it used to.
One can still read about what the promotion was like though (very easy to find). There was actually more than just the “D-9” site...
There was also a “multinationalunited” site, a “mnuspreadslies” site, and a “mathsfromouterspace” site (all had the typical ending for a site). Here’s something disturbing though (but what else should we expect from TinselTown at this point)...
In the ads/posters/billboards/etc that Sony Pictures put out to advertise the movie, besides including a link to a website, they would include on it a number to “report” prawns: 866-666-6OOl. Figures they used the ol’ triple 6s, right? Sigh.
you'd definitely be able to experience it again if you type the name in on wayback machine! :)
I always looked at the Prawns being more akin to ants and that's what we see here. The ship was probably a colony ship with a queen and a new colony on board. Something happened to the queen leaving the hive leaderless. This is rather evidenced by the carefree and aloof actions of the majority of the prawns. They are the workers. Mixed in we have some soldiers and that's evidenced by the prawn working with Gary. Gary would be a drone/scientist caste. I guess instead of ant, probably more similar to Tyranids with synapse creatures.
That was even stated in the film, if I recall correctly.
@@htth3152 Not stated in the film directly, but Blomkamp has confirmed it
@@adamthaxton3157 yea when I saw the movie in the original release, that was the conclusion I came to. I also felt that the fuel source was more of like a super conductive stem cell fluid, hence when Vicus came into contact with it, his body tried to fight it off but it just overwrote his cell structure.
@@adamthaxton3157 Strange. I do remember a line somewhere in the beginning of the film, when there's clips from "interviews" with various people laying out exposition. Went something like "they're like social insects, they have workers and a queen. Without their queen they don't know what to do, they don't have initiative". I don't remember the exact wording.
Rewatched the beginning. Yep, it's there, though turns out I got false memories about it. No queen was mentioned. Maybe the scene just fused with the Blomkamp's commentary in my mind.
Around 14:55 -
"What we have stranded on Earth, in this colony, is basically the workers. They don't particularly think for themselves, they will take commands, they don't have initiative. They'd lost their leadership for whatever cause, we presume illness."
I keep thinking of the unbearable horror of this event from the perspective of the prawns. It’s such a disaster it’s really interesting to see how it happens
Neill blomkamp did such a great job establishing how evil and vile MNU is and their intentions. Wikus isn’t the most likable person either, you sympathize with him when he’s faced with becoming a prawn and battling all kinds of different groups. It’s a really emotional and sad and film about how humans are so hellbent on annihilation
You'd be terrified of aliens with crazy tech if faced with that as reality as well. I think most of us would be.
I say those xeno scum deserve it!
The fact that the Prawns where actually sick and needed help is what makes this story even more messed up.
@@VisceralCarbon It is based on how humans treat our own refugees, sadly, so I'm not exactly surprised.
Not really familiar with South Africa’s history, are you?
Love the video. Some clarifications:
6:11 Kid threw a lolipop. Wicus tried to distract the kid with candy. Kid threw it at his head. Chris (yes that aliens name is literally Chris) and his kid don't do cat food. Hugs not drugs lol
7:05 The gangs eat prawns because they think it will give them the attributes of a prawn. The ability to use their weapons and have their super strength. Like a cannibal voodoo version of "you are what you eat." Yes it's crazy.
7:22 The father was mainly mad about prawns dying because it makes the relocation seem tyrannical
8:35 It's not that no one ever survived the harvest. Its that this type of event has never happened before. No human has ever become a hybrid of human and alien tissues. They want the samples to be of him in the middle stage of transformation because they already
31:00 The movie mentions that most, if not all, of the prawns we see are from a 'worker class.' The prawns apparently lost their leadership; maybe from disease or something else. Workers are described as aimless and can be directed or guided pretty easily if you know what you are doing. We even see the gangs mention that prawns will believe anything you tell them. They don't know what's going on because they don't need to know. The aren't the ones making decisions. They were malnourished because their leaders weren't feeding them. The only one who may have been from the leader class, or someone who worked with the leader class, is Chris. Implying that this classism is socially formed, not biologically. On the other hand
Thanks, its when people get little things like this wrong in videos (probably because they weren't paying attention to the movie/game) that really bother me.
The alien fluid was supposed to be fuel. But like everything else with the prawns all their tech binds with their DNA. When Wikus gets sprayed by the Alien fluid it enters his bloodstream and most likely the prawn DNA and their technology within it starts to bind with his DNA and change it. Turning him into a prawn. Allowing him to use their weapons and technology. I love this movie. I love how Wikus really grew some balls and fought back at the end even tho he was turning into a monster. I'd love to see a part 2 and have CJ come back and actually fix him.
I'd like the aliens to come back and kill all the humans.
@@DG-pk3fh Or at least comeback and kill on the edgelords commenting on RUclips videos.
@@eirmundgundnand9442lmao w man
@@eirmundgundnand9442why is that edgy? The humans in this movie would definitely deserve it
The war mech contradicts what you think is the back story. It’s design is that on the prawn body type, meaning they didn’t just mutate in the ship during their trip.
There's no point building tech you can't operate, and this disease completely changes your physiology and DNA. If you're already an advanced civilization it makes complete sense you'd design new tech to use with your new bodies as you already understand the physics and engineering to build the mech/spaceship/space gun
I am wondering. Maybe there is another species out there that look like the prawn and initially created their tech; because all of their tech is designed for their physiology and DNA. What if another species figured out a way to mutate other living species into their species. I will note though that the mech that Vickus pilots at the end fits his still human frame perfectly. Now I'm not saying I believe the suggestion I put above; just wondering. I mean the fact that their "fuel" causes Vickus to mutate into a prawn and that the prawn are aware of this and supposedly have a cure is odd; but it's for the story.
I think possibly the ship is a generation ship where something went horribly wrong causing the the population to starve on the ship and earth may not have been their original destination.
