The film uses a sound bridge between the opening credits and the opening scene to establish the location of the shot before the audience sees anything. We hear the sounds of phones ringing, footsteps and lots of talking, typical office sounds. The first shot is a medium shot than pans in to a close up of a man at his desk in the office. Interestingly, the opening of this film is set up as a documentary to introduce the plot, locations and characters of the film before dropping this filming style for a more cinematic feel around half way through the film. The costume of the man is a sweater vest worn over a shirt, a typical costume of a character who is practical rather than fashionable, which is stereo typically a socially-awkward characters archetype.
The man in question introduces himself to the audience as Wikus van de Merwe and a title card states "MNU Alien Affairs." This sets the science fiction element of the film in place early on. Wikus reinforces the socially-awkward image already imposed on him (through costume-work) by acting as such in front of a screen. The character does not know where to look and seems eager to impress the camera, showing he leads quite a boring office life and being on camera is an exciting prospect. This also works to make the audience sympathize with the character and identify him as a protagonist. The following introduction from Wikus gives the audience a taste of the plot. He says he and his office "engage with the prawn on behalf of MNU and on behalf of humans." This builds anticipation as the audience are yet to be introduced to these "prawn" and Wikus talks of "engaging" the prawn on behalf of the human race as if it is something most people would not want to do i.e dangerous.
After the introduction to Wikus we are given an extreme long establishing shot of a hot country with a large spaceship hovering above the city. A narration starts from UKNR Chief Correspondent called Grey Bradnam tells us that "to everyone's surprise" the ship landed directly over Johannesburg in South Africa rather than any of the major cities people would expect like Washington or New York. This sets the location of the film up as well as letting the audience know the difference between this and many other sci-fi films. The music that accompanies this shot also works to help establish the location as the music has an African feel to it which the audience can apply to what they see on screen. The narration continues to expand on the back story which sets up the situation and plot of the film. Another extreme long shot of the spaceship is shown whilst the audience are told that after 3 months of no movement, humans decided it was best to cut their way in.
A series of fast paced point of view shots show a team of people working their way into the spaceship wearing hazmat suits and using torches. The shots take the form of a body-mounted camera that sees whatever the people see. Another point of view shot introduces the main sci-fi genre convention, aliens. Here the audience are given an anticlimax, as the aliens seem weak and non-confrontational rather than the normal alien archetype of being strong, powerful and aggressive. This yet again pushes the audience to believe this film is a stand-out to the crowd of alien invasion films that all follow the same patterns. Another difference would be the protagonist we are introduced to (Wikus) being quite awkward and shy rather than brave and confident, as most sci-fi protagonists are.The 3 words the narrator associates with the aliens are malnourished, unhealthy and aimless. This makes the audience side with the aliens as well as raise questions as to who the aliens are, where they come from and why they are so weak. As an opening 2 minutes, District 9's work well as they introduce the genre of sci-fi well while highlighting all the aspects of the film that make it different to most sci-fi films. This amplifies interest amongst the audience at the prospect of seeing something unique as well as wanting answers to the questions immediately raised by the opening scene.
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