Reply #55: I thought it was a very good movie (light spoilers)............

[CrownPrinceBandar]

and I got just what I expected: a morality tale about segregation and the damages of apartheid. I liked that the director threw in many reminders of that shameful time in human history:

- The Prawns arrival in the late 1980's - some of the worst apartheid-related violence was in the mid to late 80's.
- The name District 9 - District 6 in Cape Town was the site of the forced removal of over 60,000 blacks in the 1970's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_Six
- the shameful living conditions in District 9 are very similar those in the segregated townships in JoBurg and Cape Town.
- The Prawn language contained many similar clicking-sound aspects to the Bantu tongue, a prominent target of apartheid.(thanks Roger Ebert)

As far as being successful goes, I think history will judge it as a success. Over its first weekend, District 9 has already recouped all of its production costs and people are still going to see it. If anything, it shows that films with relatively limited budgets can play with the big boys. I also don't believe that box-office take necessarily predicates a good movie. There have been plenty of good movies that bombed at the box office.

But in the big scheme of things, it is after all, just a movie.