@@hamsterwolf I suspect you are probably right about Earth not being their destination or more ships would have arrived. But I suspect something else went wrong with something in the ship that forced them to land someplace habitable while the ship was repaired. Possibly it had a self-repair function; though it seemed really poorly maintained for something like that. I suspect that the crew being starving had to do with them being not especially bright without the command staff: IE: Christopher and Paul; to tell them what to do and they weren't even smart enough to seek food without somebody to tell them. I didn't realize until I read the Wiki for the movie that the dismembered prawn that Christopher finds in the weapons base was Paul. I wonder if the pair weren't mated and CJ was their child. It would explain why Christopher was so upset about seeing Paul.
its still possible, remember Vickus human form fits really well. So the mecha can adjust its cockpit
From the wiki:
"According to David Meng of Weta Workshop, the vast majority of the aliens are worker-class "drones", explaining why they were so lost and ineffectual. Christopher Johnson is one notable exception to this rule."
Work smarter not harder. Which is what Christopher took to heart. Made him smarter. /s would be hilarious and sad if this was true thougj. Would be neat if it ended up being a mix of two genetically different prawns which is why some have more vivid colors than others. Like the darker colored ones are workers or fighters. And the brighter ones are more intelligent and "beautiful". Kinda like some species here on earth. Not my preferred world. But could make a little sense. But seems kinda contrived and filled with tropes. My suggestion. Not the movie itself.
@ roanoke gaming needs to see this, it literally says it in the movie idk how he missed it
That's also, essentially, said in the movie as well, funny enough.
It could be indicated by color.
Christopher and CJ are both green and very smart.
But the other colors are not very smart.
I bet green ones work as overseers or something for the workers.
I really like how human the Prawn’s expressions are. It helps gives a visual on the fact that even though these beings are vastly different to us, even though they are not humans, they are still people. *Just like us.*
The human like expressions allow our brains to connect with the Prawns easier, allows us to understand better.
I like how those "small insects" are just unsubtly altered flood combat forms that were left over from bloncamp's halo movie he was working on before this.
Not combat forms. Combat are fully grown flood hosts
Aka marines or elites
Man I truly wonder how they would have made the flood infection scenes and transformation/mutation on the original movie, I ever wonder how chief armor looked since some stuff did look like stuff infames but had some altered parts on the designs, if I'm not mistaken there was a photo recently of how shangeilli would have looked like on the cancelled movie
My take: The fluid caused genetic restructuring to adapt the aliens to better deal with space travel, microgravity, radiation. The carapace of insects isn't "alive" in the same way as bones, replacing bulky muscles with long, lanky tendons means far less squishy tissue to potentially irradiate/mutate. Maybe a low, medicinal dose caused just enough alteration to provide protecion, but some overexposure, viral/bacterial infection, or autoimmune response (or failure) caused much more severe changes, altering/destroying whatever processes "resisted" the effects.
your bones are actually alive, very much so.
He states "aren't alive like bones are"
The battle mech does still look reminiscent of their current form, having the kind of droopy mandibles if I'm remembering this movie right. Also, imagine the feeling of having your endoskeleton turn into an exoskeleton. 🤣
I can't state how much I've wanted this video. I'm surprised that you just made it.
I hope you enjoy it! :)
We need more movies like District 9 and Chappy. Absolute gold
Interesting theory, but I highly doubt the filmmakers intended the prawns to be the result of some kind of disease that turns you insectoid. The intent was the prawns have always been an insectoid species, but the transformation Wikus undergoes is less a disease, and more a very unfortunate side effect of exposure to the pure, distilled DNA-based fuel the prawns use to power their technology, in this case rewriting one's genetic code to that of the prawns causing a transformation into one.
I believe some behind-the-scenes information and interviews explained that their species has different castes like bees or ants, with higher caste members essentially acting as "queens", being more intelligent leaders giving direction to the otherwise aimless "drones".
The premise behind the ship that arrived at earth is that the ship's leadership died, possibly due to accident or illness, so the ship automatically travelled to the nearest habitable planet, in this case Earth. But with the ship now solely occupied by aimless, directionless drones that don't fully comprehend their own technology, the ship just sat there for 3 months with the trapped aliens wallowing in their own filth, becoming malnourished and ill until humans cut their way inside.
As for why Christopher and CJ are more intelligent than most other prawns, this is explained that the "colony", in this case the refugee population on Earth, needs some kind of leadership to function, so a drone eventually developed higher intellect to fill the role of leadership caste, with Christopher being the lucky one to do so, and this likely passed on to his son CJ as well. How exactly this happened isn't clear, tho its possibly similar to how bee larvae are fed royal jelly to become queens.
One final tidbit, I believe the insectoid creatures in the "cockfighting" ring are likely just another insectoid species native to the prawns homeworld that they had aboard their ship. As an aside, if you notice the creature's design is very similar to that of Flood infection forms from Halo. I suspect this may be a holdover from director Neil Blomkamps involvement with the Peter Jackson produced live action Halo film from 2007 which sadly fell apart in production and never saw the light of day.
And yes, according to Blomkamp a sequel is being worked on, still in early stages tho.
I think this actually makes the most sense. Except I do think Chris was already apart of a more elevated caste which is why he was already in the main cockpit of the mothership. The rest I agree with 100%
I assumed the cockfighting creatures were also from the Prawns' home world.
How soon after they arrived on Earth was Christopher's ship ejected? Maybe he was going to get help, but got held up because he didn't have energy to get ship back up to the mothership.
@@CeeJayThe13th I'm pretty sure they're native to South Africa man
@@THEINTERNETANOMALY so you think that's a an actual animal that currently lives on Earth?
So a couple of things: they’re not building the guns on earth, they brought them with them. And two, the aliens were named similar to how slaves were named, so double first names was common. Also if you look at the sides of their heads is their identification painted right on their exoskeleton.
Oh, and the child alien threw a lollipop at Vickes. A can of cat food chucked even by a little insectoid would leave a bump.
And his boss was mad that too many aliens got killed, not peacekeepers. They were mad about the bad optics of killing aliens.
Final edit, I promise: You know how in the start of the movie, the news talks about how their might be a caste system at play with the Prawns? Well, you’ll notice how there’s only three green Prawns, Garrus, CJ, and Prawned Vickas. Every other alien isn’t green in exoskeleton.
