SYNOPSIS
In an alternate 1982, a giant extraterrestrial spaceship arrives on Earth and hovers over the South African city of Johannesburg. After three months of inactivity, human investigators find over one million malnourished aliens (called "prawns") inside, and the South African government relocates them to a terrestrial camp called District 9. However, over the years, it has turned into a slum, and locals from Earth often complain that the aliens are filthy, ignorant lawbreakers who bleed resources from humans. Following unrest between the aliens and locals, the government hires Multinational United (MNU), a huge weapons manufacturer, to relocate the aliens to a new camp outside the city. Piet Smit, an MNU executive, appoints MNU employee and his son-in-law Wikus van de Merwe to lead the relocation. Meanwhile, three aliens, Christopher Johnson, his young son CJ, and Christopher's friend Paul, search a District 9 garbage dump for alien fuel in Prawn technology, which Christopher has had them spend the last twenty years synthesizing enough of to enact his plan.
They finally finish in Paul's shack, but when Wikus comes to the shack to serve Paul a relocation notice, Wikus finds the hidden container with the fuel and accidentally sprays some of it in his face while confiscating it. Paul is killed by Koobus Venter, a cruel leader of the MNU mercenaries. Wikus begins mutating into a Prawn, starting with his left arm, which was injured after the fuel exposure and hidden under a large bandage. After playing down his symptoms (vomiting, nosebleed, headache, and fingernail loss), he passes out during a party celebrating his promotion. He is taken to a hospital, where his left hand is now discovered to have become a prawn claw, and transferred to the MNU lab, where researchers perform brutal experiments. They find out his chimeric DNA grants him the ability to operate Prawn weaponry, which only works with the aliens' biology. Wanting to capture this human/alien hybrid before Wikus fully transforms, Smit orders Wikus's body to be vivisected and harvested for its properties. Wikus overpowers the lab personnel and escapes. While Koobus Venter's forces hunt for him, a smear story is broadcast on television, one that reaches Tania, Wikus' wife and Smit's daughter, claiming Wikus is a wanted fugitive who has contracted a contagious disease from copulating with aliens.
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