spoiler tags

I did not like the main character for the first half of the movie. I know what they were going for, but I just didn't really like him. He was a little too annoying. Once he started mutating and went off on his own, though, I had no problem with him and actually started rooting for him. :)

The aliens themselves were awesome. They reminded me of the mysterious aliens from Half Life 2. I'm disappointed that so many of the aliens were low-life grunts, though. Were there seriously only 3 smart aliens out of all the ones living on Earth? Were Christopher (Was that the alien's name? I'm not really sure where his name came from in the movie; it seemed pretty random.) and his son the only aliens on the mothership at the end of the movie? You'd think he would need (a) permission from a ship captain or something and (b) help piloting something like that, but we never see any aliens other than him, his kid, and his friend that looked smart enough to even operate the thing.

They did mention that the prawn leadership had probably died, and you get the impression that they operate like an ant colony or bee hive, so that kind of explains why so many of the aliens stopped taking care of themselves on the mothership and resorted to primal instincts once transported to Earth. It still would have been nice to see some intelligence from more of the prawns, though.

I also didn't really like that the main character turned into a prawn. It worked as a plot device, but it just seemed strange that their source of fuel just happens to mutate other species into another of their own species. I couldn't stop thinking about The Fly throughout most of the movie. Their technology was all designed to respond only to their DNA, so the fuel having some properties of their DNA made sense, but to actually fully transform a being of another species just seemed far-fetched. Part of what makes good science fiction is actually trying to explain far-fetched ideas with "pseudo-science."

But enough critiquing. As I said, I really liked the movie overall. They strongly suggested that the prawns' home planet had been destroyed, and that's why they came to Earth. I assume at the end of the movie that Christopher (?) was going to request help from some other motherships that fled to different planets. There's a lot of potential for a sequel, and I kinda hope they attempt it because I really liked the concept for this movie.

In any case, the movie was very enjoyable. When I first saw the trailers to the movie, I thought it might be an Ender's Game movie because the aliens in Ender's Game are described as being similar to the ones we see in District 9. As much as I know they would probably butcher it, District 9 gives me hope that an Ender's Game movie could be really good.