Yeah that's also why they're so much smarter, because they are part of some higher caste, they have at least human level intelligence which all the other prawns lack. They are no quite eusocial like ants or bees since all prawns can reproduce and all have some level of free will but they are closer to that than humans are, who are pretty much all equal in intelligence and capability. I think that it's likely the caste is divided into three groups, the worker drones (almost all prawns seen in the movie), a middle caste which perform technical jobs run businesses etc, and then a leader class who are probably highly intelligent and good and processing large ammounts of data at once.
Ur right with the slave thing thrown into ghettos treated like shite and literally alienated then made addicted to a “substance” the identification could b reference to how slave owners literally branded slaves to know they “owned” them what race of ppl does that remind u of? It could be good social commentary or coincidence
Great movie tho, good take too nun off this aliens coming here to invade it’s like they became stranded here or maybe they were a slave race and their masters left them here cuz they didn’t have anymore use for them
District 10 is coming soon the director confirmed it I can’t wait
Garrus' sidekick was extremely yellow right? Maybe he's yet another caste, like a bodyguard caste?
I know a person who was in production with the film. Said the second film was going to be Vickes leading a revolution on earth as turning into an alien made him smarter and feel more connections to the aliens.
@@theblockchaindoesntlie4503 Not Fair, Truly
I love this movie, the gritty 'realistic' sci fi nature of it, the amazing design of the prawns, the weapons, the sound design. Criminally underrated imo. Really wish there had been a sequel.
Speaking of diseases, I recommend a video on the Quarians of Mass Effect and how their biology deals with diseases with a weaken immune system.
which tl;dr a common cold can even kill them without proper preparations and slow methodical adaptation since they lived in ships with no exposure to natural environment
Yet back on Rannoch their bodies carried seeds of plants and stuff like that? Which explains that their Immune system was more of a symbiotic one? I am grasping at straws here 🤷♂️
I had my own little theory that wasn't too far off from this one.
That the Prawns used *a* fluid as a way to alter their DNA to be more compatible with the planet they're about to land on, and their tech only responds to that fluid to keep other species from using their own weapons against them. It was never originally a fuel, but there was some cross contamination upon arriving at or on the way to Earth.
Like maybe a fuel cell was damaged for any number of reasons, and mixed with the genetic fluid, causing the Prawns to experience deteriorating intellect after prolonged exposure. The fuel that was gathered, was contaminated by the genetic fluid but was still usable as fuel.
Only reason I'd be hesitant to call it a proper disease is that it's not exactly the most contagious thing in the world. Humans are in constant contact with Prawns, and are even sometimes coated in their bodily fluids. Some are definitely having sex with them, and others are eating them (possibly even raw). If it was slightly contagious, there'd be more cases of humans turning into Prawns but our protagonist seems to be the first. Which is why I believe they purposely "infect" themselves to quickly adapt to the environment they're about to be in, but something went wrong with this batch in particular.
Great theory!
Cool idea
intressting
It´s interesting that he fled from the shootout in the mech, terrified for his life, so this implies that his fear took over his body, so he first ran away.
Then later he realisedd that he had the power and the ability to fight. So in this regard it´s rather realistic I think and a legit behavior for his character.
Combining the "ant workers without a queen" theory that seems to be the consensus of most places discussing this movie, and Roanoke's that the rest of the prawns are actually altered like Wikus:
I would make the case that perhaps the alteration is not unintentional, but the "prawn" form is bioengineered for interstellar travel/exploration/colonization. In addition to the point that their mechs seem to be designed to look like their current form, the increased strength, exoskeleton, and their third pair of limbs may be engineered to help them survive in the hostile environment of an alien world or being stuck on a ship in deep space.
Similarly, structuring a crew like a colony insect (the major of the crew being basic worker drones who we see the most of, big CJ and little CJ being an officer/engineer caste, and their leadership caste allegedly being destroyed) may help them maintain cohesion and limit social drift out in the far reaches of space.
It's possible that the stuff that sprays wikus is the stuff that makes a particular caste to begin with. If they've got a few castes then there'd need to be some way to pick which caste a particular person is. Then you use that same stuff as part of the tech to restrict some tech based on caste and it would make some amount of sense that getting sprayed by a canister would alter you. This would also line up well with the theory that the canister is for a leadership caste and was needed to activate the ship itself. Also would explain why wikus appears to be just as smart as he used to be, the thing isn't making him a worker it's making him a higher caste, or at least trying
Unfortunately only the creators know (or even they don't know) the truth behind these species. I mean, who would create anything new without imagining some backstory for it?
This right here might be the most underrated movie of all time and 100% deserved a prequel of some kind.
Yes!👍👍
It's official everyone,the sequel is coming.
@@immagoddamnonion1169 where it was confirmed?
@@immagoddamnonion1169 Woohoo!
Omg thanks for this, I’m so happy for its sequel, just hope it’s done well
I think the aliens just gathered all the “prawn”-effected people, and shipped them away. But luckily, or unluckily, the ship found its way to earth.
Which makes 0 sense because wikus could only work the technology when he started to transform.
@@1braincellwhm the alien ship being controlled by prawns is a mystery. Just a theory, dude. But yeah, maybe the og tech is not prawn specific, and the current alien weapons were built by prawns to have a dna lockout.
One thing I hate about some sci-fi stories is that everyone wants to walk around alien planet without proper biological protection
i also dislike that trope .
Actors do not want to walk around in space suit props so they enter an alien enviroment, check the air with some instrument, notice that it is breathable and remove their helmets. I would love for that to be subverted by someone STOP you idiot! When the new crewman begin to unlatch the helmet.
@@michaelpettersson4919 or the crewman just spontaneously combusts.
@@michaelpettersson4919 i would be okay with it if that very act of taking off the helmet didnt lead to them dying of alien diseases which always happens.
@@Narko_Marko You haven't seen much Star Trek then. It is rare for them to face more ill effect then to comment on the smell. The SHOULD contract something nasty, or more precisely Crewman Stupid should.
Crossing to another galaxy (plus stopping to restock before coming back to Earth) and back within 3 Earth years sounds like pretty efficient travel to me…
In the final ship scenes garrison searches through many galaxies before choosing theirs.
District 9 is so underrated.
