At it’s best, science fiction is all about ideas. Shrewd philosophical debates and trenchant social commentary are housed within fantastical tales of space travel and futurescapes. That’s harder to discern from the offerings in the multiplex, where the default approach to such material has skewed towards thought-averse romps at least since the moment Luke Skywalker fired up his first lightsaber. There are exceptions, of course, movies that aspire to something headier, but when major studio dollars are on the line, battling robots that occasionally disguise themselves as motor vehicles represent the norm. One of the great pleasures of District 9, perhaps the greatest pleasure of District 9 is that it manages to big as big and flashy, loud and wild as those blockbusters and still have some thoughtfulness embedded in the mayhem.

The film takes place several years after an alien spacecraft suddenly appeared over the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. The creatures that emerged from it were unsettling humanoids with arthropod traits. Unlike the trajectory of many films about interstellar visitors, this is not about the immediate battle that ensues. Instead, the aliens suffer a similar sort of bigotry and oppression that occurred in South Africa during the years of apartheid. They are treated with hostility and cordoned off to their own section of the city, the District 9 of the title. The film is then about the fate faced by one of the government officials who leads a team into the area with the express intention of evicting the aliens, sending them instead to more regimented community that is effectively a concentration camp.

The treatment of the aliens can serve as an allegory for any number of groups ostracized and mistreated for their visible differences from the ruling classes. Apartheid is most obvious corollary given the South African setting, but any society prone to viciousness towards immigrants or any other class of people that can be easily characterized as “other” fits into the mold carved out by the film. There’s also a slicing view of the lust for weapons and power that drive many earthly struggles. That last bit of commentary helps to add resonance to the scenes of mass destruction in the film, but it doesn’t detract from the thrills built into them. First-time feature director Neill Blomkamp brings authority, drive and authenticity to the action sequences. Indeed, there’s an extended stretch involving a giant robot suit that serves as a sort of striding tank that demonstrates precisely what’s missing from other films that utilize similar contraptions. There is a noticeable heaviness to that machine, a sense of how it operates. By simply thinking about how the laws of physics would apply to this worn weapon’s use, Blomkamp makes it more believable and, in turn, more exciting.

Blomkamp employs a lot of talking head commentary since much of the film is presented in documentary style, with government representative and fictional experts explaining the history of this situation to the camera. It’s an understandable conceit, providing the most direct route to delivering the necessary mound of exposition. It’s also somewhat overused and, therefore, a little distancing. The script by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell draws the central characters fully enough that cutaways go from being handy shortcuts to intrusive padding. It starts to become a cinematic trick that distracts from the sound storytelling. Happily, that’s not what sticks. It’s the thoughtful realization of the darkly inventive world, the deeply felt emotions of the predominant alien in the film, the completely relatable apoplectic bafflement of our beset hero, the clever twists on a well-worn science fiction starting point.

And I am thoroughly delighted that should a sequel come to pass the logical title for it is District 10.

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)