Sony has set up a slick official website for District 9, supplementing the movie's already extensive viral presence on the web and in the streets. The new site features pics from the movie plus a panoramic view of the District 9 area, complete with an alien ship hovering above, an alien target-practice poster below, and all sorts of urban blight in between.
The basic concept behind the movie is ramping up anti-immigrant panic to a whole new level with an alien race that lands in Johannesburg, South Africa. On arrival, the visitors are herded off to ghettos policed by a shady governmental group, the Multi-National United. The MNU is also very interested in getting its hands on alien technology.
The aliens accept their treatment fairly passively, but they really are not model guests either, District 9 director Neill Blomkamp explains in an interview with Empire.
These aliens are like ET — if he hijacked your car! Actually they're not so much malicious as accidentally destructive. I think of them as magpies: they'll steal something because it's shiny. But they tear up the city and it makes Joburg's citizens more and more angry.
Despite the vigilante-style welcome some of the locals seem to be planning for them, the aliens are hardly defenseless, Blomkamp adds.
...on their ship they have this mass armoury, stuffed with the most insane weapons we've ever seen.
Not just unwanted immigrants then. Unwanted immigrants with far superior technology and weaponry. Sounds like serious trouble.