It really deserves a second movie.
Also that scene with the fingernails always makes my skin crawl.
It's too bad that it is at it's core a piece of genocide propoganda, Given that this movie specificallly portrays white south africans as the bad guys, and whats happening to the white south africans now.
Love this video! My theory was always that the fluid was used to create a sort of warrior class among the species (hence why all the weapons are bound to their dna) improving durability and survivability and increasing aggression but over exposure causing brain damage. It could be engineered as a portion of the fuel mixture and as a fail-safe, administered to a ships passengers in case of emergency to better adapt to adverse conditions on an unfamiliar planet. It was intentionally administered in this case but there was some failure to release the passengers leading to the state they were found in. Otherwise very much the same as what you said here, great work!
I like this theory more, because having a decease in fuel seems wierd to me and the idea that the passingers would be so exposed to it in the ship (if it was a decease in the fuel).
If it was a decease it should also have evolved to spread, but there doesent seem to be much that would indicate that.
@@tatuvarvemaa5314 hey, not to be a dick but more of a heads up. The word you’re trying to write is disease, the word you are writing decease means death
@@tatuvarvemaa5314 It doesn't necessarily have to be a disease in the fuel. I think it's just a byproduct of the fuel. Think about it, our fuel pretty much carries a disease (it being a carcinogen and all.) It could just be that. I like to think they were something else, and on their way to take out earth, but either before or when they got here, there was a fuel spill on the ship which turned them all into shrimps. The ship went into lockdown to prevent them getting out (which is why they just hovered over earth with no opening) meaning they know the dangers their fuel can be to them and to other lifeforms. Also, this is why the main prawn needed to make his own fuel from their batteries/tech to power the ship. I also think his ship was meant to be an escape pod, heading back to their original planet where they have a cure for the fuel poisoning, or to bring more of their own for the invasion, cleanup of their ship cause they know it could cause a hazzard for the planet (basically like us cleaning up the BP oil spill,) or whatever they had planned, though it malfunctioned and just dropped because of the fuel malfunction it wasn't gassed up.
Ey! I thought the same. Copying my comment here:
What I think is that the prawns are all soldiers modified for war. They were not like that originally, but were muted to have better capabilities in combat. This also explains why humans can operate their weapons when muted. The weapons are for super-soldier use only. This also explains their lack of knowledge, because they are basically guinea pigs. The intelligent one is a scientist that has to be in control of this failed experiment. Also explains why most of the tech we see is weapons and not replicators or a juicer, a washing machine, etc.
I always thought the obsession with cat food was because it's established that humanity basically isn't feeding the Prawns. Once humans realized they couldn't get anything out of the prawns they basically just left them to die and it was only the black market dealers who were interested in their tech who brought cat food into the mix as "payment" that created the great desire for catfood. Since other than eating other prawns or eating a human and risking retaliation eating cat food was the safest method of obtaining food. When law enforcement realized the prawns weren't just going to die off like they'd hoped they would go on to switch over to using cat food too.
You can see multiple meat booths were humans are handing out meat to prawns though.
It's more likely that some chemical in the food reacts with their brains in a way similar to how some drugs react with ours, or that it contains some vital nutrients that they are otherwise lacking.
@@MartinFinnerup Well again, I always figured it was being used as either payment or rations. It didn't HAVE to be cat food, that just happened to be what the black market had on hand and since it proved effective that's what they stuck with. The black market or government gets the Prawns "cooperation" and the Prawns get food.
You'd eat damn near anything if they put it in front of you too. It is after all shown that the Prawns will eat any sort of meat given the chance. They could very well have stuck with cat food simply because it's cheap and the Prawns know they have it. I mean, if they started to bring in Wagyu beef cattle or something do you think the Prawns would be content knowing they've been getting fed literal animal food for years?
@@Goldenkitten1Maybe but the fact that the black market started it. Makes me think that the drug theory holds some weight. Honestly it could be both simultaneously even when you consider. That dark beers and wine have at least some nutritional value. While also being intoxicating and addictive,plus it would be well hilarious. I mean just imagine Meow mix being the Prawns equivalent of smoking a blunt.😂😂
This movie still fascinates me to this day because of all the mystery surrounding it I’ve always wanted to sequel, and tbh it’s not too late for one, a prequel would probably be the easiest to make work
I like your theory, but i would like to add this, the prawns were clearly escaping in desperation, a lot of them were probably just civilians, if they put you in a ship, escaping from earth, of maybe just your country, would you be able to know everything about that evacuation ? No, so i guess that most of those prawns are just civilians that want to go home but they simply can't fix their ship, they just don't know how
And the movie is filmed like a documentary, clearly biased against the prawns, so most of the prawns acting violent footage is probably there to make them look more like those animalistic beasts, however they must be a lot more like us, but living in extreme poverty, hunger, in stress for being in another planet with an hostile species that treats you like shit and literally abducts your people to make experiments while always going into your house pointing a gun to your face while talking bureaucracy bullshit with an itchy finger just waiting for the moment to kill you
I would be kind of pissed too tbh
I'm waiting for there to be a A movie
Were humans land on planet prawn and... You get by now..
Do you know how long space travel takes? They didn't mention anything about FLT (if they had it, I would imagine humanity would be in an uproar about reverse engineering it), so let's just assume they get as close as you can. You're still talking about tens of thousands of years for travel from areas near the Milky Way, or if they're really from another galaxy entirely, that's a couple million years, at the minimum. It's more like putting you on a ship, then your descenadants so far from you that you might even consider them a different subspecies arrive at a different planet, only ever knowing the ship they were on and whatever else was taught to them
@@jbeltz5347 The 3 years it's supposedly takes to fix the arm is most likely just the travel time. We don't know how much alien bueroucracy there is.
@@jbeltz5347 i mean, Christopher Johnson said it would take 3 years for them to come back for him, so they have FTL travel or something similar
@@walorianfederation666 they wouldn't be capturing us for the weapons like in the movie tho, they would probably laugh at how pathetic it is
I think it’s fairly possible the prawns are more of a confederation of multiple alien species brought into one species by the alien juice. Or possible a kind of slave caste with some subspecies holding higher levels of intellect.
