The Hurt District Locker 9

2009 had a lot of amazing movies in the running for best picture, with some of them that can be considered some of the greatest movies of all time. With movies like Up, Avatar, District 9 and The Blind Side where all of these films made at least $210 million in the box office it’s hard to believe that none of these films won this award. Instead this award was given to Katheryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” A film that follows a bomb squad stationed in Iraq that has to constantly watch each others back in a dangerous foreign country. District 9 was most similar with The Hurt Locker out of the nominations but it’s story was much more unique so how did The Hurt Locker win the award over it? 

District 9 follows a man named Wikus Van De Merwe who is put in charge of moving an alien species, known as prawns, that came to Earth looking for shelter away from the city Johannesburg, South Africa. In the film he comes across a black substance that will slowly turn him into a prawn and now he has to survive being hunted by a weapons corporation called MNU that wants to harvest him and use his DNA so humans can operate the prawn weapons that they brought with them. District 9 is a documentary style film that tells this story in a very unique way with found footage and interviews showing the audience how all the events happened in detail. The interviews seemed authentic too with the main people being interviewed being Christopher Johnsan, a scholar that spent years researching about Wikus’s story trying to figure out what really happened to him, Wikus’s mother, who just wants people to stop learning about how his life ended and move on, and Wikus’s wife, who is still confused about happened to him but still believes he’s alive and is hiding. Blomkamp, the director of District 9, did a great job, not only with showing how these events affected the characters but also with showing how these aliens impacted the city of Johannesburg and how it turned the city to chaos. With constant protests and constant media attention the city was only focused on figuring out a solution for what they should do with the prawns. It also shows how big name corporations, such as MNU, use these creatures to profit and sell weapons to give countries an upperhand in wars. The main focus of the film was to show how these events impacted Wikus so quickly and how he can change in such a short amount of time. Throughout the whole film he’s constantly looking for help but no one chooses to help him, even people he’s known his whole life turned their back on him, the only one that helped him was a prawn looking to get back to his homeworld. Wikus was very selfish towards the prawn helping him by only going to him so Wikus can be turned back into a human. But by the end of the film Wikus understands that the prawn needs to save his species first before he can save him which is why at the end of the film Wikus sacrifices himself so the prawn can escape. And even then Wikus is saved by more prawns just looking for something to eat. 

The Hurt Locker follows a very different storyline about a US bombsquad stationed in Iraq that had just lost their Staff Sergeant. This film focused on how being in this terrorist filled country can affect a soldier in different ways. In the beginning Staff Sergeant Matt Thompson is forced to put on the bomb suit in order to deactivate an IED and he seems very nervous about it. He takes his time walking over to the bomb and is in constant communication with Sgt. JT Stanborn but when Specialist Owen Eldridge hesitates to shoot a man with a phone watching Thompson deactivate the IED it leads to Sergeant Thompson's death. This opening scene keeps the audience on the edge of their seats because it gives a feeling that you know something wrong is going to happen, you just don’t know when. And right when you think everything’s okay, all hell breaks loose. This is very realistic to being a part of an actual bombsquad in the US Military, since they are constantly face to face with explosives that can kill them with the slightest movement anything can go wrong at any time. After the death of Sergeant Thompson the squad is assigned a new leader, Sergeant First Class William James who is completely different from Staff Sergeant Thompson. The first time the film shows James in action he doesn’t hesitate to put on the bomb suit and when he gets it on he almost runs towards the bomb as if he’s excited he gets to do this. He’s fearless and does his own thing which shows to be an issue for Sergeant Sanborn which also causes fighting between the two. At this point in the film Bigelow introduces the audience to three different types of soldiers. Sanborn and Thompson, who always follow protocol, Eldridge, who is more nervous about being in Iraq, and finally James, who is reckless yet proficient in doing what he does. Sanborn starts the film off constantly following protocol and is later revealed to not truthfully know what he wants out of life. He has a girlfriend at home that wants a kid, but he doesn't want one because he’s unsure of how he’ll do as a father. But when he comes face to face with death he realises that he wants more people around for him to care for and that will care about him which helps him realize that he does want a child. Eldridge starts the film off being a soldier that doesn’t seem like he wants to be fighting. In the opening scene he has a chance to save Thompson’s life but hesitates to kill a man and that decision haunts him throughout the film. He’s caught in a similar situation later in the film where James is trying to defuse a car bomb and there's a man with a camera watching him and Eldridge is left with the decision to shoot him or not. Lucky James defused the bomb and Eldridge didn’t have to kill a man but that would change later when he’s forced to shoot a terrorist in order to save James and Sanborn. But after Eldridge gets shot on accident by James, it leads him to go home thinking he has bad karma. James isn’t shown to have much character development throughout the film because he’s seen it all, he’s lost squad members, he’s failed to save innocent lives, and he’s helped soldiers become better at serving and protecting. The only thing he realizes at the end of the film is what he truthfully loves, which isn’t being home with his family, it’s being out there defusing hundreds of bombs and saving lives. 

The Hurt Locker and District 9 both follow two completely different stories which both take place in foriegn countries. One movie shows the events of literal aliens living with humans while the other shows the effects of war on the soldiers fighting in it. But both of these films focus on the effect of these events on the characters and the citizens of the city in conflict. District 9 is about how people are in conflict with what should be done about the aliens and The Hurt Locker is about how realy people are effected by terrorism everyday so why did The Hurt Locker win best picture over District 9? This is because The Hurt Locker did a better job on getting to the audience on a personal level, by showing innocent people being killed by these attacks and showing good soldiers dying from other people's mistakes. It shows the effects of war and how dangerous it is, yet it shows how some people can excel in it. By having James being confident and good at what he does in his own way it shows how that can rub off on soldiers in a good way. James got Eldridge to save the squad and become more confident in fighting, he also helped Sanborn figure out what he wanted to do with his life back home. District 9 couldn’t get that personal connection with the audience, while it’s an excellent film with a great story idea it just couldn’t connect with the audience. The film only showed, for the most part, bad guys being killed and getting what they deserve, even in the end Wikus isn’t turned back into a human he only completes the transformation and is forced to live the rest of his life as a prawn. This is the reason why The Hurt Locker won best picture over District 9 and all those other great films was because of the personal connection the audience got for those soldiers.