District 9 Invades Philadelphia

If you have been out and about in the city no doubt you may have seen these stickers on the sides of news paper vending machines, or as posters in stores and various other places in the city where humans tend to go. This is the start of the viral marketing for the movie I think might be the salvation of a summer filled with remakes sequels and rehashes and other re-treds that have become a staple of the summer movie season.

The movie is District 9 and it’s produced by Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame, and directed by first timer Neill Blomkamp. Neill is best known for his work on HALO Land fall a short film that was meant to be viral marketing and a warm up with Weta for the Halo live action movie, that he was supposed to direct until that project was sadly derailed. But what we saw in that 7 minutes was some of the best sci-fi warfare I have seen since Starship Troopers, and the general opinion was if he could do this with a shoe string budget imagine what he could do with a real budget and a real film.

See Landfall and more after the Jump!

District 9 is based on a short film by Neill entitled Alive in Joberg, the short is about a race of aliens that arrive on planet earth(this arrival does not appear to be on purpose, but they did not crash either), and are being quarantined against their will in a work camp in South America called District 9. The narrative is told through interviews with the local people, the Multi-National United(the company which is keeping the aliens on the planet so they can steal their technology) and the aliens.  The aliens, while looking like your standard rubber-suited monsters are no real threat and simply wish to go home while the MNU wish to keep them around to unlock their technology and slave labor is always nice. In the short, the peaceful aliens are forced into a life on earth of poverty and despair and appear more human than their captors and that seems to be the common theme between Alive in Joberg and the District 9 theatrical film.

District 9 is due to be released August 14, 2009 and  this film is definitely taking a page from the Dark Knight for its marketing. The official film website www.D-9.com is “operated” by Multinational United (MNU), the fictitious company from the film. After the token trailer, the website presents the viewer with a short instructional video and viewing options for viewing the site for humans or non-humans. You definitely notice a difference in tone between the two sites with the human being friendly and the non-human, not so much for that matter.

There is also another main site MNUSpreadsLies.com which is a fictional blog run by a non-human equal rights advocate, arguing that Multinational United is oppressing the non-human race and just after them for their technology. The website shows an uncensored version of the film’s trailer which has a translation of the alien’s responses to his interrogator changing the tone of the trailer significantly. The blog while written in an alien script also provides an option to “translate to English.” If Neill can carry the narrative that he has started in Alive in Joberg and carry it for an hour in the half this might be the surprise sc-fi hit of the summer. I leave you with the censored and uncensored trailers.

pic by John.