^^ The clue for me is that the heavy armour is in the form of a prawn's body, at least signifying that their race is supposed to mainly look as they appear in the film. I would then guess that the DNA-altering substance is used to assimilate intelligent species they encounter throughout their interstellar travel.
I want to believe that the prawns in the movie were the lower class/undesirables of their civilization, and the elite just grouped them up on a ship and hoped for the best, maybe because of overpopulation or just plain sadism.
I mean nearly every prawn in the movie seems to be lazy, misguided, or just plain dumb.
If the point of the fluid inside of their tech, is part of the system to prevent non-prawn from operating their tech, then the fluid is likely the mechanism that is recognizing prawn biology, and non prawn biology.
If your species wants to keep it's technology safe from being stolen by other species, then a mechanism that converts creatures that are tampering with your technology (trying to steal it ) into your species, achieves that to a dramatically effective degree.
"You want to know about prawn tech? Ok, you prawn now"
I think it's both, the juice could be used by a higher prawn caste to turn people into slaves
@@sneedclavehere8918 it's because the movie is a metaphor for human refugee situations, and slums with other races or "aliens", and how poverty, ghettos by the government, social non acceptance, and being separated from your roots, can make anyone or any group "dumb and lazy" that would have otherwise been a hyper intelligent society, at least when talking about mass groups.
Edit: and then be percieved as inherently undesirable by even benign and regular people such as the ones in these comments. And the movie ofc. I mean cmon they even have a racial slur for them which is the default that everyone knows them by.
I would like to mention that falling into the cooling tank of a nuclear reactor is not explicitly dangerous as long as you remain near the surface. the water diffuses the radiation so you would only be affected if you went to deep into the pool
Pics or it's fake
@@PR-xm5zc or research it yourself
@@PR-xm5zc bro wants him to jump into a nuclear reactor 💀💀💀
This dude thinking he's smart but most people here saw the same reddit thread you got that info from
@@danieljohnson7354 Jump into it for us
One of the best movies of all time.
What I like about it especially is that this movie basically turns the Humans and our behavior towards the Prawns into what we normally see from the Alien Species im such movies, meaning trying to inslave and overpower a seemingly harmless Culture
They aren't harmless though. They are a serious threat to the planet.
@@TristanBanks how are they a threat to the planet? They didn't do anything wrong.
@@JJM8043 They are hypercarnovires with serious brain degradation causing them to get violent extremely easily. They are the only ones that can operate their advanced technology even with the brain degradation.
They breed through egg clutches so their population can expand much faster than humans.
In a few generations they would have depleted the earth of most life if humans allowed them.
@@TristanBanks you're only responding now?
I asked this question almost 2 weeks ago.
@@JJM8043 they are a carnivorous life form that can use weapons and reproduce asexually. That is a HUGE problem lmao
I always thought it was weird that he turned into a prawn but the idea that the aliens were never like that and got infected the same way he did I feel like I just put on glasses for the first time again. I've always loved this movie so much and I like it even more now tbh.
Man, once I discovered your channel I was hooked, I love the fact that you can break down so easily the scientific part of the movies and explain them to us in a way that we "non scientific" people can easily understand, I love movies, sci-fi are my favourite, and you make it possible to view the plot from a different perspective and give us insights about what's happening, and why, the things that we see are happening. Keep up the great work man. Love your channel.
While your theory regarding Prawn creation is interesting, I have a different and simpler one: Christopher and CJ come from a "royal caste" of Prawns who are more intelligent and independent. Eusocial species of insects are actually fairly intelligent and independent at an individual level, more so than previously, thought, but they're still very collectively-minded overall. If you notice, the other Prawns or "workers" are quite social and intelligent in some regards, but lack the level of independence or rational thought that Christopher and CJ do, almost like they've no purpose.
It could be that this colony was forced to evacuate, but Christopher or his predecessor was one of the only royal caste members of the species to make it. He focused on trying to get back to the ship and thus didn't have as much incentive to manage the rest of his worker caste. However, the worker caste still display some collective behaviours like forming militant groups or defending royal caste members with greater mental faculties like Wikus.
I realy want to see what their major or soldier caste looks like.
@@julianswinton5355 Now see, I don't think they actually have major physiological differences the way normal eusocial insecy species do. Their powerful weaponry is likely an equalizing factor in that regard. Instead, I think caste differences are more psychological and in overall rational processing capabilities.
It could be that this supposed "royal caste" that Christopher and CJ hail from have enhanced intellectual capabilities to act as guides and develop the technologies of the species and are the ones who have actual understanding and introspection. Normal Prawns do have their own individuality, but they seem to be lacking a bit in comparison.
No need for them to be more intelligent, merely educated.
I've always thought of the "fuel" as being like a royal jelly and contains the dna of various levels of castes, or could give the next generation it's needed boost.
Sure it could be some enzyme based catylst for engines of some sort. I just thing with all their dna synched technology, this fuel would be dna or similar.
I have the District 9 artbook and they confirm this theory. "In colonial insect societies, such as ants or termites, there are casts within the species with specialized anatomy to fill specific roles. For the time during the development of D9 story this was the case for the alien refugees as well.." "..there were going to be two species of prawn in the movie and also two types of evo suits. each tailored to that subspecies specific anatomy..." Those ideas were dropped or never used, but who knows if it is going to be used in an (hopefully) sequel or prequel of the District 9 movie.
When I was a kid I always assume that the reason why garrus was different to the other prawn was because of two things.
It was either a prisoner ship and he was one of the very few wardens who survived, with his friend being a chill prisoner who at the very least understood what was going on.
Or because they were like insects most were probably a class of workers. And the others who didn't survive were the intelligent class.
My first guess was the prawns left behind were lower level worker bees with no direction and our red vest loving boy, Chris, and his son were just exceptional. But I'm really loving your theory too and it could make sense. I wish we could get a sequel. I've only been waiting 84 years. It's one of my all-time favorite sci-fi films and I need closure.
