The Guardian's Ben Child feels like we've seen a lot of this year's SF before:

Earlier this year, sci-fi actioner Pandorum proved that you can concoct an entertaining - if rather artistically bankrupt - thriller in space by splicing together bits of other popular genre flicks: in this case, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien and Brit horror flick The Descent... [W]ouldn't it be nice if 2010 saw just a little more originality entering the sci-fi arena? So far this year we've had Avatar (supremely entertaining but predicated on every space opera cliche from Star Wars onwards, via a bit of Dances With Wolves, Princess Mononoke and Ferngully), Moon (very much picking up where the likes of Solaris, Dark Star and Silent Runnings left off) and the aforementioned Pandorum. The only truly inventive flick that springs to mind is District 9, Neil Blomkamp's excellent satire of apartheid era South Africa, and even that managed to rock out the exosuit battle scene from James Cameron's Aliens for its barnstorming denouement.

We're tempted to offer up the usual "There is no such thing as a new story" excuse, but it's a good point; even this year's "new" stories have been very familiar. Even with the new voices coming into SF cinema, are we running out of new things for them to say?

Where should sci-fi boldly go in 2010? [Guardian.co.uk]

The DVD is loaded with even more video including 23 deleted scenes which expand the back story of that alien race. Also there's plenty of art, commentary plus an in-depth look inside the mothership hovering over Jo-Burg. District 9 will be available on December 22, 2009.

[Two Videos via UGO and Scifi Wire]

This is, of course, just our opinion, and feel free to disagree in comments. We went back and forth about several of these films, and there were a few others that we almost included instead, so we're not claiming infallibility here. If you want to view this in non-gallery format, click here, and I promise it'll work.

Pitch Black. This is nearly the perfect movie — a gritty anti-hero with weird eyes that can see in the dark is on a prison ship, which crashes on an alien planet. The lurking monsters are ominous and alarming, but the film's real mystery is Riddick himself — the Furyan inspires loathing, hero-worship and a desperate longing for the anti-hero to become a hero by the movie's end. Like Riddick's own eyes, our view of him only really works when we see him through total darkness.

Avatar. I'm going to post my review of this film in a few days, closer to its actual release date. But this is definitely one of the decade's most significant science-fiction films, both in its startling new look and in its elaborate alien world. Sigourney Weaver is one of the few heroic scientists we've seen in movies lately, and she fearlessly spouts facts about the science of Pandora. Avatar is by no means a perfect movie — it's a frustrating mixture of brilliance and utter cheese — but it's clearly an important movie in science-fiction history.

Slither. This movie sort of slid (I'm tempted to say slithered) under the radar, but it's one of the great all-time alien possession movies, and a brilliant metaphor for being trapped in a bad marriage. An alien parasite lands in a small town and takes over a woman's awful husband — and then it starts infecting everyone else in town, so that they all speak with the husband's voice. Wherever the wife goes, she hears her husband talking to her. And then people start getting grotesquely pregnant with alien offspring — this sort of thing is really why body horror was invented.

Star Trek. A young hero reluctantly starts to claim his true destined greatness... only to find out that his whole life has been altered, and maybe wrecked, by time-traveling, tattooed maniacs from the future. It's a weird spin on a Star Trek movie, but considering how hard it was to imagine being thrilled by another Trek after Nemesis, this film is a marvel. Plot holes, frat-boy antics, "red matter" and all, it's still the film that recharged Star Trek and may have helped bring back space-opera as a genre. And Spock has never been so... fascinating.

Donnie Darko has garnered an enduring cult fan base, for good reason. Its blend of mysicism and weird physics has aged amazingly well, and we still get lost in its "tangent universes." We keep hoping Richard Kelly will make another film that's both as mind-blowing and as well-constructed as this one.

Robot Stories. Another great movie that didn't get enough props when it came out. Greg Pak, who went on to write the Planet Hulk storyline for Marvel Comics, creates an anthology of three stories about robots that show how much robots are connected to our emotional lives — and what will happen when robots get emotions. In one story, two office robots fall in love, only to find that robot love is forbidden. In another story, a mother becomes determined to help her dying son amass the perfect collection of robot action figures — at any cost, even stealing. You'll see robots in a whole new light after watching this film.

Spider-Man 2. There were a number of superhero films that managed to bring the greatness of comics' storylines to life in the first half of the decade, including two X-Men movies and two Spider-Man movies. For my money, though, this is the best of the bunch, particularly because of Alfred Molina's Doc Octopus. Peter Parker's superpowered angst collides with Doc Octopus' cyborg identity crisis, and both hero and villain seem to be clinging to their identities by a thread. Even though we wish Peter Parker could keep his damn mask on, it's still thrilling and maybe the most perfect straight-up superhero movie of all.

Sleep Dealer. Alex Rivera's look at the dark side of telecommuting is one of the most memorable and intense films we've seen lately. In the future, everything depends on the dollar — you can't even access water reservoirs in Mexico or speak to your family in another town without feeding dollars into a slot. And the only way to get dollars is to get cyber nodes all over your body, allowing your nervous system to pilot machines in the United States. That way the U.S. can import Mexican labor without bringing in actual Mexicans. It's beautifully filmed and harrowing look at the ultimate form of alienated labor.

