District 9 Movies Rolled Into 1!

This week, I went to see “District 9.” After reflecting on it for a bit, I saw that the movie’s downfall has some valuable lessons about the unity of messaging. It’s failure to appeal to a single mass audience by blending different movie making styles provides further evidence for the need to segment audiences.
Synopsis
(I’ll try to do this without giving too much away, though I wouldn’t recommend this film to anyone who isn’t a blood relative of the cast members.)
District 9 chronicles the story of a government agency’s attempt to relocate over a million aliens living in a fenced-off district near Johannesburg, South Africa. We follow Wikus, a well-meaning and naive agent heading up the operation. The film documents the historic removal of the alien mothership and the events leading up to it.
What’s wrong?
The movie has multiple personality disorder. It begins as a documentary, sprints into an action film, flirts with being a love story, and then jumps back to documentary-style. At first, I thought this movie was going to provide a thoughtful commentary about who we are and how we treat each other. It changes its mind away from that goal about 20 minutes in, though.
So what?
Some people like mockumentaries. Some people like action. Some people like both. The lesson learned is that you can’t mix and match elements of different previous successes to create your own. That’s what “District 9″ tries to do, and it fails. It is the result of too many creative people sitting in a room dreaming up a screenplay without a down-to-earth realist to keep things in balance. Is it entertaining? Yes. Are the special effects great? They’re spectacular. Does it deserve to be at the top of the box office? Sure. But it will be soon forgotten; stashed away from movie greatness with the likes of “Cloverfield” and Spielberg’s “AI.”
What if…
The movie got me thinking about what it would be like to release several cuts of the same movie. What if “District 9″ came out as one cut true to the documentary-style through and through and was showing in the theater next door as the action movie. Like the college website that has different landing pages for different audiences, (students, parents, athletes, alumni, etc.) what if “District 9″ created the same story with different genres to appeal to different crowds. Might the movie be just as significant? Maybe. Might it make more money as well? Possibily. I would pay to see both versions after seeing the first one. I suspect others might too.
I’m not trying to change the movie industry here, I’m just asking “what if?”