I absolutely loved your video here. District 9 is one of my most liked movies, and seeing such an in-depth look into what we could never know normally is just such a treat. Thank you
So I always figured the 'fluid' wasn't really fuel or diseased, but a catalyst for the fuel in the ship. You put the catalyst into the actual, usually inert fuel in the ship in controlled bursts. An enzyme reaction causes a release of massive amounts of stored chemical energy and then the ship flies. The enzyme is present is small amounts in the waste products of the fuel which is how the enzyme was filtered from other sources over years. And some prawn DNA and the enzymes super fast actions caused Wicus transformation into a prawn.
So bio fuel possibly made from prawn waste and other fuels mixed together to make a makeshift starter fluid
District 9 did it better than Avatar.
Oh, by far
I have long wondered whether a District 9 sequel is languishing in funding-hell but there has been talky-noise of it having been green-lit last year (2021), with the script currently being fleshed out.
I love Blomkamp's films but I do recognize why some people, particularly those with hundreds of millions of dollars to throw at movie production, would be leery of Neill Blomkamp. He routinely makes most humans, and the privileged rich in particular, appear to be horrible, selfish, greedy, and amoral AF. While I suspect quite a few of us, your audience that is, have similar views, it seems to scare off most studios that would otherwise be interested in Blomkamp's style.
EDIT: Neill Blomkamp grew up in SA during the waning years of Apartheid, when the violence was at its worst. He was sympathetic to the black majority being oppressed but he also witnessed a small number of people of all color and creed being completely evil to those they felt were below them. It clearly affected him on a deep level and we see it in his writing and films. For example, the Prawn Ghetto of District 9 is depressingly similar to the IRL shantytowns that surrounded Johannesburg and other large cities in South Africa from 1940s, and only started to replaced real houses and apartments going into the 2000s. The vile and disgusting attitudes of the MNU and their mercenaries toward Prawns, and even poverty-stricken humans, is another.
You're right, but you're missing one thing. Plenty of fiction with a budget does that. Blomkamp takes it a step further, with the fetishization of said elite's violent destruction.
I don't have those views at all but I still loved district 9 and elysium
I mean a lot of the actors in his movies are filthy rich bastards too. Have you seen what Matt Damon's house looks like?!
People aren't bad at all. We fell into a trap a long time ago making us servants of the few elites. We would have started phasing oil out years ago if it wasn't for them. They will not allow us to be free.
Movies from the biggest and most rich companies really have no issue showing rich guys as jerks
It was pretty clear the mnu were evil as shit when you notice that every prawn had "property of mnu" stamped onto their bodies mostly their heads/faces.
As sad as I am we never got district 10 I did still really love how this film was made. John the pawn was the best character, vikus didn't deserve him, but at least he did do right by him in the end. Funny that the s called savage alien was the one teaching the human about humane treatment and mercy
Just watched this again and it still holds up. Starts off kinda slow then into pure chaos.
Thank you for reviewing my favorite movie!
I always watch your videos when I'm feeling down or just need something to watch, it's always nice to see you post because it lights up my day.
Keep being amazing Roanoke.
Well I'm happy to help broham
@@RoanokeGaming your channel is terribly underrated.
I can't give your channel enough praise, you are a true Giga Chad Biologists
I wonder if the cat food thing might be somehow related to the presence of particular proteins in canned cat food? I know that cats are completely incapable of making taurine, and it's also super important for cats to have it or else they can develop dilated cardiomyopathy which is life-threatening. Maybe these aliens need some other kind of protein for that same reason? It's something they're dependent on that their body is incapable of producing on its own?
U watch the whole thing? He says it right at the end
He’s probably pretending he didn’t so he sounds smarter. He would’ve otherwise deleted / edited the comment.
@@Turian_Hustle You sound like such a tool
@@Turian_Hustle maybe he wanted to comment his thoughts b4 finishing
@@Turian_Hustle or he's like me and never seen the movie
17:10 "He's made of delicious meat" That's some vicious mockery on a man being turned into shrimp food. Absolutely foul 😂
Weirdly enough this was my favorite movie as a kid.
Hope I do it justice!
Hang on, Nitrogen is not a Noble Gas. It it special because it has an extreme affinity for itself and forms diatomic triple bonds, but Noble Gas has a very specific definition of having fully-realized “electron shells” and being chemically inert on their own, not because they’re sharing strong bonds with another atom.
I always assumed it was a simple refugee ship. I saw them as normal, average people that got stuck on an alien world and just go about being confused, scared, lost, and just reacting to the situation.
You made my day with this cult classic!
Can you make one about the French horror film "Mutants" it's covers the hole turning process and also is pretty good
I can take a look!
@@RoanokeGamingnice, first time I'm early enough on a vid so this wouldn't get lost in the comments :)
Love your content
You have to wonder what level of reality of aliens being treated would be like, is this an accurate representation or projecting ral life scenarios onto sci fi? Anyway well in for doing this film its class
Humans don't have the greatest track record thats for sure
I’d like to think that we’d be better than that but yk, humanity sucks
We do this sort of thing to eachother, why wouldn't we do it to aliens?
Defiance did it better tbh. And it is hard to feel sympathy to the alien species in this one. Especially since they do pose a threat to humanity.
@Roanoke Gaming could you go over the zombie virus in the French film "Mutants"
Love the content bro
Chappie, elysium, and district 9. All FANTASTIC movies from these guys.
District 9 was so weird but eventually become one of my favs, nothing better than aliens and mutations. That leak analogy reminded me of Pandorum (2009).
Personally, I rather liked that Wikus was by no means an action hero. He was scared and confused, and his survival instincts overrode a lot of his common sense and personal honour, right up until the end when he finally decided to complete his journey from corporate stooge to underdog hero.
I think that many of us would not have had the cajones to do even that!
It helps to make him look human, rather than a larger-than-life ideal hero, like the wisecracking hunks of the 1980's.
To be clear, I love those kinds of movies, I'm just saying that it was nice to see the protagonist go from a spineless weakling with a poor moral fiber to a more compassionate and heroic person!
The less human Wikus got, the more humane he became.
I am also perfectly fine with there being no sequel. It lets us imagine things for ourselves, and at this point in time, I don't trust the movie industry not to ruin the whole thing with tone-deaf virtue signalling, a dead-on-arrival expanded universe, and "funny" comedic relief that butchers any mood that the movie would otherwise try to establish. With some poorly conceived political messaging on top that will age about as well as milk with polio.