The Incredibles. The other great straight-up superhero was one of several Pixar films that we wanted to pay tribute to from the past decade. If you were as disappointed as we were by the two Fantastic Four films, then rejoice that this film does the FF right. A surprisingly light-hearted look at super-mutants in a world that learns to fear them, this movie does a better job of portraying what makes superhero comics so awesome than almost any live-action film. And we love the Omnidroid.

The Host. Sorry, Cloverfield — this was the monster-rampage movie we loved from the past few years. Unlike Clovey, the Host actually has a decent if snarky origin story, including weird chemicals dropped in the water by a callous American, causing one of the local creatures to get a little too big (and rambunctious) for comfort. More than almost any other monster movie, this film sucks us into caring about its main characters, a hapless family who operate a failing fast-food stand on the beach — we laugh at their antics and then get hopelessly, tragically, wound up in their fate when they tangle with the monster. Rob and Hud just don't quite measure up.

28 Days Later. Purists may hate this film's "fast zombies," but they're not even really zombies — they're the victims of a "rage" virus that stupid animal-rights activists cause to be released onto an unsuspecting world. Of all the apocalyptic scenarios we've seen in the past decade, 28 Days provides the best dose of terror and the sheer horror of society unraveling. When Christopher Eccleston's vicious soldier says the words, "I promised them women," your gut sinks. And the idea that the rage-virus outbreak will cure itself because the quasi-zombies will starve is genuinely clever. We were tempted to include Danny Boyle's other great SF film of the decade, Sunshine, but 28 Days is clearly better.

Paprika. A parade of nonsense images stomps through a man's dreams, forcing him to jump out a window... and it's just the beginning of the mayhem as the dream world collides with reality, in Satoshi Kon's weird exploration of dreams and their potential to tear our world apart. A machine that allows you to enter someone's dreams therapeutically gets stolen, and soon reality itself is being torn apart. Trippy, insane and mind-expanding, this is a film you need to watch more than once.

Primer. Speaking of films you need to watch more than once... few, if any, science-fiction movies talk down to their audiences less than this one. You don't even realize, for a good chunk of the movie, that the geeky characters are building a time machine. and it comes with very realistic and fascinating limitations, even as it allows the main characters to cross their own timelines over and over again, rewriting history in more and more psychotic ways. The walkman scene makes the whole thing worthwhile, just by itself.

Moon. It's interesting how many of the great science-fiction movies of the past decade are about loneliness, one way or the other — but none of them delve into isolation as hauntingly as Duncan Jones' debut feature. Sam Rockwell is amazing as the two versions of Sam Bell, who's tantalizingly close to finishing out his contract on a lunary mining station — until he finds out that things aren't ever what they seem. Add paranoia to the list of things this film does better than almost any other.

Iron Man. As we wrote when this film came out, it's actually more of a cyborg narrative than a superhero one. Jon Favreau and company wisely chose to focus on the heart of Tony Stark's origin — literally, the fusion reactor that keeps his heart from stopping, and turns him into a part-machine badass whose armor is just a shell that goes over his cybernetic body. Tony Stark's uneasy relationship with the military technology that he created parallels his unease with his new technological body — he's like the heroic flipside of Spider-Man 2's Doctor Octopus. And yes, any movie that talks about our dependence on, and unease with, technology automatically gets to leap over the pile of by-the-numbers superhero films.

The Dark Knight. See here for our argument as to why this film really is science fiction. Shorter version: Batman's fantastical technology is at the heart of the story. If Batman Begins showed how Bruce Wayne used technology to become Gotham's fearsome crime-fighter, then The Dark Knight is about how far he's willing to take that approach in the face of a mad bomber.

District 9. Most science-fiction movies, you come out of furiously debating the science or the finer points of the storyline... but this one, people walked out of speechless and shellshocked. Perhaps the ultimate "humans oppress aliens" movie, this film confronts us with a perfect allegory of our own inhumanity, through the story of a crashlanded group of aliens who are forced into shantytowns. Even before the main character, Wikus, starts turning into one of the aliens, our loyalties are getting more and more divided.

Wall-E. The other Pixar movie we couldn't help including on the list, this may have been the greatest blend of post-apocalyptic dystopia and cute robots. The love between Wall-E and Eve is both lovable and genuinely moving, and the trademark Pixar humor is in full effect with Wall-E's junkyard slapstick and spaceship antics. The funniest, and maybe the best, robot uprising we've ever seen.

