I think District 9’s biggest problem was that it had this great idea that it didn’t know what to do with. It made a lot of good points (most of which you hit on) but then it bought into a lot of the same stereotypes. The only scene I really liked was when the main character was sacrificing himself to save the alien — it’s a good reversal of the “heroic brown man dying to save the white man” trope (see: Ironman).

I think there’s definitely a level of sexism in the Star Trek movie, but I think there were also some refreshingly positive messages.
1. Spock loved his mother. This is one of the only portrayals of a good, healthy father-mother relationship that I can think of…admittedly, I first saw the movie after reading Watchmen.
2. There is no “no means yes” here. A lot of movies have a female character who will reject the advances of the male protagonist only to sleep with him later. (See: Ironman) Here, Uhura rejects Kirk and then never changes her mind. It was refreshing to see.
3. Gaila’s role was basically a stereotype waiting to happen, but there’s actually a reversal of the assumed relationship (Kirk is surprised that Gaila has slept around)
4. There’s a woman of color as the main romantic character! A lesser movie would have made one of the white females from TOS (such as Yeoman Rand or Nurse Chapel) the primary love interest. As a Latina, I was overjoyed to see a non-white woman’s relationship being taken seriously, not pathologized, and given central place in the movie.

But this doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of signs of the times in the movie. Deep Space 9, like you said BYC, took apart a lot of the liberal imperialism of the Next Generation, but it didn’t abandon the political and moral problems plaguing the 20th century. Abrams and his crew taking apart the Star Trek franchise isn’t space clearing gesture. It’s an example of deep-seated cynicism. You see this in Cloverfield when he burns down Bloomberg New York. But when you look at Lost and this re-visioning of Star Trek–two series that loudly say they are taking up the “big questions”–you get the sense of the pessimism that surrounds the whole attempt. It isn’t only that both are really skeptical about figuring out answers or ways forward to these “big questions”, it’s like taking up these questions itself is just a gesture–just a matter of “style”.

If this movie is a take-down on the liberal imagination, it seems it is still a prisoner of it. It isn’t only the deliberately cartoonish, schlocky characterization in the movie–a Peter Jackson specialty–seems to support the mocking of this imagination. It’s own limits come in when the movie can’t enter into the space of the aliens from their point of view.

Watching the movie you expect a radical shift in subjectivity when Wikus is forced to hide in the ghetto, where the story will now be told from the view of its inhabitants. The fact that this doesn’t happen shows that this imagination is incapable of seeing the system from viewpoint of the oppressed. It’s similar to David Simon and The Wire. Probably not a more fierce taking apart of the American system in television ever, but the show sees little alternative emerging from this decaying order.

The end result is, and this is what really struck me, Wikus is as horrifying as this world that is being portrayed. You can’t feel anything but the deepest contempt for Wikus. This dude is a moral scumbag. Wikus is not the white liberal savior of so many of these movies–think of The Constant Gardener, or The International, which is much more self-conscious about this. He is this “hero” kind of turned inside out to reveal the monster that the white liberal hero really is.

Wikus is the perfect representative of system that creates zones of surplus humanity–zones where the system doesn’t see “citizens” but “bare life”.

As for your comment on whiteness, I agree that Wickus as the hero in a majority black or person of color film (lets assume that the aliens are poc, since they’re treated like it) is a played out, racist element that needs abandoned. However, I do disagree with your statement that a “white” person can never be the victim of white supremacy. If our goal is partly to end whiteness, then we have to believe that white people can break with whiteness and throw their lot in with people of color. Its certainly possible for people of color and white people to be retaliated against for fighting white supremacy. Now, I don’t think that Wickus throws in his lot with the aliens at all. Sure, he looks like an alien, but he cant wait to become a human again, and he screws over Christopher in the film in order to achieve his retransformation faster. So he’s not much of a symbol for multi-racial solidarity.