Neill Blomkamp’s next project... ELYSIUM? - Part 1

[Persona]

If that's the case, then Max just made the world much, much worse.

well, that's what's interesting, the film doesn't bother trying to answer whether that was a sustainable solution or not (most likely not, which is part of why Elysium was set up the way it was), we just know Max did what he did for Matilda and there are widespread, immediately positive impacts that happen but may not necessarily lead to a brighter future. the ending is bittersweet at best, but the film posits that there are some things that are still worth doing because who knows what our children and our children's children will be able to accomplish in dealing with the problems that humanity will inevitably and always face, just so long as we enable them.

 

[Persona]

I was thinking they too had exo skeletton. Krueger at least.

But what bothers me is that if you take away the exo skeletton from the movie, and instead, the pills they gave him allow him to move like usual, the story would be the same.

exo-suit is part of the cyborg upgrade that allows Max to brain-jack Carlyle which sets the rest of the plot in motion. they could have just given him the brain implant but they figured, hey, while we're operating we might as well give him something that will alllow him to actually survive this heist and so on. and then, though it's often subtle, Max proceeds to make it through every action scene that the movie throws at him because of the exo-suit. it's the movie's way of giving the character a means of handling extreme situations and droids that he couldn't face before but it doesn't make him some invincible superhuman, so i think people confuse that with "oh, that suit didn't make much of a difference, now did it." there are numerous small touches where the suit factors, too, like how it enables Max to throw a rock hard enough to take out a drone or to break the lock on the chair that was holding Frey up, etc.

 

[Naked Shia]

The pills werent working on their own, thats why they gave him the exo-suit. It was the combination of that and the pills which meant he could move around normally. We see him taking the pills before he gets the exo-suit and he is still stumbling and struggling, Spyder sees this also and thats why they give him the suit.

I got that. What I meant is that the story would have been the same if he just needed the pills to go on.

exo-suit is part of the cyborg upgrade that allows Max to brain-jack Carlyle which sets the rest of the plot in motion. they could have just given him the brain implant but they figured, hey, while we're operating we might as well give him something that will alllow him to actually survive this heist and so on. and then, though it's often subtle, Max proceeds to make it through every action scene that the movie throws at him because of the exo-suit. it's the movie's way of giving the character a means of handling extreme situations and droids that he couldn't face before but it doesn't make him some invincible superhuman, so i think people confuse that with "oh, that suit didn't make much of a difference, now did it." there are numerous small touches where the suit factors, too, like how it enables Max to throw a rock hard enough to take out a drone or to break the lock on the chair that was holding Frey up, etc.

He could have hijacked Carlyle's brain with a simple device, and the story would be the same. The subtle references you're talking about are less interesting imo, than him trying everything without the exo skeletton because he has nothing left to lose and has to fight for his life no matter what.

The exo skeletton is a plot device used to avoid making Max use his intelligence to overcome obstacles. Which is part of why he is so bland a character imo.

also, they did nothing interesting with the exo suit in the action sequences. The action beat are really generic.

 

[Persona]

i thought they did interesting things with it, they just kept it grounded and didn't make it so that he was ridiculously powerful. i mean, i dunno what you're looking for, the suit was just meant to augment his strength and make him a little faster, and that's what it did.

the plot absolutely would have not been the same if the info wasn't a neural download. from the bad guys wanting Max alive to Max using a grenade to his head as leverage to Max having to die in an incurable fashion (brain failure) in order to transfer the reboot sequence to the Elysium server, the fact that the information is stored neurally (the film basically insinuates that that is the most secure, least tamperable place for information in the world now, that's why Carlyle initially uploads it to his brain with a lethal defense encryption and then destroys the computer the reboot was on) is crucial to the plot. you can argue about the logistics or whatever and refuse to buy the movie's portrayal, i mean, it's sci-fi, a brainjacking is just theoretical stuff to begin with, but the film sets it up so that if neural information is to be taken against a person's will, it has to be a brain-to-brain transfer. Spider can look at what Max got in his head but it isn't a usable form of the information.

 

[Naked Shia]

you're mixing the exoskeletton and the neural download. Like I said, he could have use a laptop or something like that to make the neural download, instead of the exosuit, and the plot would be the same, the info would still be in his brain. Also, I already stated what I wanted: a protagonist who succeeds because he is smart, not because an exo suit allows him to break a lock.

 

[Tequilla]

One of the biggest disappointments i had in a loooong time. The hell was this Mr.Blomkamp ? Outside of some of the visual form and conceptual design (dat Syd Mead !!) , i was actually baffled by how poor everything was.

By the end of the picture the only teary eye i had wasn't because of a character's sacrifice , but just how much i disliked the film.

Everything that isn't great in District , here is exponentially present.
Everything that was amazing , here is in very small doses.

The least problem of this film is the simplicity of the context (something i read in various places). That could have actually been a quality of the story , if the rest was handled well.

Did this production suffer from any type of studio interferences ?

 

[redhawk23]

One of the biggest disappointments i had in a loooong time. The hell was this Mr.Blomkamp ? Outside of some of the visual form and conceptual design (dat Syd Mead !!) , i was actually baffled by how poor everything was.

By the end of the picture the only teary eye i had wasn't because of a character's sacrifice , but just how much i disliked the film.

Everything that isn't great in District , here is exponentially present.
Everything that was amazing , here is in very small doses.

The least problem of this film is the simplicity of the context (something i read in various places). That could have actually been a quality of the story , if the rest was handled well.

Did this production suffer from any type of studio interferences ?

Apparently they really only stepped in on one scene which was reshot. Blomkamp had pretty damn near free reign given the people he was able to offer the lead role to befor Damon.