Serenity. Just pretend for a second that this wasn't the continuation of a beloved TV series, and that Joss Whedon had created a whole new universe from scratch just for this film — it would still be one of the most audacious, most memorable, science-fiction films of all time. The story of the Alliance, which maintains a tenuous grip on a sprawling star system after a brutal civil war, and the lengths to which the Alliance will go to try and make people "better," Serenity is one of the great action-adventure films as well as one of the neatest SF concepts ever. When you discover the secrets of Miranda and see how River Tam becomes both the messenger and the avenger of Miranda's people, it's hard not to jump up and down in your seat.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. How far are you willing to go to get over a lost love? Are you willing to injure yourself — by erasing a huge chunk of your brief time on this planet from your own mind — just to get back at your former lover? This Charlie Kaufman/Michel Gondry joint does what all the best science fiction does: it creates a fictional technology that has the potential to change who we are as people, and then it uses it to tell a deeply personal story. The scenes where Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are wandering through Carrey's childhood memories are both unsettling and poignant, as Carrey tries to hold on to the love he was in the process of throwing away — by letting her into more of his mind.

As we can see from that early concept art, some of the alien designs were way stranger than the final version. Why were those rejected? Were you told to tone down the nastiness?

Those designs weren't necesarily rejected outright, we just evolved away from them. A huge amount of work was done designing these things. There were so many iterations, by the time the final design was nailed down, these early images were out of sight and out of mind. The technical approach to realizing the creatures was always in flux, so that affected the look. I'd like to note that the reason the aliens in the early concept art have such human eyes was because they were, at first, intended to be actors in make-up. Due to budgetary constraints, we didn't think the aliens could be done as pure CG, which is what they ended up being. They were originally conceived as practical make-up with digital replacement over certain parts.

Neill actually encouraged us to make the aliens gross and unpleasant. He was very keen that the aliens should look revolting when they were eating, and left it up to us as to what that meant exactly. So I did my take of what an open alien mouth would look like, and some viewers have been disturbed by it! They took note of the genitalia-like aspect. It's my job to disturb people sometimes, and to be honest, I was only a little worried that genitaliia-esque aliens were old hat. But I think they continue getting such visceral responses because they remind the viewer of his or her own vulnerability, not because of the shock value. In the end, that aspect didn't make it into the final alien, possibly due to censorship issues, but as I said, these illustrations were old news by then. Oh well, it's all good.

It seems like a lot of the meaning of the story changes depending on how aggressive or how loveable the aliens appear. Was there ever any talk of making them cuter? Or more scary and soldier-like?

Definitely for the little child alien, Neill wanted to make him very cute. I collaborated on the child alien with Jamie Beswarick, and Neill encouraged us to play up the big eyes and rounded head, etc. For the the general alien populace, Neill wanted them to be intimidating due to physical strength and size, and off-putting. I think the endearing quality of the generic aliens was due to their ineptness and victim status, one felt sorry for their plight. There was another design phase of the Prawns I personally liked, where they looked very much like those early concept images, but with larger bug eyes. That evolved further into the final aliens. Neill really pushed the eyes to be bigger and bigger, which I initially wasn't sure about, but upon seeing the final movie, I understand the decision. A lot of people seemed to prefer that. It seemed so obvious to have big puppy dog eyes, but without them, perhaps no one would care about Christopher Johnson and his kid.

So the aliens were pure CG, not a mixture of CG and practical effects as you'd considered. How would that mixture have worked? And were any of the alien body parts still done with practical effects?

The Prawns themselves were entirely CG, from head to foot. The alien parts on Wikus were prosthetics built and applied by Weta Workshop (Sarah Rubano and Joe Dunckley took care of the make-up work on location), and there were various alien corpses that we fabricated physically, such as in the laboratory dissection scene. Initially, the aliens were to be an actor in a suit, who would then be augmented with digital replacement in some areas, at an earlier stage we considered mechanical puppetry mixed with prosthetics. Ultimately the decision was made to have them be pure CG.

The aliens in D9 are amazingly expressive — they do a lot of "acting" with their eyes and mandibles. It seems like the biggest problem for a really alien creature is getting human audiences to identify with it or feel its emotions. How did you approach this problem?

That credit should mainly go to the animators and Neill Blomkamp. They solved how this thing we designed should move and emote. But from a design standpoint, it would go back to the eyes. Throughout most of the design process, the aliens had mammalian eyes with pupils and sclera, etc., so we always knew they would be able to emote warm-blooded emotions. Neill didn't go with our versions of the eyes as solid black or cephalapod pupils, so they retained a relatable humanity to them.

Obviously, a lot of the press about D9 focused on its low budget. How do you create aliens who look more convincing and interesting than most big-budget movie monsters, on such a low budget?

Of course, that credit goes to Neill's filmmaking sensibilities. I was part of an initially larger team of designers who were later scaled down to Greg Broadmore, Leri Greer and myself. I worked as lead creature designer, concentrating on the organic creatures. Greg designed all the robots, bio-suits, weaponry, vehicles, the mothership, etc., and was the lead concept designer. In his role as art director, he also contributed studies of the alien's body coloration, as well as some subtle last minute tweaking on the final version aliens. Leri did the graphic design, logos and costumes. With Neill directing me, I just offered up as many possibilities as I could, bearing in mind that it had to be relatable to human audiences and based around a roughly humanoid shape. Initially, we tried not to heed any budgetary or technical constraints, so as not to become creatively impaired, but those things factored in later on. Eventually, time just ran out.

