Elysium (Neill Blomkamp, 2013)

[mfunk9786]

Elysium feels like a District 9 b-side in a lot of ways, but it's still solid R-rated action fare that there is far too little of in this superhero-dominated blockbuster movie landscape. Neill Blomkamp's signature seamless blend of CGI and grime is here again, looking seamless and grimy - and there are some set pieces that really astonish. Story-wise, it's minor work, but it's the most fun you'll have at the movies this summer, and while that's not saying much with most of the dreck in multiplexes, it's something!

[criterion10]

Elysium feels like a District 9 b-side in a lot of ways, but it's still solid R-rated action fare that there is far too little of in this superhero-dominated blockbuster movie landscape. Neill Blomkamp's signature seamless blend of CGI and grime is here again, looking seamless and grimy - and there are some set pieces that really astonish. Story-wise, it's minor work, but it's the most fun you'll have at the movies this summer, and while that's not saying much with most of the dreck in multiplexes, it's something!

I'm hoping to see Elysium tomorrow, but I fear what it seems that you found to be a flaw in the film: the story. It just doesn't seem like that original of a concept, though I'm hoping that I can at least still get some enjoyment out of the film.

[mfunk9786]

It's just undercooked - and for all the gorgeous visuals, one never gets a sense of place from the title location. We spend very little time there, and when there are flyovers, it never looks much larger than an impressively sized country club or two stitched together. I realize it would have lengthened the proceedings to an unfavorable degree, but developing Jodie Foster's character and the actual world of Elysium more would have been to the benefit of the film.

[jindianajonz]

I saw this a few months ago, so my memory is a bit rusty, but I remember being dissappointed that despite it's attempt at tackling real life issues, the whole rich vs poor thing boiled down to essentially being an occupy Wall Street fantasy. The rich are up above with their super technology stuff, and we all deserve it, dammit! After hearing the premise I was hoping the film would explore issues on medical technology developing to the point where it's feasible to essentially have an immortal elite who have centuries to harden their grasp on the world, or where life expectancy lengthens enough to where it becomes a strain on resources, but if I'm remembering the ending correctly, this movie was content to say

SpoilerShow

"Whelp, everybody can come on up to this paradise, because that's probably sustainable."

though I guess that would leave room for an interesting sequel.

But this is all complaining about the movie not being a different movie, which I admit is not a terribly valid criticism, and when I put that complaint aside, I actually found the movie to be a lot of fun. Special effects weren't quite finished in the version I saw, but they were still very good even at that stage, and the pacing of the movie never left me bored. I don't know if I'd agree with mfunk that it feels like a District 9 b-side, but it does feel less ambitious than the earlier film. Still, if you enjoyed District 9, I think you would enjoy this one too.

[Roger Ryan]

So I take it that this film lacks the satirical black humor that made DISTRICT 9 such a surprising treat?

[mfunk9786]

There's a bit of it, but not nearly enough when compared to District 9. When it does happen, it is a lot more effective than most big budget blockbusters, though.

[mfunk9786]

Right-wingers are getting their santorum in a froth over this one.

[domino harvey]

Laughing Out Loud @ Contagion being a "box office disappointment"-- yeah, that adult drama with little four-quadrant appeal more than doubled its budget in ticket sales, what a disaster!

[mfunk9786]

Combine that with:

Elysium also faces a big sequel in Percy Jackson: The Sea Of Monsters, a film whose first installment performed rather admirably.

The first Percy Jackson film cost $95 million dollars, and made $88 million domestically after a disappointing $31 million opening weekend. Rather admirable, indeed. It's a big sequel like RED 2 was a big sequel.

[domino harvey]

Plus every Percy Jackson sequel reviewer has been sure to mention that the film looks cheap, probably was cheap, and is a sequel to a film not even fans of the books enjoyed

[mfunk9786]

The post essentially exists to create a comment thread about how Matt Damon is a left wing ideologue who shouldn't be allowed to speak about his personal political beliefs. But if Clint Eastwood wants to yammer on to an empty chair in front of the RNC, by all means, you wonderful man!

[domino harvey]

I love how these sort of commentators always rally against left wing actors but then hold up C-string celebs like Gary Sinese or Ted Nugent as valid political minds just because they share their ideology! Did you hear the thing about Sean Hannity devoting time on his show to making fun of Ryan Adams for saying something mean to him on Twitter? Not seven years ago, this week! And Miss Oklahoma was involved in the pile-on too for some reason?

[matrixschmatrix]

Combine that with:

Elysium also faces a big sequel in Percy Jackson: The Sea Of Monsters, a film whose first installment performed rather admirably.

The first Percy Jackson film cost $95 million dollars, and made $88 million domestically after a disappointing $31 million opening weekend. Rather admirable, indeed. It's a big sequel like RED 2 was a big sequel.

Meanwhile, The Adjustment Bureau made $62.5 million domestic (and $127 million worldwide) off of a $50.2 million budget. And Damon was the center of the Bourne series, which made like half a billion dollars between them, and has had a major role in ten $100 million plus movies over the course of his career. Box office poison, right there.