 

[Tequilla]

I wanted to blame someone else than the director t:

Those flashbacks.... What the hell are those mammoths doing in this film ? And it ends with one

 

[terry78]

Nah, they gave Blomkamp the freedom he needed this time around. Which is why I'm kind of pointing the finger at him for the "questionable" accents Fitchner and Foster supposedly have, as two excellent actors as those should not come off as goofy in any role unless instructed to do so.

 

[Persona]

the film actually makes a point of the fact that Max is NOT smart. he succeeds for most of the film because he is driven by desperation and at the end because he chooses to be selfless. you wanted something different and that's fine as long as we agree that Max not being a smart character is not some kind of flaw, that's what the movie was going for.

 

[Persona]

i LOVED the way Fichtner talked in this. Foster was a bit off but Fichtner was great.

 

[Persona]

oh and i already addressed the exosuit thing. the info in Max's brain is no good if he gets killed procuring it or after. the exo-suit is his survival gear.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

I got that. What I meant is that the story would have been the same if he just needed the pills to go on.

But it was already established earlier in the story that the pills had little effect on him, so I dont see how thats possible, unless you mean changing the story?

Without the exo-suit he wouldnt have been able to perform anything in the movie, even walking. It was also to show how worthless the company considered its work-force. They give him pills which have little to no effect then send him on his way with the information that he will die in 5 days. It was too show how little the people who had it made thought of the people who were struggling to get by.

Again its a bit of a social commentary on todays world.

oh and i already addressed the exosuit thing. the info in Max's brain is no good if he gets killed procuring it or after. the exo-suit is his survival gear.

Yep, and as I said above, he couldnt perform even basic tasks like walking for long without it, so it was essential to his character at this point in the story.

 

[Naked Shia]

But it was already established earlier in the story that the pills had little effect on him, so I dont see how thats possible, unless you mean changing the story?

Without the exo-suit he wouldnt have been able to perform anything in the movie, even walking. It was also to show how worthless the company considered its work-force. They give him pills which have little to no effect then send him on his way with the information that he will die in 5 days. It was too show how little the people who had it made thought of the people who were struggling to get by.

Again its a bit of a social commentary on todays world.



Yep, and as I said above, he couldnt perform even basic tasks like walking for long without it, so it was essential to his character at this point in the story.

Yeah, I'm talking about changing the story. I know the pills weren't working in the movie.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

^Ah right, fair enough, the exo-suit did allow to do things a normal human couldnt though, like throw a guy deep into a concrete floor and some other things. So they obviously wanted the character to have those abilities.

Plus, its a sci-fi movie, and Neill tends to be great at designing and realising this stuff so I am glad they put it in, just wished they had done a bit more with it.

 

[dark_b]

i am a scifi fan. so i am not going to be against a exo suit. but i agree that there was nothing special about the exo suit.

i did like the body horror scenes when they put the suit on him. to see scenes like this you need to go back to the 80's and watch a Scott,Cameron or Verhoven movie.

 

[SolarTiger]

I'm iffy on seeing this movie this weekend, I loved District 9 but I've heard this movie isn't on that level. Worth seeing?

 

[Thundercrack85]

I'd say it's more of a rental. But if you got nothing else to do, and you like special effects, go for it.

 

[Silvermoth]

I saw it yesterday and liked it. I thought the science fiction elements were very well done and it was all very exciting. Vikus makes a terrifying bad guy!

Unfortunately some guys in the audience kept laughing at his accent which isn't very nice but I think a lot of people here in Australia still think its ok to laugh at someone's accent unfortunately. Never mind, it didn't ruin a very good film

 

[Eggyman]

Saw it last night. Not too bad, nothing to get worked up over. I have no passion for this film. It was just okay. That Bloomkemp knows how to make a film look good. The CGI is some of the best I've seen mixed into real sh**. The story, performances, and all that important stuff you don't make on a computer was lacking.

 

[hopefuldreamer]

I thought the film was GREAT. Best blockbuster of the summer IMO.

It was powerful, it had meaning, it was well balanced (spacing out action, drama, tension and emotion perfectly IMO), it had both retro concepts and new ideas blended together seemlessley, and it was beautifully directed (bar a couple of weird video gamey fight shots).

The acting was superb from everyone IMO.

Not to mention Sharlto Copley totally stole villain of the year

 

[dark_b]

what was the meaning? the 1% ? that the rich are living a good life and the poor are dying?

it had an idea that was never developed.

 

[BlackFox]

FINALLY, finally got to see this and well in all honesty a little dissapointing.

It was decent and watchable but considering the great cgi work it was a bit underwhelming. The story was basic, not that that is always a bad thing especially in sci-fi but it was so ham-fisted and so black and white, there is not much subtly in it and the whole thing with the kid and the "hippo" story felt rather generic and forced. All the actors were fine, Damon did his best, Foster had an odd accent but nothing unbearable, Copley was probably the standout but the whole thing felt underwhelming.

The people I saw it with all liked but we said we never really needed or wanted to see it again. I would say it was an par or slightly better than Oblivion as at least it didnt drag in places like that film tended to.

Overall decent but a bit shallow. 6.5/10

 

[BlackFox]

Saw it last night. Not too bad, nothing to get worked up over. I have no passion for this film. It was just okay. That Bloomkemp knows how to make a film look good. The CGI is some of the best I've seen mixed into real sh**. The story, performances, and all that important stuff you don't make on a computer was lacking.

Yeah thats pretty much how I feel about it too.

 

[chaseter]

The good news is...everyone got healthcare. The bad news is...they all still died from lack of food and clean water.