Fussbett wrote:

Fullofkittens wrote:

So, here's the big underlying question about District 9:

Why did the ship stop at Earth in the first place?

Two theories floated by characters in the movie:

1. They ran out of gas.
   
   • REJECTED. They clearly had enough fuel-containing objects on the ship to get the ship back home, because that was Christopher's plan. It took him 20 years to accumulate the fuel that he used to reactivate the ship, but during that period he was collecting the fuel from objects that originated on the ship.
   
   

But they weren't collecting fuel, they were distilling fuel from the fluid in their technology, and at an implied rate of one drop per many tablespoons. But I hear you, you're saying why didn't they just hover and do that in the air? Maybe they were, but then the humans decided to cut their way in? Or perhaps when the command module dropped off (by accident?!) it contained Christopher, the one dude who knew how to do it.

Did the movie mention a "queen"? I remember them talking about leadership and the command module... But yeah, this is the most plausible explanation and clearly what they were going for, making such a big deal out of the two classes of prawn shown in the movie. I was blown away by the realization that the lower class of prawn was so stupid because...

Apparently the whole thing is a big apartheid analogy so I guess I can set aside the other core question of: if you were a group with weapons as destructive as these aliens had, would you let yourself be pushed around like that? Would you trade those weapons for cat food?

...what does it say about apartheid when you make the aliens actually stupid? And not "we misunderstand them" stupid, but actually stupid and belligerent scavenger drug addicts who can't self-organize? It means your apartheid analogy says a lot of terrible things about black people. Oops!