I understand that you can try and fit all of these movies into what ever genre/copycat that you wish. However, I will argue that all of these movies brought different 'angles' if you will.
District 9 is much more than any generic alien movie. How many other alien films out there have aliens trapped and living in something comparable to india? or perhaps the Japanese collection during WWII? I'll admit the very end was pretty obvious which was my big knock on district 9, but getting there was very unique movie in regards to the story arc.
Shrek was a 'buddy movie' I guess, but what made it different is that story, which is my point. The story is a bunch of fairy tales that are combined into one (or several movies if you see that way).
Matrix shouldn't even be a question here. They brought you 'bullet time' and used humans as batteries. He also jumps into another man's body and destroys his 'code'...what other movies do this?
Avatar is a straight up war movie where the good side always wins and they are always outnumbered until the last second where something/someone comes from no where to take out all the bad guys. I can't tell you how many movies do this but here a few...
LOTR, Star Wars, Braveheart, etc.
All I'm asking is that we get away from the same generic crap. I'm not asking to reinvent every movie out there.