2009 – District 9
There were a lot of visual effects in this film, but the good thing about them was that a lot of them didn’t look like visual effects. They looked very photo-realistic, and there is a specific reason why. About half the movie was filmed as if it was a low-budget documentary, or found-footage. There was a lot of hand-held camerawork, and low-grade images that made to look like they belonged in a television news program. You’d think that using such techniques, they would be able to get away with a little less detail on the CGI, but I assure you, that wasn’t the case at all.
For example, one of the first effects we see in the film is the image of a gigantic spaceship hovering over Johannesburg in South Africa. But the ship is only seen as news footage. On top of that, the city has a haze of smog over it, making the distant alien ship look almost fuzzy. However, later on in the film, we get to see the ship from a much closer vantage point and the detail is increased to what you might expect in a modern film.
The aliens, themselves, were pretty remarkable. They were insectoid in nature, and though they had distinctly humanoid shapes with arms, legs, and heads in all the familiarly human places, though they were otherwise completely alien. The had antenna on their heads, mouths with finger-like tentacles, flexible claws instead of hands, segmented bodies with what appeared to be exoskeletons, and little vestigial appendages that could retract into their abdomens. In a few of the deleted scenes included on the DVD, the visual effects had not been rendered, and you could see the actor in a gray motion-capture suit, standing on stilts to give him the proper height for the other actors to perform against.
But there were two really great effects that stood out to me as very well done. The first of these was the alien weaponry. Their guns fired jagged blue lightning bolts that, when they hit their organic targets, would make them vaporize with a disturbing spray of blood, and disgusting bits of meat and bone. It was a very cool effect. The other was the alien battle-armor. You’d think that such a large robotic body-tank would move in a clunky way, but they made it very quick, mobile, and incredibly realistic. And to the script’s credit, they made it incredibly durable, but not unstoppable.
And finally, probably one of the most disturbing effects in the movie was how the main character, Wikus, is slowly transformed into an insectoid alien. And being as realistic as they could be, it happened slowly, a little bit at a time. You could see the different stages of his pitiful transformation. That really creeped me out, but it was really effective story-telling. And honestly, the low-resolution documentary-style footage really made everything look very realistic. And in contrast to so many special effects-heavy films, most of the action took place in bright daytime locales, allowing us to see and appreciate all the cool visual effects. Thank you!