Box office
District 9 grossed US$115.6 million from the United States and Canada, with a worldwide total of $210,819,611, against a production budget of US$30 million.[3]
It opened in 3,048 theatres in Canada and the United States on 14 August 2009, and the film ranked first at the weekend box office with an opening gross of US$37.4 million. Among comparable science fiction films in the past, its opening attendance was slightly less than the 2008 film Cloverfield and the 1997 film Starship Troopers. The audience demographic for District 9 was 64 percent male and 57 percent people 25 years or older.[46] The film stood out as a summer film that generated strong business despite little-known casting.[63] Its opening success was attributed to the studio's unusual marketing campaign. In the film's second weekend, it dropped 49% in revenue while competing against the opening film Inglourious Basterds for the male audience, as Sony Pictures attributed the "good hold" to District 9's strong playability.[64]
The film enjoyed similar success in the UK with an opening gross of £2,288,378 showing at 447 cinemas.[65]
Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes gives District 9 an approval rating of 90% based on 314 critic reviews and 82% based on 250,000+ audience reviews, with an average score of 7.80/10. The website's consensus states, "Technically brilliant and emotionally wrenching, District 9 has action, imagination, and all the elements of a thoroughly entertaining science-fiction classic."[66] On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has a score of 81 based on 36 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[67] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[68]
Sara Vilkomerson of The New York Observer wrote, "District 9 is the most exciting science fiction movie to come along in ages; definitely the most thrilling film of the summer; and quite possibly the best film I've seen all year."[69] Christy Lemire from the Associated Press was impressed by the plot and thematic content, claiming that "District 9 has the aesthetic trappings of science fiction but it's really more of a character drama, an examination of how a man responds when he's forced to confront his identity during extraordinary circumstances."[70] Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum described it as "... madly original, cheekily political, [and] altogether exciting..."[71]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four and praised it for "giving us aliens to remind us not everyone who comes in a spaceship needs to be angelic, octopod or stainless steel", but complained that "the third act is disappointing, involving standard shoot-out action. No attempt is made to resolve the situation, and if that's a happy ending, I've seen happier. Despite its creativity, the film remains space opera and avoids the higher realms of science-fiction."[72]
Josh Tyler of Cinema Blend says the film is unique in interpretation and execution, but considers it to be a knockoff of the 1988 film Alien Nation.[73]
IGN listed District 9 at No. 24 on a list of the Top 25 Sci-Fi Films of All Time.[74]
From the Chicago Tribune: "As this summer nears its end, this movie has made the entire Hollywood feel ashamed."
From The New York Times: "A forward-thinking film, a fable about life."
From USA Today: "It proves that science fiction doesn't need to be star-studded, overly budgeted, visually captivating, or purely entertaining."
From The Hollywood Reporter: "A truly genuine, original science fiction movie that captivates you from the start, making the audience unable to stop watching until the very end."
Political response
Nigeria's Information Minister Dora Akunyili asked movie cinemas around the country to either ban the film or edit out specific references to the country because of the film's negative depiction of the Nigerian characters as criminals and cannibals. Letters of complaint were sent to the producer and distributor of the film demanding an apology. She also said the gang leader Obesandjo is almost identical in spelling and pronunciation to the surname of former president Olusegun Obasanjo.[75] The film was later banned in Nigeria; the Nigerian Film and Video Censors Board was asked to prevent cinemas from showing the film and also to confiscate it.[76]
Hakeem Kae-Kazim, a Nigerian-born British actor, also criticised the portrayal of Nigerians in the film,[77] telling the Beeld (an Afrikaans-language daily newspaper): "Africa is a beautiful place and the problems it does have can not be shown by such a small group of people."
However, the Malawian actor Eugene Khumbanyiwa, who played Obesandjo, has stated that the Nigerians in the cast of District 9 were not perturbed by the portrayal of Nigerians in the film, and that the film should not be taken literally: "It's a story, you know. It's not like Nigerians do eat aliens. Aliens don't even exist in the first place."[78]
Teju Cole, a Nigerian-American writer, has commented that the "one-dimensionality of the Nigerian characters is striking," even when taking into account that District 9 is meant to be a fable. He suggests two possible explanations for Blomkamp's narrative choice: first, that it is meant to reflect anti-foreigner sentiment within South Africa, or second, that it simply represents an oversight on Blomkamp's part.[79]
In 2013, the film was one of several discussed by David Sirota in Salon.com in an article concerning white savior narratives in film.[80]
Alexandra Heller Nicholas discusses Wikus's self-identity in District 9 as problematic due to him being a white man and the hero of the film. Nicholas argues that a white saviour "disempowers the film's allegory to apartheid that comments on the corruption of the South African government" as well as the discrimination black South Africans dealt with during and post-apartheid. Making Wikus the "white savior" backtracks from the main message of District 9 which is to show the audience the detrimental effects "of colonialism brought by the Western world". Another point Nicholas makes is that District 9 is a "stereotypical White Saviour film". She states that the plot is about a white man working for the government, who has roots "in South Africa's apartheid culture", involuntarily joining the "victims of apartheid". In this case, instead of black people, it's prawns.[81]
It has been argued[82] that Wikus's grotesque transformation is indicative of the fact that "While biological discourses of racial subhumanity might have been expunged from public knowledges in the postapartheid nation, contemporary South Africa continues to be structured according to the binary that undergirds such narratives."[83]
Accolades
District 9 was named one of the top 10 independent films of 2009 by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. The film also won The Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation. The film received four Academy Awards nominations for: Best Motion Picture of the Year (Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham), Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell), Best Achievement in Film Editing (Julian Clarke) and Best Achievement in Visual Effects (Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros and Matt Aitken); seven British Academy Film Awards nominations: Best Cinematography (Trent Opaloch), Best Screenplay – Adapted (Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell), Best Editing (Julian Clarke), Best Production Design (Philip Ivey, Guy Potgieter), Best Sound (Brent Burge, Chris Ward, Dave Whitehead, Michael Hedges and Ken Saville), Best Special Visual Effects (Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros and Matt Aitken) and Best Director (Neill Blomkamp); five Broadcast Film Critics Association nominations: Best Makeup (Won), Best Screenplay, Adapted (Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell), Best Sound, Best Visual Effects and Best Action Movie; and one Golden Globe nomination: Best Screenplay – Motion Picture (Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell).[84]
It is the fifth TriStar Pictures film ever nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards (the previous four were As Good as It Gets, Jerry Maguire, Bugsy and Places in the Heart). It won the 2009 Bradbury Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.[85]