[rohming]

i sorta loved this movie. i mean, it's basically a cutting-edge throwback to the hard action '80s sci-fi of Verhoeven and Cameron with some aesthetic influences from Ridley Scott (old and new). i feel like the "heavy-handedness" of the politics and storytelling are being belabored way too much by the critical community. it is, first and foremost, a kick-ass action flick. if it has some thematic prescience, so much the better, though i think the real thematic core of this film is something much simpler and more poignant. Drew McWeeny at HitFix touched on this in his review, but i feel like the film is basically a science fiction extrapolation of the question, "what would we do for our children? for our children's children?" and it charts the various extremes of the answer to that ponderance. heavy-handed though it may be, i feel like the film's denouement was beautifully done, had a sort of last-montage-of-Inception vibe but without the twist. it was a resonant closure to a movie that just spent the better part of an hour kicking my ass with action that had real weight (can't remember the last time i said that) and cool ideas driving it.

[flyonthewall2983]

It's just undercooked - and for all the gorgeous visuals, one never gets a sense of place from the title location. We spend very little time there, and when there are flyovers, it never looks much larger than an impressively sized country club or two stitched together. I realize it would have lengthened the proceedings to an unfavorable degree, but developing Jodie Foster's character and the actual world of Elysium more would have been to the benefit of the film.

You don't really get much of a sense of place on Earth either. For all it's comparison to 80's-90's action/sci-fi, the one thing it lacks in comparison, is the obsessive sense of geography someone like (free) John McTiernan had. It's even evident in something like Predator, which takes place in the freakin' jungle.

"Undercooked" is an apt phrase, but it had it's highlights. I hadn't seen District 9 before so I wasn't aware of Sharlto Copley. I have to say he was great as the villain in this, kind of a cross between Captain Hook and Kurtwood Smith in RoboCop.

BTW, did anyone see Matt Damon's hilarious segment on Colbert last night?

[mfunk9786]

Yeah, you get no impression of the condition of anywhere outside of Los Angeles. I feel like the film would have worked a lot better if it had a 15 minute or so prologue, just to place us more firmly in its reality.

[warren oates]

I agree with almost everything written in this thread so far. Though I admired some of the ideas in District 9, most of all the production value bang for the buck and the consistently high quality of the VFX, I wasn't a huge fan. So Elysium wasn't really a letdown for me. It seems more like a lateral move into a more mainstream mode of storytelling. Aside from the expected quality of the visuals, what I liked most about the new film was its cyberpunk sensibility. Damon's slightly outmoded exoskeleton was supercool and the installation surgery made me wish Blomkamp directed things like Minority Report. (He wouldn't have wasted the eye operation by turning it into a slapstick routine.) As a projection of currently developing technology and an embodiment of the nuts and bolts of sci-fi's dystopic dirty future that whole exosuit is hard to beat. William Gibson likes to say "The future has already arrived. It's just not evenly distributed yet." Which could also be a press kit statement of Elysium's theme. How awesome would be be if Blomkamp ever got his hands on some of Gibson's books?

[matrixschmatrix]

Saw this today, and I think I'm pretty much on the same page as everyone else- it felt as though the science fictional framework hadn't really been thought out thoroughly, such that there isn't really a sense of a system and how it works and how it sustains itself, nor of what it means when that system changes. Which is a shame, really, because doing that doesn't necessarily take all that long (Monsters, Inc managed it perfectly well), and without that consistency a lot of the derring-do feels unmoored, and the characterization of the rich doesn't have the biting familiarity that a story about people who treat desperate immigrants as subhuman threats really should.

I can't hate any movie with that metaphorical framework too too much, and it's certainly watchable throughout- I particularly enjoyed Copely's presence, wherein his threat is somehow heightened by an accent that might otherwise seem silly. Damon seemed kind of wasted, though, as it was a role that an inexpressive Sam Worthington could probably have executed equally well.

[rohming]

whatever Elysium's flaws (and they didn't bother me as much as most), i am as excited as ever to follow Blomkamp's blooming career. he has gotta be one of the best directors out there right now in terms of how he works with FX and integrates them and, for the most part, i find myself very simpatico with his aesthetic sensibilities for the genres he trades in. his next film, Chappie, could be a real treat, he teamed back up with his wife and D9 co-writer (and Vancouver screenwriting grad, so perhaps she's the writing "brains" of the duo) on the screenplay, and from what i can gather it's an expansion of his Tetra Vaal short into a sort of comedic, crazy buddy-cop movie with Dev Patel and Sharlto playing the robot. the rumored budget is about 60 mil, midway between D9 and Elysium, so maybe we'll get the best of both worlds in terms of D9's DIY ingenuity with a little bit of Elysium's extra polish and scope.

[R0lf]

SpoilerShow

It's a shame Damon died at the end because I was looking forward to finding out how he changes his clothes with the exo skeleton.

[HistoryProf]

Plus every Percy Jackson sequel reviewer has been sure to mention that the film looks cheap, probably was cheap, and is a sequel to a film not even fans of the books enjoyed

with almost zero marketing behind it. I didn't even know the thing existed until I was checking RT to see what was opening last weekend. Not exactly tentpole material.