Ambrosia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
missroserose) wrote2009-08-15 12:13 am
missroserose) wrote2009-08-15 12:13 am
On District 9, and human nature
Honestly? I think District 9 is going to be like Children of Men, for me. Which is to say, almost everyone I know will enjoy it from "moderately" to "a hell of a lot", the critics will sing its praises, and I'll be left going "Did I see the same movie?"
I get the point they were making, and I certainly appreciate the darker aspects of human nature they were trying to bring to light, but the complete lack of subtlety did nothing to win me over. Combine that with the facts that the lone pair of sympathetic characters get maybe a combined 25 minutes of screentime, most of the cinematography was in that awful nausea-inducing pseudo-documentary shakycam, and (as seems to be the norm for films Peter Jackson's had a hand in) there were probably more than half an hour's worth of CGI-laden action sequences that could have been dropped completely without hurting the story one bit, and I kind of wanted my two hours back. I mean, sure, the fight scenes were choreographed well - at least I could tell what was going on at any given moment, which doesn't quite seem to be the norm for shootouts in the movies any more - but I don't go to the movies to see explosions and effects, I go to see storytelling. And the story they told frankly didn't impress me.
I think what it comes down to is, I just don't like stories that are solely about how awful people can be to each other (or aliens, although since the aliens in most stories of this nature are stand-ins for some group of people I'm counting them in the same category). I already know what happens when a minority group becomes unpopular with the majority; I already know what's going to happen when one person has something of value in an environment where most people have nothing, I already know how things will play out when everyone involved is at the lowest common denominator of trust*. These things are not interesting to me, because they're predictable - people who are scared enough will always act a certain way, and others will react to them in a same way, and it's a vicious cycle that just creates more shit for everyone. I know all of that, you don't have to write your story specifically to cram that message down my throat.
What's interesting in a story isn't when people act shitty to each other. What's interesting in a story is when people overcome that instinct - because, no matter how desperate the situation, no matter how scared the people, there's always that opportunity to overcome the think-of-only-yourself urge and make the choice to be a decent human being. Think of the ferry scene in The Dark Knight, for example; that one little moment is quite possibly the biggest triumph in the whole story, and it doesn't even belong to a 'good guy'. That is what makes people (and stories about people) interesting - not when they behave according to their predictable reptilian brain, but when their higher instincts kick in and they do something no one expects, something that is not only protective of themselves but also promotes the survival of everyone involved*, something that inspires the rest of us to be better like them. But in stories like District 9, where almost every character is functioning at the absolute lowest level of interaction*, I just can't see the point.
*There are actually terms for these concepts in game theory, which I'm good at understanding instinctively but suck at explaining because math isn't my strong suit. It's interesting stuff, though, and quite applicable in the realms of psychology and economics.
I get the point they were making, and I certainly appreciate the darker aspects of human nature they were trying to bring to light, but the complete lack of subtlety did nothing to win me over. Combine that with the facts that the lone pair of sympathetic characters get maybe a combined 25 minutes of screentime, most of the cinematography was in that awful nausea-inducing pseudo-documentary shakycam, and (as seems to be the norm for films Peter Jackson's had a hand in) there were probably more than half an hour's worth of CGI-laden action sequences that could have been dropped completely without hurting the story one bit, and I kind of wanted my two hours back. I mean, sure, the fight scenes were choreographed well - at least I could tell what was going on at any given moment, which doesn't quite seem to be the norm for shootouts in the movies any more - but I don't go to the movies to see explosions and effects, I go to see storytelling. And the story they told frankly didn't impress me.
I think what it comes down to is, I just don't like stories that are solely about how awful people can be to each other (or aliens, although since the aliens in most stories of this nature are stand-ins for some group of people I'm counting them in the same category). I already know what happens when a minority group becomes unpopular with the majority; I already know what's going to happen when one person has something of value in an environment where most people have nothing, I already know how things will play out when everyone involved is at the lowest common denominator of trust*. These things are not interesting to me, because they're predictable - people who are scared enough will always act a certain way, and others will react to them in a same way, and it's a vicious cycle that just creates more shit for everyone. I know all of that, you don't have to write your story specifically to cram that message down my throat.
What's interesting in a story isn't when people act shitty to each other. What's interesting in a story is when people overcome that instinct - because, no matter how desperate the situation, no matter how scared the people, there's always that opportunity to overcome the think-of-only-yourself urge and make the choice to be a decent human being. Think of the ferry scene in The Dark Knight, for example; that one little moment is quite possibly the biggest triumph in the whole story, and it doesn't even belong to a 'good guy'. That is what makes people (and stories about people) interesting - not when they behave according to their predictable reptilian brain, but when their higher instincts kick in and they do something no one expects, something that is not only protective of themselves but also promotes the survival of everyone involved*, something that inspires the rest of us to be better like them. But in stories like District 9, where almost every character is functioning at the absolute lowest level of interaction*, I just can't see the point.
*There are actually terms for these concepts in game theory, which I'm good at understanding instinctively but suck at explaining because math isn't my strong suit. It's interesting stuff, though, and quite applicable in the realms of psychology and economics.