The aliens in the film are standing in for South Africans during Apartheid, but they don't act or appear like any human ethnic group — did you have any discussions about avoiding the "Jar Jar Binks" effect, and making them look less like members of a human ethnicity and more like real aliens?

I don't remember that we did. They spoke in an utterly inhuman language and were so insectile, they didn't really run the risk of mirroring any human ethnic group. Personally, I never thought our space lobsters would strike anyone as ethnic caricatures!

In the film, we got very little information about the aliens' social structure and how they came to be in such bad shape. Were you told anything more about this, during the design phase? Is it true that most of the aliens on Earth were worker drones? Did you have any ideas about what other aliens, like their Queen, might have looked like?

I think the idea was that the vast majority of the aliens were workers, and that Christopher Johnson was much brighter than most. Which sort of explained why the overall population were so lost and ineffectual. There was definitely talk of the social structure of the aliens during the design phase. It factored into how we designed them. There was a lot of stuff designed and talked about that never made it into the film. It's possible that Neill may want to save some of these ideas for other future projects, so I don't know if I should talk about it.

Speculative fiction is full of stories about people who've lost their identity – AMC just gave us a dreamlike remake of The Prisoner in which Number Six forgets who he really is, and Dollhouse returns Friday with more mind-erasing fun. But it's weird to see the trope of "fighting for selfhood" merged with that action-movie staple, the entertaining killing spree.

Recently, I was re-watching chunks of X-Men: Origins: Wolverine and thinking about that movie's insane body-count — both before and after Logan starts trying to regain his elusive humanity. In Wolverine, the mutant known as Logan is caught between his bestial nature and his dignity as an individual. For a hundred-odd years, he is a slaughter machine for the military, and then he joins a super-secret mutant taskforce. But in mid-atrocity, he suddenly starts questioning orders, and then he goes… rogue. (No, he doesn't bleach part of his hair and start talking in a Southern-girl voice. He just wanders off the reservation.)

The point is, Wolverine is just as much of a killing machine after he starts asserting that he's not just part of the machine, or not just an animal. He never makes the connection between the sacredness of his own personhood, and the sacredness of human life in general. I get that you have to fight for your freedom sometimes, but the movie makes a big point of showing Wolverine killing when he could just as easily disable his opponents — one of the movie's few great fuck-yeah moments involves cold-blooded murder. (Sure, he's killing scumbags. But he was just as much of a scumbag twenty minutes earlier.)

Likewise, Terminator Salvation (newly on DVD) gives us Sam Worthington's tormented cyborg Marcus, who discovers that he's basically a reanimated corpse with metal parts — and he makes the choice to be human, slaughtering several of John Connor's men in the process. (During his heroic escape from the resistance compound.) But it's okay, because Marcus' emergent selfhood is more important than any sense of self all of those dead people might have possessed. (Actually, I might need to — shudder — rewatch this sequence. I know a bunch of the rebels die, but some of them die due to hydrobots that attack afterwards. Does Marcus actually kill anybody directly, or just cause their deaths by tearing apart their security?)

And then, of course, there's District 9, in which Wikus also fights to regain his humanity — by putting on a battlesuit and shredding people with alien weapons. This film at least subverts this trope a bit, by having Wikus use alien weaponry that he's only able to use because he's losing his humanity — and the film doesn't exactly reward Wikus for his mass murder.

This odd combination — the hero who devalues human life in the process of exalting his own — has been around for ages, but seems to be on the rise. RoboCop and the Universal Soldier movies give us cyborg heroes who struggle to re-humanize while killing lots of other humans. Michael Bay (surprise!) gave us The Island, in which a clone grown as an organ donor kills his "original" self, along with a number of other people, on the way to becoming a full-fledged person.

For almost as long as there have been action movies, there's been the high body count: watching a Rambo movie in the 1980s, you don't stop and think that everyone of these bodies flopping to the ground is another person who won't come home to his/her family. It's one of the conventions of action movies that we accept that this carnage isn't really happening – even as the movie expects us to suspend our disbelief about a guy falling out of a helicopter on fire and surviving, it asks us to maintain full disbelief that mass murder is taking place in front of us.

On some level, too, we stop thinking that those people dying in front of us are really people – especially in a movie with tons of bad CG (like Wolverine). We can watch the corpses piling up because we know they're not human.

But the action-movie body count and the "search for identity" plot are great separately — I love a good John Woo bloodbath — but they sit uneasily together. The more people we see your cyborg or mutant kill — and the more casually they're killed — the less we can identify with our hero's quest for selfhood. The whole thing starts to feel more like a first-person shooter, and the main character more like a video-game avatar, rather than an individual who Deserves Human Rights and all that stuff.

If life is so cheap, then who really cares about Logan's quest for self? Not to pick on Wolverine, but these questions keep coming back as you watch the movie, as if they have a mutant healing factor.

How do you square the contrast, between the hero's inalienable uniqueness and everyone else's disposability? Maybe it's because Our Hero is a Nietzschean ubermensh, whose will to power makes his individuality more precious than everyone else's? What do you think?