That second part had no right being as accurate as it was
I've always wanted a sequel but damn, you're probably right about how it'd be ruined nowadays.
I'm picturing a Disney-fied sequel filled with poorly animated CGI action and constant wisecracks and want to die (even in a best cased scenario it'd be about as "good" as Independence Day: Resurgence)
Way too accurate
Spot on.
Man I love you talking about gravity having an influence on the species and their older biology coming from older years, I wish u did more of these, hell even create your won
One big flaw in your theory that something changed them while on the ship into the appearance that they have now. Their language. If they didn't always look like they do now, or at least for a very long time. Then they wouldn't have a language to communicate. If something did change them quickly while on the ship, then the way they talked would of changed too. And since they have a language that they all understand, then that means they've had the same bodies for a long time. I hope that make sense.
Well, there's some argument that the language is a thing like mors code or short hand that everybody is taught and with their altered appearance they all started speaking in that.
The mech suite which was clearly not built on earth looks like the prawn body type. So no I do not believe they somehow mutated in route.
They are insects. They have a class system. If the leaders died off for whatever reason the drones wouldn't know what to do and the ship was just programmed to land on the nearest inhabitable planet. Either through AI or a last ditch effort by the last surviving leader drone.
Wikus started understanding their language more as he turned into one
@@JL-el9kb We don't know since how long they exist, or how long and how far they were travelling. Maybe even for thousands of years. It is possible, if they have the technology for a spaceship that can travel that far. And so if they were travelling even just for a hundred years, they adapt to their current selves, they teach their own history, and what happened to them if it is a mutation, create a language, they understand it, they accept the situation. They get used to it, so they build the mechs in a way to make it look familiar to them (like humans imagine humanoid walkers (Gundam, Arbalest, etc.)).
On the other side of the argument:
Humans build robotic dogs! Or look at an AT-AT! If alien species look at those, will they think we looked like that before? And I don't think that mech the Prawns used looks like a Prawn (the alien lifeform itself) (apart from the mouth tentacles). More like it was just an effective mecha that can walk, shoot, jump, punch, etc. equipped with heavy armour and an intelligent AI assistant. It can be only just effective with a design familiar to them. They gave in some of themselves. I doubt it was built before they boarded the ship, but if it was, they might have modified it.
At the end I've got lost in my own thoughts... dang. I hope you know what I tried to say with this long monologue
@@WarriorOO2 it takes 3 of our years got a round trip between their world and Earth. It is stated in the movie.
I want more strange big budgets movies like this, I was absolutely blown away seeing this for the first time.
Yea, but this wasn’t a big budget movie lol. It was actually a low budget movie, costing only $30 million to make. Other movies in its class cost 100s of millions whereas this $30 million dollar movie was created on a very small budget, something Neil Blomkamp is very famous for doing.
@@NeckPUNCHattack Wasn't aware of that, shows that Neil Blomkamp successfully pulled it off. However, I just googled, low-budget seems to be everything below $5 million, so we could consider this a mid-budget movie :D
@@musicbyoakly That’s all well and good, but It seems that you’re trying to find a “I’m not right but neither are you” middle ground response. I wasn’t trying to school you in my other comment btw, but I feel I should point out that if you simply google “district 9 budget” without using any words to try to sway the search (like “high or low” budget), 3 of the 5 top returns will show in their headlines that in this genre of movie, the $30 million budget is considered a low budget film (compared to their AAA counterparts that cost 100s of millions to make)
You’re trying to interpret it differently, but like I stated in my original comment, I said $30 million was called low budget for “this class of movie.” Middle budget films are a more recent term of classification in media and you’re trying to apply a more recent term (that is just media being silly tbh; it’s either a big or small budget in the industry) to something that just doesn’t apply.
Fact is that, like I stated, his film is considered a “low budget” film. That’s how the industry sees it, so I’m not trying to interpret it any other way.
@@NeckPUNCHattack
Chill bro, I'm sure he didn't want to "school" anybody.
One of the best alien movies, if not the best I’ve seen. Such a short introduction but explains everything so well.
For some reason I never picked up on the fact this was a virus despite being called fuel and i assumed as a kid it was just had a mutation side effect.
Saying that the prawns are possibly not naturally a species, and that their changes are comparable to a fuel breach, god that revelation just thoroughly mindblowed me
Because it's not a freaking virus. It's multi-purpose nanites they extracted from every piece of their scrap over the years.
The nanomachines attempted to "fix" Vickus after getting into his system, deeming his human anatomy being some sort of horrifying, diseased malformation.
Well if its a virus or some kind of infection. Why havent other humans changed? I mean prawn and humans do interact alot. Some one defently doing the freaky with them. Not to mention the experiments. Hell they eat prawn. Yet the virus doeaent spread. It only spreads in the fuel.? This virus or altered mind set is also passed down to there children. So if its a virus its clearly still going around changing them? Always bugged me that the so called bad guys. Have no idea what is going on or how to duplicate it.
i mean its possible because most of their tech are bio coded a bio code that allow specific prawn to access certain equipment like the war mech might be need, a virus overriding dna isnt far fetched idea.
at this point its possible the fuel is more a "key card" or activation requirement for the mother ship.
I mean, why should they take the risk and use a Virus infected fuel and not just normal one?
I really think it's just highly concentrated Prawn DNA for some kind of Bio Code to use the tech.
District 9 was such a good movie, was heavily influenced by the xenophobic attacks that had been happening in South Africa and was also supposed to be a Halo movie
I felt so bad for the prawns. They really seemed like a harmless species and didn't deserve how they were treated
They have op warmechs
Agreed... the way (Christopher)he stood over his fellow prawngs in the human labs...
You know it really messed him up for a second, seeing his fellow prawngs experimented and cut one like that....
Even though he was in a middle of a firefight...
You can feel what he felt...
I also feel like honor is very important to them and he knows his rights and what I wrong and right and even what's illegal... Christopher and the kid is very inteligent...
