thavoice wrote: I believe it was directly about apartheid. The interviews that were shown were supposed actual interviews. How trur or accurate they were I dont know. It was a bit jumpy camera-wise for me.

This movie was based on the aprtheid. Another interesting thing I read is that all the alien's homes in the movie are actual homes in Johannesburg in the rough part of Soweto; with the exception of the one that the ship was buried under (see below). This movie was really good, I was interested in the scenary as I am going to J-burg in July.

Manhattan Buckeye wrote: Yeah, there was definitely an analogy to apartheid in South Africa.

I hope that it gets some awards at the Oscars, I'm a bit cynical as to the actual costs of the film but if it is truly what was advertised they did an amazing job with such a small budget. The CGI and special effects were impressive.

The cost of the film is legit, but they were also able to use a lot of "free" stuff to help with the production.

Peter Jackson has the hook ups.

thavoice wrote: From pretty early on I took it that the aliens were basically just any minority group that was ever forced to live in a camp type setting...from indians to places in africa...slavery, things like that.

Yes, the political commentary was obvious. And that's the issue I felt was a bit stale and unoriginal. It was decent, but a far, far cry from Planet of the Apes.

I also felt the main character that transforms into the alien was annoying beyond belief. I got his portrayal of racism/bigotry (or whatever you want to call it), but that sort of non-pc cavalier attitude felt very dated. 20 yrs ago a person may have acted like that in a documentary, and maybe that was supposed to be the time period that I just didn't buy into. A guy acting like that big of a naive, racist idiot on a documentary just wasn't at all believable to me. That was the part of the movie - a major, key part - that didn't work for me.

Anyway, I think that's a good way of summing up how I felt about the film. Decent, but a poor rip-off of Planet of the Apes

I also felt the main character that transforms into the alien was annoying beyond belief. I got his portrayal of racism/bigotry (or whatever you want to call it), but that sort of non-pc cavalier attitude felt very dated. 20 yrs ago a person may have acted like that in a documentary, and maybe that was supposed to be the time period that I just didn't buy into. A guy acting like that big of a naive, racist idiot on a documentary just wasn't at all believable to me. That was the part of the movie - a major, key part - that didn't work for me.

An outdated notion you say? I think you need to look no further than the huddle to see that there are indeed many naive racist idiots out there.

Respect your opinion on the film though.

Websurfinbird wrote:

An outdated notion you say? I think you need to look no further than the huddle to see that there are indeed many naive racist idiots out there.

Fair enough. I suppose, in theory, this film "took place" 20-30 years ago. I'm just talking about the main character being a complete moron and so ignorant in a documentary being not believable at all. I guess with the clothes and the cars they did try to recreate that 30yrs ago feel but it's hard to suspend disbelief when there were no spaceships 30 yrs ago.

I think they would have been better served to scrap the documentary and give it a more modern feel with the political statements being less overt. It was a narrative device I don't think fit the movie very well. They obviously didn't give their audience much credit for being intelligent (haha, who can blame them?)