All Of District 9's Alien Dialogue Was Improvised On The Spot
In 2009, Neill Blomkamp crafted a one-of-a-kind directorial debut with his brilliant "District 9," a film that plays out like a routine action flick but also functions as a layered socio-political allegory about xenophobia. With no shortage of dystopian sci-fi dramas that focus on alien invasions, "District 9" could have easily been lost in the shuffle due to its similar premise. However, what elevates Blomkamp's debut above standard genre fare is the gritty specificity of the film's world, which consistently manages to feel evocative of our own despite teeming with CG aliens and VFX-amped environmental elements. Instead of posing the extraterrestrials as an overt threat, the film presents them as a dwindling, malnourished race, trapped on Earth, forced to be treated as an underclass, and forever at the mercy of Multi-National United (MNU). Here, the local enforcers exploit the alien settlement, mock their appearance and modes of communication, and instigate violent retaliation time and again.
Although Blomkamp and co. cooked up a functional alien language consisting of a 26-letter alphabet, almost all of the aliens' dialogue in the film was improvised on the go. The aliens (disparagingly called "prawns" by the MNU) are seen communicating through rhythmic clicking noises, which the local Nigerian population has grown to understand over time. When MNU stooge Wikus (Sharlto Copley) is sent to District 9 to serve the settlement relocation papers, it becomes increasingly clear that he's inept at handling the situation and conveying his message effectively. Unable to understand their language, Wikus stumbles through his job, which leads to sequences where the aliens engage in dialogue with him. Surprisingly, all of these dialogues were generated impromptu thanks to Copley and actor Jason Cope, who played deuteragonist Christopher Johnson and all the other speaking aliens in the film.
Playing pretend
Neill Blomkamp, who had to bring a high-concept sci-fi world to life with a budget of $30 million, struggled after his originally-planned collaboration on the film's VFX with WETA fell through. After pivoting to the lesser-known company Image Engine, Blomkamp and his crew had to contend with an insufficient budget and arbitrary shooting schedule, which demanded that a lot be accomplished with little. In a 2009 conversation with Gizmodo, the director explained that all the alien interactions during the eviction sequence were improvised on the spot by Sharlto Copley and Jason Cope, who effectively shifted scenes while pretending to evict different aliens:
"So we would film the two of them and then we would go to a different shack. And he'd [Copley] pretend to evict a new alien. Then we'd go somewhere else. [...] It's the conversations between those two, the actual dialogue, and what actually came out of them was totally improved. Any details in words and the language between the two happened right there on the day of shooting."
Apart from stellar improvisation, the reason why these interactions feel so real is the way in which the camera captures these events in faux-documentary style, granting them a grounded, realistic essence. Even in moments when the duo diverge from the script, Blomkamp kept rolling, stopping only when something did not work in tandem with the story. For instance, after the crew drew a sign on the wall, Copley randomly ad-libbed, "This is a gang sign, we're in a gang area right here," which meant that the characters inside the alien home with the sign would now be treated as gangsters. This meant that the specifics of the story had to often be changed to allow creative freedom to the duo at the heart of the eviction sequence.
What the eviction sequence manages to establish
Although Wikus starts off as a corporate pawn hopelessly out-of-touch with the realities of District 9, his character undergoes a massive evolution. This transformation is triggered by metamorphosis, where Wikus is forced to assume a double-edged position after he begins morphing into an alien himself — he is deemed both a non-human (hence, lesser than) and an asset (because of his newfound ability to use biologically-synced alien weaponry). Even after Wikus is subject to inhumane treatment, his sole motive to help Christopher and his family is the promise that he will be reinstated to his human form. However, as time passes, Wikus helps the renegade aliens from a place of radical empathy and hope.
The eviction sequence positions Wikus' biologically human status against his callous indifference; he is simply here to serve the aliens' relocation notices, and he is not even good at that. There is no empathy for the impoverished conditions that these alien families live in and Wikus has no intention to linger. As a result, his attempts at communication are rushed and ineffective, leading to the alien fuel mishap that leads to his hybrid condition. At this juncture, the status quo had shifted: Wikus is no longer worthy of empathy in the eyes of his own species, and is nothing more than a lab rat, a point of contention that leads to a tussle between MNU and local gang-leaders. After Wikus escapes the lab, he is labeled, othered, and cast off as a dangerous liability.
In the end, Wikus is finally able to communicate with the aliens from a place of empathy, which allows some of them to return to their home planet. As for Wikus, he pours his remaining vestiges of humanity into making metal flowers for a loved one.