Review of Elysium (2013) by Scrawnypunk — 10 Aug 2013

A swing and a miss...

This movie had a ton of potential (social commentary action superawesome!), but it's just a mess from frame one. In trying to be many things, it fails as social commentary (greed is bad I get it), an action movie (terribly boring), and sci-fi (turbulence on a space station? facial re-construction gets the beard right? the entire population of earth can be healed of all sickness with two shuttles and no one crowding a queue? what?).

The biggest miss here is probably the social commentary. Aside from a few Silkwood-like workers' rights abuses, the portrayal of most Earth citizens is basically drug addicted, cursing, fighting, stealing bums. It's hard to cheer for the whole human race if you don't show their nobility. It's equally hard to cheer against the citizens of Elysium if we don't see any other than the tyrannical defense minister and a calloused (and failed) business owner. All I know is that the rest of the people are in good shape and like to have parties is that evil? Do I hate them for that? I almost think Blomkamp could have lifted some lines from Roger and Me to at least make me dislike the rich folks a little.

I did not expect this to happen, but I believe both Oblivion and After Earth are better than this movie and neither one of those is special.