The tone in the movie is one that i find hard to follow and distinguish throughout. At the start of the film, the film is presented in a documentary form, one consisting of many interviews and personal accounts. The movie then progresses into sci-fi scenes from the new die hard movie, only then to ultimately finish up with a tad more documentary. I don’t know what Blomkamp intended with this format, but I imagine he tried using the documentary style to implement a more serious and believable sense into the film. As such he prevented the film from just being a pop corn fiesta.

As far as the story goes, I found it at first hard to relate to South African apartheid due to the circumstances, but towards to the end I did see it. I saw it with the transition of Wikus from human to alien. With this transition he is suddenly scooped into the group that he was working against. As such you see that he sees what exactly the internment is like on their end, however idealistic the idea of the internment started out as. Relating this back to apartheid, I wondered if the intent of it was one of good nature, that just turned out badly, or whether it was just a plan a racist plan from the start.

I also wondered, if the situation in the film actually happened in reality, what would we do? They aren’t human, so human rights would technically not apply to them, however their intelligence is too high for them to be considered animals either, so animal rights would be degrading them. What should be done? Can a race with equal intellectual capacities as humans coexist with us on earth? Or would one try to oppress and rule over the other as portrayed in the film. In the end you begin to wonder if naming human rights “human rights” isn’t an infringement on the rules of nature in itself, because by that you assume that each  of animals has its own set of rights, some having more than others, and thus claiming that there are some animals which are superior to others. Furthermore, the degree to which we value life shows as a way as to how we segregate and categorize the entire world based upon their necessity to us. Due to the emotional bond many people have with dogs, beating or hurting a dog is a criminal offence and is seriously frowned upon by society. However, if I were to squish an ant, nobody would say anything because its “only an ant,” whereas it too has a life of its own. So by looking at this I think I can safely say, that i personally believe that should aliens, such as in district 9, were to come to earth, we really wouldn’t treat them much better than portrayed in the film. This based upon how we treat other living creatures on this earth and how we place ourselves, as humans, above the rest.