The tireless team of pixel-animators from CineFix has released an 8-Bit Cinema version of Neill Blomkamp’s debut feature film District 9. Just like Blomkamp’s Elysium and last year’s Chappie, District 9 takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa. It tells the allegorical tale of a large group of stranded aliens who have been reduced to a refugee population who face routine regulatory checks at their shelter camp, known as District 9. Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copely) is a typical desk-bound bureaucrat in a privatized military company before he’s appointed to lead a transition of the aliensâknown derisively as “prawns” due to their quasi-crustacean appearanceâfrom the dilapidated District 9 to a new government-sponsored internment camp.
As is often the case in life, protagonist Wikus finds himself sprayed with some alien goo and shortly finds his arm taking on some decidedly prawn-like characteristics. When his condition is noted by fellow recon employees, he is taken to an experimental facility and it is discovered that his modified genetic code allows him to control confiscated alien weapons. Now that he shares a kindred predicament with the maligned aliens, he returns to the District to find a solution to his slow transformation and winds up helping one of the aliens return to the mothership that has been hovering stationarily over Johannesburg. The movie ends with Wikus’ transformation fully complete after the alien mothership has left for a journey back into the stars. Blomkamp has stated that he would like to write and direct a sequel to the film, but whether it comes to fruition remains to be seen.
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