FilmJunk reports that a story in Uruguayan newspaper El Pais says that Alvarez has signed on to direct a $30-40 million movie that may or may not be based on Panic Attack, to be produced by Raimi. According to the story, Raimi would "shield" Alvarez from business concerns, allowing him to concentrate on the movie, a la Jackson and Blomkamp on D9. Is this the new model for young filmmakers breaking into the industry, or Raimi wanting to see if D9's success is repeatable?

Sam Raimi Signs Panic Attack! Director for Sci-Fi Feature Film Debut [FilmJunk]

At the end of 2012 the cast members who have survived the massive floods and volcanic destruction on Earth head over to Africa, the new center of the world. What happens next has just been picked up by ABC as a television series that Emmerich is helping out with. We got the chance to find out more about his post-post-apocalypse series at the 2012 press day.

io9: You may dislike sequels but I hear you are interested in making a TV series sequel to the this film called 2013?

Roland Emmerich: But that's something different. It's something like Lost, which has a totally different feel to it. It's more than a little bit like District 9. These ships show up in Africa and [in] Cape Town there are survivors, and they are not happy people. Because they were left behind. And how do you start a new society? It has no visual effects, it's all about characters. What will the future bring? Hope for us?

Will 2013 have to happen pretty quickly after this movie is released? Do you have any actors or additional writers in mind?

They just made a deal with ABC. And we're very happy about that. I'm already discussing with the people that write and try to help them with what this could be. The original idea is from [2012 co-writer] Harold [Kloser], me and Mark Gordon. Mark is big in TV so Harold and I had an idea. Because there were a lot of things we couldn't incorporate in 2012. And we thought it was interesting what happened after all this. When we were writing the script we had to end it at one point and we left it very vague. They discovered that Africa is still existing. It has just risen a couple thousand feet. But that's it. And we ended on a really really small note about a little girl who overcame her fear. It was a very small way [to end]. Which was also kind of for us something very personal and poignant. [In the sequel] people would expect visual effects but it will be only what happened between people. We can do that on a TV show week after week after week.

It's just the fact that they come off their shiny arcs to a destroyed Cape Town. And it's not the bright and happy future everybody was envisioning. It's same old problems.

Instead of Superheroes: Disney Mash-Ups

As much as I love a well-dressed Clark Kent with the Superman T-shirt peeking out from underneath his white button down, we've all seen it before. And sadly, the Watchmen idea is a little played out by now as well. I'm sorry, but the 1,000 Rorschach comic con cosplayers pretty much solidified Rorschach's status as this year's Joker costume. So mix it up, literally. Be a Disney Marvel Mashup like Mickey Venom here. It's clever, timely and most likely the most original costume you'll see all night.

Instead of Sexy Princess/Sexy Beloved Childhood Icons: Undead/Evil Princesses And Villains

Another Halloween, another batch of slutty Disney Princesses and beloved childhood characters getting sexified by the masses. Look, just because they make the costume, doesn't mean you have to wear it. Sexy Snow White and Rainbow Brite are TIRED. We suggest that if you're going to sexify a cartoon princess, do it with edge, twisted princess style — like this overhauled evil Alice get up from horrorland. You could even flip it around and be the baddie, we're actually kind of excited about sexy Maleficent, at least we haven't seen her around the block as many times as Snow White.

Instead of The Joker: Cesar's Joker

We get it, you really, really, really liked Dark Knight's Joker. Well so did millions of other people, which is why the streets are perpetually flooded with Jokers every year, The Office even poked fun at the Joker masses. This year if you must don the old purple suit, at least go retro Cesar Romero style. Don't forget the pencil-thin mustache.

Instead of Bloody Doctor: A Real Science Experiment Gone Wrong, District 9 Style

Every year one of my friends in the medical profession always half asses it with an old pair of scrubs and some fake blood. This is not scary, nor is it interesting. Put a timely spin on this look with a "Prawn" hand! Slap on a "property of MNU" and this amazing arm extension and BAM you're Wikus from District 9. Just remember to say "fook" a lot. Alien hand available on ebay.

Instead of Sexy Cat: Sexy Avatar Cat

Throngs of unwashed, mewing "sexy cats" prowl paws first through our city street every year. But this year, we beg of you, update your kitty ears and tails into a James Cameron approved sexy cat, an Avatar Na'vi. Plus 1,000 points if you wrap it in with Arrested Development's "never nude" shorts.

Instead of Darth Vader: Sexy Vader

While we all love a good Chewy and Han here and there, I'm a little tired of seeing poorly constructed Vaders. Give the old costume a whirl this year and throw a pair of heels on the Dark Lord.

Instead of Leia: Zombie Leia

Same thing that applies to Vader also applies to the tons of Leia costumes, switch it up, take her from beauty to undead lovely with a zombie twist!

Variety is reporting that not only is Blomkamp's next scifi feature getting money, but he's getting creative freedom and a larger budget than the $30 million District 9 was allotted. (But the budget will still be "modest" by Hollywood blockbuster standards.) Still, we all know he can make a winner without a ton of money.

