I'd never had any intention of going to see District Nine (or District 9, whatever). I prefer my science fiction to be uplifting, thank you. I want to walk out of the theater full of joy and hope for humanity.
But, I read a review of it, from this one reviewer that I read on a regular basis. Not that I actually like this reviewer (he writes for a local, but online publication), I just find it interesting to see what new variations on pretentiousness he can come up with in each new review.
Anyway, he pointed out that one of the lead characters, a human, is injected with something that is slowly turning him into one of the aliens that are incarcerated in District Nine.
And I'm like, how derivative is that? And how silly. You forcibly change someone who hates/fears you, into what you are...and what do you think is going to happen? Will they embrace you with love and understanding? No, they will hate you even more for doing something to them without their consent.
And this has been done before. In one of those X-Men movies, the evil mutants drug one of the anti-mutant politicians and turn him into a mutant. (Bruce Davison as Senator Kelly.) (2003)
And there was a Doctor Who that did the same thing. Tim McInnery, in Planet of the Ood (2008 - David Tennant as the Doctor) is forcibly turned into an Ood.
I suppose it all got its start from the Quatermass Xperiment of 1956, when an astronaut (played by Richard Wordsworth) is turned into a blob, but these later iterations on the trope, as the pretentious would say, just make no sense to me. "You will be assimilated!" Blah.
Let joy and innocence prevail.
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