While this is an economics/political theory blog, an occasional foray into pop culture surely wouldn't be overly harmful, especially when the movie in question has strong relevance.
The movie of course, is District 9, in my non-professional (but well informed) opinion, one of the best movies of the summer. While it functions as a Sci-Fi action film (using a combination of shaky cam and live action filming with mockumentary feel) The political subtexts are evident to most everyone who views it.
For those who have never heard of District 9, here's the wiki-pedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_9
I think the movie would be a very interesting one for any libertarian, as the situations posed can provide some interesting food for thought. Discuss?
I enjoyed it for it's artistic merits, but in terms of storyline, it felt like showing Super Size Me to someone in Thailand. It's an allegory for South African apartheid, and racial issues that stem from new immigrants. Though, seeing as my country does possess a milder form of apartheid and does have racial issues of it's own, I suppose it's not so irrelevant.
I wish we got more background on MNU. We don't know which country or area of the world they come from, we know their leader is black, they seem to possess large private security forces and probably have a lot of puppets in the South African government. It would have been interesting to know how they started and how they got to that level of power and resources. I suspect TVTropes was correct in saying that the use of PMC's as villains is done to avoid political controversy, as using real nations militaries (or obvious ripoffs thereof) will probably get you banned there. It did provide a refreshing break from the cliched aliens-arrive-to-earth-then-secret-government-agency/military-puts-them-in-holding plotline.
Also, "Little One" was adorable. And I thought Smit and Kobus were interesting villains, when you compare their different motives and aspirations (Smit seemed to be a greedy power luster, while Kobus seemed to just be using the aliens as acceptable targets for his psychopathic tendencies). I think a sequel to it should be an MMORPG, personally. Dunno why, just seems to fit on some level.
I thought the movie was OK. I also thought that the movie was way overhyped. It was a decent movie without much of a plot. Okay, everyone gets that it's a reference to District 6 and apartheid. But, honestly, there wasn't much to the movie besides aliens and humans blowing shit up. Big deal.
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I thought it was quite enjoyable for sheer entertainment value. Politically, I did enjoy many of its points as well. District 9 developed its own sense of culture and economy. The subsistence levels of consumption and lack of any enforceable system of property rights highlighted the tendency towards a higher rate of time preference and decivilization. And even in such conditions, there was a market economy in cat food and alien weapons, which existed in spite of government prohibitions. It was interesting to see aliens with highly advanced technology (and more powerful bodies) still vulnerable to the decivilization of raised time preferences and lessened property rights. And interesting to see black market economies and individual expression permeate even in such a primitive state.
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I thought the movie was excellent! It reminded me of the splatter-fest Peter Jackson made in his earlier years, called Bad Taste. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092610/#Scene_1