"Hopefully, this will be a bit unique, very much a reflection of me. It is absolutely another science fiction film, quite different from `District 9,' but some of the blending of genres and the tone might be within the same realm."

And rumor has it the untitled feature takes place entirely on an alien world. Blomkamp is also committed to directing the District 9 sequel, but that comes after this next project.

We already showed you Greg Broadmore's concept art for the movie's alien mothership, but now here are some incredible designs for different versions of the aliens. (All alien images are by Meng, except for "Generic Alien Illustration" (#10), which is a collaboration between Meng and Broadmore.) Plus some of the other most recognizeable images in the film:

You can also read our interview with Broadmore, and see more of his work, here. More art at the link. [WETA NZ via Concept Art World]

If you're looking for the movie that outright made the most profit? Well, that's Transformers, but only just; right behind it is the movie that offered the best Return on Investment for studios, with some math that could even tempt some studios into spending less money on movies in future... unless Michael Bay is involved, of course. But there's no denying that District 9 has to be some kind of gamechanger for science fiction movies of the future, going by these numbers.

(For the math-inclined, these movies are ranked in terms of ROI.)

[UPDATED to add Wolverine and Harry Potter, because I forgot both. Sorry!]

District 9
Domestic Box Office: $112,440,084 (over 6 weeks - $18,740,014 per week average.)
Budget: $30,000,000
Profit: $82,440,084
(374% return domestically)

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen
Domestic Box Office: $401,555,453 (over 13 weeks - $30,888,881 per week average.)
Budget: $200,000,000
Profit: $201,555,453
(200.7% return domestically)

Star Trek
Domestic Box Office: $257,638,255 (over 20 weeks - $12,881,912.75 per week average.)
Budget: $150,000,000
Profit: $107,638,255
(171.76% return domestically)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Domestic Box Office: $179,880,256 (over 21 weeks - $8,565,726 per week average)
Budget: $150,000,000
Profit: $29,880,256
(119.92% return domestically)

Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince
Domestic Box Office: $299,695,999 (over 10 weeks - $29,996,599 per week average)
Budget: $250,000,000
Profit: $49,695,999
(119.88% return domestically)

Moon
Domestic Box Office: $4,843,670 (over 15 weeks of limited release - $322,911.33 per week average)
Budget: $5,000,000
Profit: -$156,330
(96.87% return domestically)

GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Domestic Box Office: $146,569,665 (over 7 weeks - $20,938,523.43 per week average)
Budget: $175,000,000
Profit: -$28,430,335
(83.75% return domestically)

Terminator Salvation
Domestic Box Office: $125,322,469 (over 16 weeks - $7,832,654.31 per week average)
Budget: $200,000,000
Profit: -$74,677,531
(71.61% return domestically)

We've talked to Broadmore about space weaponry before, specifically his love of ray guns. But you can check in on the man who helped craft Neill Blomkamp's alien power suit over at his blog.

Allegations of racism against Neill Blomkamp's movie have been flying since its release, but this new move from the Nigerian government raises the stakes significantly. Information Minister Dora Akunyili explained her problems with the movie:

We feel very bad about this because the film clearly denigrated Nigeria's image by portraying us as if we are cannibals, we are criminals... The name [of] our former president was clearly spelt out as the head of the criminal gang and our ladies shown like prostitutes sleeping with extra-terrestrial beings... I have also formally written to Sony Pictures Entertainment, the company that produced this film, demanding an unconditional apology for this unwarranted attack on Nigeria's image.

The government has also asked the Nigerian film censors' board to ban the movie within the country. Sony have so far declined to comment.

Nigeria 'offended' by sci-fi film [BBC News]

The shaky cam, which finds its origins relatively recently, has become synonymous with mockumentaries and "realistic" approaches to fiction.

Movies that use the shaky camera technique strive for a realistic approach to better "connect" with the audience. Sure, in theory it's realistic. People move and so do our eyeballs. But our eyes are so well adapted that trying to replicate them is useless. No camera even comes close to capturing the details our eyes can.

The Good:

The beauty of film for me has always been seeing and picking up on things you wouldn't in everyday life. Shaky cams are agonizing because you miss as much as you get from a film. Most films that use the technique require atleast a rewatch or even a careful inspection of stills.

That being said, there do exist films which use the realism to their advantage.

District 9 used the shaky cam well, sparingly using the camera to "replicate" the human eye. When it did use the realistic technique, it wasn't distracting and actually added to the storyline.

The camera is not as shaky as in other films and even serves to enhance the viewing as it switches from a relatively still camera taking documentary statements to the 1980s-esque hand held shaky cam.

Even with these action-packed clips from D9, even with their more distracting movements, you don't miss any of the action.

Director Neill Blomkamp keeps the action front and center, never sacrificing the story for "authenticity." Perhaps that's why his shaky cam is less distracting, because Blomkamp seems to understand that while some movement is accepted by the human eye, too much loses viewers as they look away to readjust their eyes.