@@joelrodriguez9820Alright but why are you putting so many periods this is not a soap opera 😂
I always thought it was more a class system, with true prawns like the main scientist prawn being fewer and captured races transformed Into less intelligent worker prawns. Eventually the true prawns almost entirely dying out leaving a ship of technology they were bioengineered to use, but not mentally equipped to.
there's a theory that the prawns are a slave race to a higher tier species (think like the grunts in halo) and they actually captured ancient humans and bred them to then gene alter them with the goop then once they got the gene altering right they just turned all the humans and got the prawns to asexually reproduce
Interesting
I have the District 9 artbook and they confirm this theory. "In colonial insect societies, such as ants or termites, there are casts within the species with specialized anatomy to fill specific roles. For the time during the development of D9 story this was the case for the alien refugees as well.." "..there were going to be two species of prawn in the movie and also two types of evo suits. each tailored to that subspecies specific anatomy..." Those ideas were dropped or never used, but who knows if it is going to be used in an (hopefully) sequel or prequel of the District 9 movie.
Rather than a disease that makes them dumber, I think it's funnier to think that the prawn homeworld was just rounding up the dregs of society and shipping them off to other planets to get rid of them. Christopher was smarter because he's the pilot, and the only one supposed to make the return trip.
This man really just said if there's anything I've learned from Mass Effect, then proceed to forget the Quarians and Turians literally have there own side quests/mini stories explaining on how careful you have to be with "Interspecies Relationships".
Dude I remember watching this on HBO and I thought for the longest time that this whole movie was just a fever dream
It exists! 🤣
21:26 - Just a heads up, nitrogen is not a noble gas. The noble gases are helium, krypton, radon, xenon, neon, and argon.
Lol I need to brush up on my chemistry
WAIt wait wait wait, KRYPTON IS A GAS?
I think a sequel would involve a full scale war. With Christopher taking to the home planet the news about Earth and the atrocities done to the species by humans. Humanity atoning for their crimes now have to deal with the repercussions.
*DISTRICT 9!!~* 🖤
Love this movie, I Love the concept,
I Love the designs...
But It makes me too sad...
A very human interaction with another species
@@RoanokeGaming And that's hard to watch... 😩
It's disturbingly realistic in that regard.
I could see how humanity would treat a species in need. I honestly think this film showed us how we would really act if something like this really happened.
You calling Christopher "Garrus" is making me laugh so hard! All I'm thinking about now is the fact that my Sheperd's boyfriend is a prawn! XD
South African gov't: "Prawns get paid cat food if they serve in our military."
South Africa conquers the planet with alien tech.
Ironic.
When I was a kid I saw this movie on a flight to thailand. I've never seen a movie like this and I got intrigued and kinda scared. The whole semester I couldn't stop thinking about it. My child brain couldn't make sense of it.
I always thought that the prawns seemed like they could be humans from the future, this alien disease having warped their physiology to the point of being unrecognizable. It seems like they were trying to return to earth, which they managed to do, but so far in the past that they are only recognized as aliens themselves. It would explain why Vikkas' transformation was possible, his DNA being compatible with their tech and his final transformation being identical to the other prawns
Interesting take.
Roanoke, Not only does the water spend several decades cooling the fuel rods, but it also affects their radiation. The water essentially acts as a biological shield with hydrogen absorbing and deflecting the radiation bouncing against it. This makes it completely safe for you to stand near the pool with no ill effects. You could swim in the water and be perfectly safe. WhatIf did an entire video on it.
I've been waiting for this video for a long time. Also can you explore the parasites from the parasites anine please. Really would appreciate that.
I can check it out!
We need District 10 already. The return of Christopher Johnson. Honestly, bothered me so much you didn't call him that. Iconic name.
The impression I got from the movie regarding their relative intelligence and the disparity between some of the Prawns was an ant-like caste system (albeit one where each caste can reproduce on its own rather than relying on a queen to do all the breeding). It's been a while since I saw the movie, but I recall them saying that their leaders and scientists had all died, and what remained were the workers.
Had the upper castes been self-segregating, then a disease might not have spread to the lower castes in the lower decks, but without leadership or guidance they began to starve as we saw them in the start of the movie when the humans broke into the ship.
If the smart one and his kid were remnants of the scientist class, they might want to keep that quiet to avoid being interrogated and/or dissected.
There is one problem with the theory explaining the strength of the prawns: life invests the least amount of resources that is required for survival. A very spectacular example of that are astronauts who spent a larger time in space and lost the majority of their muscle mass and bone density. When they come back to earth, they require a prolonged rehabilitation to regain much of the lost mucle mass and bone density.
So, along the laws of biology, prolonged exposure to the weaker gravity of earth should make the prawns loose much their of the skeletal and muscle mass, hence they should not be much more stronger then a human, considering the very similar base biology (similar within the context of an extraterrestial species).
Their strength is probably a matter of the exoskeleton biology
An endoskeleton is pretty neat, but exoskeletons can get you a lot of strength by bundling the muscles together, instead of wrapping them around a bone
This is more so just some observed life on Earth, wouldn't necessarily be the case across varying planets with different evolutions taking place. There's also the possibility they're engineered to not weaken, or the exoskeleton thing mentioned above
You don't need to be that deep and complex to reason this. Life is adapted to it's local environment, but that doesn't mean an alien species would be physically the same as us after a while on Earth because they can stay either frailer or sturdier than us. As we can see here on Earth the other animals are either frailer or sturdier than us, and they live in the exact same physics/gravity as us.
We don't know how strong they originally were; maybe the increased strength we see in the movie *is* a much lower level than they first had
@@left4twenty
Exoskeletons also have mechanical advantage. Muscles can only pull in straight lines. If you flex your arm your biceps pulls from below the shoulder, over the top of the bone against the forearm on the opposite side the elbow. With an exoskeleton the same muscle would pull diagonally to under the armpit.
I genuinely hope that Wings gets better. He clearly has struggled for most of his life, while a lot of his struggles are his own doing he does deserve stability in his life
Fun fact, swimming in a cooling pool of nuclear reactor ist pretty safe, you would need to practically dive up to arms length to the reactor to quickly absorb a lethal dose of radiation