UPDATE: District 9 Plot Details Revealed

If you scroll down The Movie Mash main page, you’ll see a mash that I posted last week with the chilling new teaser-trailer for District 9, which premiered in front of X-Men Origins: Wolverine over the weekend. I elaborated as best I could on the available plot information, but it is apparent that Sony Pictures is slowly releasing bits of info. about this film, creating a Cloverfield-style “what the hell is it?” vibe, to ultimately heighten anticipation and curiosity.

Alex Billington over at FirstShowing.net picked up the latest issue of Rolling Stone, which has an extended look at newly revealed plot details. It seems to only be available in the hard copy issue because it’s no where to be found on  RollingStone.com. Their website is actually quite amateur for such a major publication BTW. Regardless, Mr. Billington was kind enough to take a photograph of the issue and upload it. Check it out.

The D9 feature is apart of Rolling Stone’s Summer Movie Preview issue, calling D9 “Summer’s Secret Weapon.”  The feature contains a few good quotes from director Neill Blomkamp and producer Peter Jackson, primarily about the concept and the story. Mr. Jackson jokes, “It’s fun watching people trying to compare this to other films. Is it like 28 Days Later? No, it’s not. Is it like Cloverfield? No.”

In the teaser-trailer, it shows a montage of dreary 3rd-world living conditions in South Africa, accompanied by interview snippets with fed up citizens describing their frustration in dealing with “them & they.”  Then a massive mothership, Independence Day-style, appears hovering above the city with helicopters flying towards it. It then cuts to an interrogation room. There is a man with his back to the camera, sitting in a chair opposite a creepy alien with its faced blurred out. The man questions the alien about its/their intentions on Earth, to which the alien replies, but in its own language of clicks and noises. Pretty ambiguous stuff, until now.

Jackson elaborates on the back story of the teaser-trailer, giving us a much better understanding on what the hell is going on:
“These aliens arrived 20 years ago in a dead, derelict mothership, which hovers above Johannesburg. It’s enormous, like the size of 10 football fields. The aliens have ended up in a Soweto-style township beneath the ship. It’s clear that they’re not really integrating into society. They like to scavenge things, rip up train tracks. So the authorities shift them 200 miles away, into the African belt. They’ve built a concentration camp. And of course, that’s when things get crazy. The resident’s of Joburg want them gone.”

Jackson elaborates on the style and overall concept of the film:
“The film has almost a disregard for visual effects. Like, the aliens are so mundane and so part of the geography that you don’t really focus on them at all, which is what makes this so unique. Neill has built these teasing glimpses of alien culture, like gangs that spring up among them. Part of the fun is learning how the alien society has taken its lead from Earth society and from its own original thoughts. The film has this documentary rawness to it. It’s original, which is good, because the film industry today only wants to remake every 70′s TV show and superhero graphic novel. District 9 is not your typical summer film.”

Alien concentration camps!?!? So now what’s your most anticipated flick of the summer?

What Do You Think? Discuss.