OK, so I have a couple of reservations about it. One is that I need to see it a few more times before I start calling it a classic in the mode of Aliens, because I thought Gladiator was a classic on the first watching, but after a few more times around it looked less and less impressive every time.
But beyond that: see it! See it now! I’d certainly put it up there with Aliens or Robocop as a very good sci-fi actioneer with a bunch of smart social commentary. Beyond that recommendation, I’m going to tuck a bunch of spoilers and overthinking away below…
You’re underthinking this plate of beans. The Nigerians are the mirror image of MNU. The experiences of the aliens and van der Merwe’s experience at their hands mirror one another; the differences are ones of detail; the biotech labs vs the religious rituals; collecting weapons for catfood vs taking them under the guise of paternalistic protection. MNU stands for the evils of white colonialism in Africa, while the Nigerians stand for black regimes that have failed Africa (Rwanda, Mugabe, et al).
If your problem with that is that you uncrtitically accept portraits of whites as evil psycopaths or sociopaths (the Colonel and the MNU directors and scientists), but get hinky about the same portraits applied to black Africans you should maybe think more about your own attitudes, rather than ascribing xenophobia to the film.
More broadly: my wife described it as “The Fly meets Die Hard”, which is a pretty fair summary, which probably accounts for the gear grinding of a lot of folks who found the action sequences dissapointing. I’d compare it to Aliens, and suggest the same applies to people who love Alien but find Aliens a huge dissapointment.
One thing I did dislike heartily, though: women. It’s pretty much all guys all the time. I don’t know if that’s deliberate, or just thoughtless.
(Actor) I went in having avoided interviews and whatnot about it. I was blown away when I read he hadn’t acted before, and that large chunks of his dialogue were improved. That’s pretty incredible.
Also, the worker caste being helpless without direction - that was pretty much spelled out in the film. The idea that Chris was an emergent intelligence from the hive, a la bees replacing their queen, was spelled out explicitly in the AV Club interview, but I thought that it was pretty much obvious that he must either be a surviving high-caste or somesuch from the expert interview segments.
I didn’t like the shot of prawn van der Merwe making the rose at the end - I would far preferred if it had ended with the wife’s comments about where her flower came from, rather than ramming it home that way.
Also, how dumb are humans that their response to the craft leaving isn’t to start treating the aliens a damn sight better until we find out whether an invasion fleet is coming back or not? Which dovetails, I guess, with Blomkamf’s generally negative view of human behaviour.