The recent reincarnation of Battlestar Galactica was critically hailed for it's inventive use of the shaky cam realism, featuring jumps and surprise zooms and using the camera as a translator of the action.

It was quick and fast and yet you never felt as though you missed any part of the important action scenes. Again, a careful juxtaposition of still and shaky shots combined to give us an easy, even pleasant to watch story. BSG and Firefly put shaky cam back on the map for inventiveness and District 9 is taking it even further by using it as an actual enhancement instead of an authenticity booster.

Too often filmmakers seem overly excited by the thought of realism and forget that some people want to watch a movie for the fiction of it all; but yes, the realistic shaky cam does have its advantages.

The Bad:

Remember when Paul Greengrass was set to direct Watchmen? It would have been an entirely different movie if the master of shaky cam action sequences had been at the helm of the greatest graphic novel film. Instead, he tackled the Bourne trilogy.

Greengrass's The Bourne Ultimatum is filled with shaky, "realistic" jumps and serves and zooms. And while, they're not always as bad as those in previously mentioned mockumentaries, there's still something lacking, there's still some action you're missing out on.

The film isn't half as distracting as Cloverfield, but it still never seems to stop moving. There's no break, no pause, very few still shots. With so much movement, you can assume Greengrass wants his audience involved in the action, engaged and invested with his hero. And yet, if I can't see the man I'm supposed to be supporting, how can I root for him?

Bourne is better at giving the audience a glance at the actual action, and yet there's still something missing. An improvement over the shaken more in post-production fests of above, but still not quite perfection. And the problem is that many have tried to imitate what didn't work even for Bourne and end up shelved in the Ugly section.

The Ugly:

The ugliest shaky cam abusers are those which have little regard for the actual film they're making and instead are more concerned with the look and visceral feel of the movie.

Mockumentaries have a terrible habit of using the shaky cam to its shakiest to make a scene scarier or more believable. Instead they merely make you angry you're missing what they're supposed to be documenting.

Ever watch an actual documentary? They don't shake half as much as these mocking films would have you believe.

Quarantine coupled the shaky cam with a terrible night vision green hue giving you not only jerky, hard to follow camera shots, but a sickly color throughout much of the film. Of course the camera was often not focused on the scary source of crazy sounds to build suspense and fear, but when it was focused on the action it wasn't even worth it.

Cloverfield is another mockumentary that relied on it's jerking camera shots to make it's realism wildly apparent.

In this clip, the camera is constantly tilted and always moving to remind us that this is "found footage" from a dig site and it was recorded by an regular human being instead of, say, a photographer with a steady hand.

Why eschew established filming techniques in an effort to ruin my experience? Cloverfield had one of the best premises for a monster movie in recent history, the story was engaging and mysterious and required a lot of imagination and extrapolation. It was inventive and steeped in the same lore than makes serials such as Lost work.

So why'd that get thrown out the window when it came time to film the movie? Director Matt Reeves constantly threw around the word "authenticity" when discussing the filming.

If this camera feature is supposed to be so authentic and realistic, how come I always feel like I'm missing so much of the action? Action movies are great; the adrenaline, the jumps, the fights. But with a shaky cam, I feel as though the movement detracts from the pivotal action. I want to see the bad guy getting his face kicked and during car chases; I want to see the car we're supposed to be chasing; I definitely want to see the monster I've been waiting for all movie.

So where do you draw the line; when does realism impede getting the shot?

I'm not discounting every use of shaky cam ever, simply asking for it to be used sparingly, especially with shows like Stargate Universe and the threat of movies like Cloverfield 2 and another Blair Witch on the horizon. Until filmmakers learn to keep us engaged and literally unable to look away, I vote for a moratorium on shaky cam use.

After District 9 screened in Johannesburg, many noted that the "prawns" — as the aliens are contemptuously referred to by many humans — are a reference to Parktown Prawns, a common and much-loathed creature often found in Johannesburg homes. Parktown Prawns are not, in fact, prawns, but a species of king cricket that has likely been around since prehistoric times. The critters can grow up to 10 centimeters in length, and sport barbed legs and powerful mandibles.

But it's more than their name and their insect-like appearance that the District 9 aliens borrow from the South African bugs. One of the Parktown Prawn's less endearing qualities is its tendency to spew a noxious black sludge, which one commenter on the William Gibson discussion board points out is likely the inspiration for the black alien liquid that is central to the movie's plot.

As for human interactions with the Prawns, a New York Times article from a decade ago relates a story of a woman who screamed upon spotting a Parktown Prawn, prompting the confused creepy crawly to leap into her mouth, and was summarily rushed to the hospital after chocking on the barbed legs. But the commenter from the William Gibson boards takes a much calmer approach:

[T]he real secret is to TALK to your Prawn — I would always say, "Hello, Prawn, well, I know this is a nice house but really, you belong outside in the garden, so just stay calm, and I'll pick you up and put you there." It really works, if you ever encounter a Prawn, try it.

The film's military contractor, Multinational United, would likely be impressed, since they advise a similar approach:

When dealing with aliens, try to be polite, but firm. And always remember that a smile is cheaper than a bullet.

