With Blomkamp, he’s subtle and complex, and packages a trojan horse into the stories. See this:
In recent interviews, filmmaker Neil Blomkamp hasn’t really hidden his frustration with the current Hollywood paradigm. After bursting onto the scene with “District 9,” Blomkamp has had a bit of a rocky go of it, with his films underperforming. The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back came with the release of his film, “Chappie.” That film was released to poor reviews and low box office.
Watch Neil Blomkamp’s New Short Film ‘Rakka’ Starring Sigourney Weaver - IMDb
I think people don’t like his movies because they cause discomfort. He’s not explicit about drivin self-examination; but he certainly has it in their.
LIke the way people treat “Chappie”, who to all intents and purposes is a bright 7 year old. It’s uncomfortable for humanity to watch the movie, because we all have that edge of the capacity to treat badly in us, and only social / ethical / religious / moral / etc binds keep us from doing it ourselves, in our real lives.
He makes us feel the impulse towards those behaviours. And shows us the mechanical conditioned responses that cause us momentary self-awareness of our own capacity for ill treatement and callous behaviour.
With District 9, who fails to see the obvious allegory of how we treat immigrants in our own areas? Awfully, I started thinking about that with the Grenfell Tower fire here in the UK. Thinking about the First Peoples in various colonised locations.
So he’s trying to find a way to sell movies, and he’s finding it tough, because Hollywood doesn’t care for his brand of ‘socialism’. It doesn’t sell like Tom Cruise in the Mummy [which looks atrocious], which has a gazillion $ in marketing.
I rather think that as costs of movie production decline, which is an evolution that allowed him to make District 9 in the first place, he will still be able to produce output, and it will have a dedicated and supportive audience.
He seems to be a person with a real soul. Bless him.
And he can tell a story, that’s for sure.
