Review of Elysium (2013) by Chrystian H — 28 Mar 2014

After the fantastic film that was District 9, Neil Blomkamp's Elysium was probably one of the most anticipated movies of the year for many people. I was one of those people. District 9 was an original, fresh, and interesting piece of sci-fi. So I was expecting something very similar with this film. I mean, Neil Blomkamp was the man trusted to direct the live action Halo film when it almost happened, and was offered Star Wars: Episode VII, but turned it down. This is a man people trust to deliver proper sci-fi. Maybe we all came to judgement too soon. Because Elysium is a stupid and nonsensical film. Spoilers for Elysium follow.

I'm not calling this film stupid in the way that a child calls someone or something stupid. This film actually treats it's audience like idiots...or maybe it's written by someone who knows not the ways of subtlety. The entire film is a very, very thinly veiled allegory for the Occupy "movement" and how the rich are unfairly favored over the poor. All of the poor people live on a scorched Earth, and all of the rich live on a beautiful ring world (hmmm) called Elysium, where everyone sits by the pool all day every day, and everyone has a magic box in their house that can cure any and all disease and injury. But no poor people are allowed treatment by the magic box (for no reason), because no poor people are allowed to Elysium.

It is never hinted at or said in Elysium that the magic healing box is a finite resource, or scarce at all in some way. There is one in every single house on Elysium. The rich simply don't share this technology with the poor for no reason. That's the biggest problem with this film; too much happens for no reason.

For example, Jodie Foster's character is the main villain of the film. She is the security director on Elysium. When people from Earth try to illegally fly up to Elysium, she shoots them out of space, killing dozens, just because she's an asshole. The character's motivations about why she is so strictly defending Elysium are never developed. Not much is said about the character at all. She's an asshole for no reason, or if there is a reason, it's just to better shove down the viewer's throat the idea that the rich are bad people. But I honestly don't think Neil Blomkamp gave it even that much thought.

But the most offensive thing that happened for no reason is the exoskeleton that Matt Damon's character wears. The plot point that sets the film in motion is that Matt Damon is hit with a deadly dose of radiation, and he needs to get to Elysium to use the magic healing box to make himself better, or he will die in a few days. So before he tries to go up to Elysium, he puts on an exoskeleton. It doesn't slow the damage from the radiation. It seems to make him stronger, but that isn't even shown until the end fight scene with Sharlto Copley's character, and even then, it seems to only serve the purpose of making a really strong punch look really cool. I thought the exoskeleton would be the coolest, most interesting part of this film. In the trailer, a character says "this will help you hack their whole system," or something along those lines, as the exoskeleton is shown for the first time. In the film, though, that line is said about something else entirely. The exoskeleton could have been wholly absent from the film, and nothing would be a bit different.

Next, let's talk about both Sharlto Copley and Jodie Foster's performances. Particularly, any time they spoke, and how grating it was. Jodie Foster seemed to be trying to fake some sort of accent, but I'm not sure what she was going for, and it just came off as awkward and distracting. But even worse than that was Sharlto Copley, who spoke in a completely cartoonish, incomprehensible voice. I have no idea what his character said the entire movie. Luckily, I don't think it would add anything to the film if I had understood him.

My last gripe is about the camera work on this film. The new fad of using "shaky cam" during action scenes is something I've always found to look amateurish and distracting, except in the case of found footage films, which is the only place that that technique makes any sense. The number of shots of the back of Matt Damon's head as he walks away and the camera bobs around like a drunken idiot are numerous. The action scenes are shot similarly, which made them much too hard to follow, much in the same way a movie like Transformers' action is hard to follow. There is much less happening on screen in Elysium, but when the camera is wobbling about and your perspective is constantly changing to a degree, it's difficult to grasp exactly what is happening. And when the action isn't particularly interesting to begin with, it just become unbearable.

I lied. That wasn't my last gripe. Let's revisit the magic healing box for a moment. At a point, Sharlto Copley's character gets his head blown off, and the machine detects that his brain is still intact, and is able to heal him from complete death. But, later on, when Matt Damon has to die to make the film end, he can't be magic'd back to life. That was really stupid. It is also revealed in the ending scene that Elysium had a completely automated fleet of robot piloted EMS ships full of magic healing boxes that could fly to Earth at any moment. They just never did that. Because rich people are assholes. All of them. For no reason.

Also, everyone on Elysium was white. And everyone on Earth was hispanic, except Matt Damon. Even though Matt Damon's last name is DeCosta, and he speaks fluent Spanish. I think the fact that this movie was so clearly written with a Latino leading man in mind, and they ended up casting Matt Damon because he's a white man with star power and audience draw says a lot that contradicts exactly what this movie is trying to say, which is funny. But, also sad.

I never like to write a review without saying something positive, and I think everything has some sort of redeeming quality, and Elysium is no exception. The visuals are incredible, and I'm sort of in awe of how great the numerous robots look in the film. I couldn't tell if they were the best CGI I'd ever seen, or some sort of weird practical/motion capture/CGI hybrid. They looked great.

I think Neil Blomkamp's biggest strength is in world building, which he accomplished masterfully in District 9. He does it well here, but it could have been better. A lot of what we learn about the world is told in on screen text, which isn't always a bad thing, but when it is the bulk of what we get to know about the world you have created, that's when it becomes an issue. We get some glimpses of what life on Earth and Elysium are like, but nothing that let me as a viewer become fully immersed in the reality of the film. I think given a little more time, something really great could have come of the world of Elysium, but at a running time of almost 2 hours, the movie feels very long, and I think the they did the best they could have done without adding an extra half hour to the film.

However, ultimately, Elysium was not a film I enjoyed at all, and left me very disappointed. I could not, in my right mind, recommend this film to anyone. It seems to really find its place amongst the untested, generic schlock that pollutes cinemas at the end of the summer. There are a number of films still playing in the cinemas (Pacific Rim) that deserve your money a lot more.