[William Gibson Discussion Board via Reddit]
These Streets Belong to the Pre-Millennium Bug [NY Times via Reddit]

DISTRICT 10:
So I finally saw District 9 and it was better than I had hoped. I'll definitely take a sequel. As for him tackling a video game property? I'll just say I wasn't thinking Halo when I saw D9 that's for sure...

THE CASE OF KIRK V TAM:
I'm sorry, but a walking coma patient who occasionally spazzes out and can be turned off by a phrase can't beat a walking man bomb who at worst can be distracted by the phrases "I have some Romulan Ale" and "Green poon at 4 O'clock, set phasers for fun."

First there was their tête à tête:

Then came the battle of the shows... seriously. Twilight Zone at #12 and Firefly #3?! sigh.



I guess it's a tie after all.
WAIT! Bonus Round!!!
When Summer Glau does something strangely wonderful like THIS, THIS, THIS or THIS and of course THIS then maybe she'd be in the running.
THE SHAT WINS, THE SHAT WINS!!!


V PRODUCTION SHUT DOWN:
The remake of the classic series V was shut down for undefined reasons. Don't these rich Hollywood high rollers realize that while they may be able to glide through some weeks off, the rest of the below the line production staff really takes a hit. They have to think of everyone while they run through their "creative issues".



PITCH US YOUR IDEAS:
I actually did pitch this to SyFy (back when it was Sci-Fi) and this was the mock-up I did for it. They do love their reality shows after all. One line pitch... Take overweight CosPlayers and slim them down until they really look sharp in their costumes and then a final judging by a crowd at ComicCon. I'm still available SyFy, feel free to pick it up, you know how to find me.



SUPER-BABY DNA:
So now we can add a third parent to the classic 2 parent embryo. Wow, we as humans are really taking this science ball and really rolling with it.



IT'S A DISASTER:
Ahhh "Avatar". I guess the all those complaints about the overuse of CG, lack of story and character, super inflated budgets, and too much action that get sent my way when I'm excited for Michael Bay movies must not apply to James Cameron. I'm still definitely seeing it even though...

remember. the guy also made "True Lies" and "Titanic".


Until next time...
This is Garrison Dean, signing off.

You know, the monetary cost of producing a science fiction film for theatrical release. Someone like myself who makes a good living in the entertainment business probably shouldn't be discussing such things in public, but this summer we've had our Terminator 4, Transformers 2, GI Joe, Star Trek and Harry Potter all in the two hundred million dollar budget range, and Moon costing somewhere around five million dollars. So does that mean the only science fiction movies getting a theatrical release are at the opposite ends of the budget spectrum? District 9 is reported to have cost somewhere around thirty million bucks to produce, but I wonder if Weta Digitia; would've billed the same number of hours if Peter Jackson hadn't been the movie's producer. I dunno. Still — let's say that one's in the middle, and I think it's really the best of the lot. Neill Blomkamp is the mega shizz in my opinion.

Hmmm... I wonder if those sixteen minutes of Avatar cost the same as District 9. Maybe. They certainly cost more than Moon. Reports have Avatar costing somewhere north of three hundred million bucks, and it looks seriously and completely awesome: I think that blue Legolas guy looks cool! So don't get me wrong, I'm very happy that science fiction has become such a popular form of global entertainment that financial investments of the aforementioned magnitude make sense to somebody. But one thing does kind of suck about it. Most of that money is spent on CGI. Maybe Avatar will be the game changer, but for me — CGI jeopardy isn't usually that compelling. Are you still blown away by green screen vistas and pixel generated monsters? Are you still terrified by tidal waves and explosions that took rocket scientists months to render?

I like that stuff. I like it a lot in fact. I read Cinefex every month. But CGI just doesn't freak me out or put me on the edge of my seat like it once did. I think one of the great things about science fiction movies that don't have a gazillion dollars to spend is that they need to make choices. They need to come up with ways to use filmmaking techniques and practical effects to adjust for the fact that they can't afford 1000+ CGI shots. They've gotta build suspense the old fashioned way: Hide the creature for a while. Shoot on location. Blow stuff up. Crash a car. Pay a stuntman to do a full body burn. That's the stuff I miss. I miss movies like Star Wars, Escape From New York, Alien, Aliens, Outland and Predator. Movies where a big part of my suspension of disbelief came from recognizing a world where physics could be painful and not everything was in focus all the time.

Lost and BSG have been kicking ass with this approach on the small screen. And with Blomkamp's District 9 and his amazing short films, I have hope that we could be on the verge of a new crop of middle budget sci-fi flicks coming to theaters; movies that can transport me to a different reality by taking a world that I recognize and making it extraordinary through traditional movie making techniques and state of the art CGI. Gamer looks like it might do this. Neveldine and Taylor's gonzo Crank flicks give me hope that it's gonna viscerally rock. But I hear it cost around sixty million, so I wonder how much of that they spent on CGI?

Oh well — see you in line for Avatar.

Jesse Alexander is creator and executive producer of NBC's Day One, and has worked on Alias, Lost and Heroes.