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

[Octoberist]

Yeah I was talking to a few friends about the film. The message behind the film is admirable but Neil went about it almost at a high schooler level. Then when you start to think about it, the film doesn't make any sense.

Does Elysium store all of the rich people....of Earth? All of them? As huge as it is, Elysium looks like it can hold maybe the population of New York but not the rich population of the world. It's big but not that big.

It would make sense maybe if there were several 'Elysium' and this was the closest the main one?

 

[Spider-Who?]

Yeah I was talking to a few friends about the film. The message behind the film is admirable but Neil went about it almost at a high schooler level. Then when you start to think about it, the film doesn't make any sense.

Does Elysium store all of the rich people....of Earth? All of them? As huge as it is, Elysium looks like it can hold maybe the population of New York but not the rich population of the world. It's big but not that big.

It would make sense maybe if there were several 'Elysium' and this was the closest the main one?

While I haven't seen the movie yet, based on what I know of the plot, I think it's safe to assume you may be missing an important aspect: if the plots subtext concerns a huge break between classes, this would mean that the number of poor is of a far greater ratio than today - meaning that the rich are fewer in number, but with that comes a greater share of the wealth.

But to go with your population estimate, there are about 8 million people living in New York. As of 2013 there are only about 12 million millionaires in the world. That isn't much more than NYC, especially if you reduce the number to fit the film's premise. To go even further, we could assume that one is either "poor" or "super rich"....in that case we're looking at less than 2,000 billionaires in the world right now.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

^Well yeah, I thought the movie made it pretty clear that pretty much everyone on Earth was poor, and that all of the rich were Elysium, BUT, because the rich didnt share their wealth there werent as many rich people, and Elysium could easily house them.

 

[Thundercrack85]

Sort of. There probably are some rich people on Earth. But the 1% seem to live on Elysium.

Though there might even be a "middle class", since for example, presumably those soldiers working on Elysium aren't multi-millionaires. So, Elysium might have some middle tier inhabitants as well.

In some of the viral stuff, they did imply that they were building more Elysiums, but I saw no sign of that in the actual film.

 

[dark_b]

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

befor they died the population multiplied times 10. so at the end more people will die in pain than before Damon got on Elysium.

it makes me very angry that Blomkamp didnt have a solution that made sense in the context of the movie. i disagree with him as an artist that he didnt only show how the daugther got saved by machine. he should only teased at the end that maybe all humans will get help by the med-machine. only teased but never show it. you just can not show it hahhahaha. t:

there is a big difference when you make a simple brainless blockbuster about a guy in a big building with terorists and a space station for rich who have the technology to stop aging and diseases. you can not introduce this kind of world and NOT develop a story around it. Bay and other directors can joke in interviews how they wanted to make a simple entertaining movie. Blomkamp started it with deep and complex idea . the movie is not good enough. i am angry.

when is the next time a director will get 100 millions for a scifi movie about the rich and poor?

 

[Octoberist]

Yeah, it's more like a non-solution to the problem.

 

[hopefuldreamer]

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.

No that's not meaning, that's just the plot.

Max's character arc was great and full of meaning. From naive childhood dreams, to reckless rebellious youth, to maturity and acceptance, to being faced with mortality and the selfishness of the survival instinct, and finally moving past that and onto giving your life for something you believe is more important than yourself.

That was a journey I enjoyed.

As for the movies overall ideas, there was a whole bunch I found stirred up a lot of thought.

For example, I was sitting there thinking 'I wonder if there is anyone who would watch that movie and actually be thinking Elysium was logical, and that there SHOULD be a place like that for them and the priveledged.'

Like obviously we watch it and think the entire concept of a tiny percentage of people lording over us, controlling us, hogging all the wealth and technology is horrible and unjust... but scarily, there really are people our there who would think that is for the best.

And I also couldn't help thinking at points 'Is this really all that different from what is ACTUALLY HAPPENING?'

I mean, are there not part of the world's where people will die from things we could treat with a simple course of tablets? Where people are so desperate not to loose the jobs they have that they will risk their lives doing something unsafe?

I dunno, the film got me thinking a lot. It played with a lot of ideas, and I really really liked the perspectives it was showing and the way they were shown.

 

[Persona]

i'm with you, hopefuldreamer.

like pretty much any world-building movie that has any sort of ambition whatsoever, you kind of have to give the movie the benefit of the doubt about certain things it doesn't have time to develop more or explain in detail. now, that's a choice. if you didn't really like the movie, you aren't gonna give it the benefit of the doubt, and when it comes to world-building you will emphasize how "under-developed" or "illogical" or whatever it was. if you do give it the benefit of the doubt, then there are any number of explanations that you can come up with to fill in the gaps, the film's framework is usually loose enough or vague enough to allow that. Elysium's is but people, understandably, aren't gonna want to do the movie any favors and meet the movie halfway intellectually if they didn't feel engaged by it. i did feel engaged by it, so i can see how the film's world could work if i think outside of strictly what is shown within the film. like, no one in the film explicity says "we can't shared the medpods with Earth because it's already overpopulated," but you can infer that from other things that you see in the film. then, at the end, you can take the hopeful atmosphere as Neill naively suggesting that everything will just be hunky dory, or you can assume that he's choosing to accentuate the positive without necessarily contradicting the questions of sustainability and better quality of life and how will that stuff work out. basically, at the end the movie's like, "Earth is still beautiful and children, inevitably, are the future but after that...who knows?" it's an interesting clash of a dash of optimism with the pessimism and cynicism we see everywhere else in the movie. but it ties into that somewhat universal hope that our children will live better lives than we did.

 

[Asr]

Finally saw this movie, thought it was pretty good but agree with the general plot-based criticisms. For me the stand-outs were the CGI (definitely the most real-looking robots so far) and the robot-human combat was awesome too, Sharlto Copley (man is that dude able to convey unlikeable characters or what? He should play a villain in a CBM!), and William Fichtner who was surprisingly awesome in the few minutes of screentime that he had.

IMO District 9 was a better film than Elysium. Something about Elysium just felt like Blomkamp went backward instead of forward. And he certainly knows how to deliver visuals, but his storytelling leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[redhawk23]

Eh, most of the problems I have with Elysium are just as present in District 9.


Elysium's story was straight forward, which I'll take over the convoluted but entirely hallow messes Hollywood serves up on regular basis.

At it's center is one man simply struggling to survive but is ultimately faced with the opportunity to do more.

 

[jacobed]

I enjoyed the story, never found the problems that a lot of people are having. My biggest problem is the filming of action, I'm sure it was amazing but I couldn't see any of it. That was worse shaky cam than Quantum of Solace and the Bourne movies which I use to find to be the worst out there. Also he needs to find a new of killing people other than blowing them up. It gets old and tiring very quickly.

 

[redhawk23]

I enjoyed the story, never found the problems that a lot of people are having. My biggest problem is the filming of action, I'm sure it was amazing but I couldn't see any of it. That was worse shaky cam than Quantum of Solace and the Bourne movies which I use to find to be the worst out there. Also he needs to find a new of killing people other than blowing them up. It gets old and tiring very quickly.

 

[BlackFox]

I enjoyed the story, never found the problems that a lot of people are having. My biggest problem is the filming of action, I'm sure it was amazing but I couldn't see any of it. That was worse shaky cam than Quantum of Solace and the Bourne movies which I use to find to be the worst out there. Also he needs to find a new of killing people other than blowing them up. It gets old and tiring very quickly.

I never had a problem with it in Bourne, but yeah it felt like the camera was sat on a washing machine was painful to watch at times, didnt need it either when the effects were so good.

I think the biggest problem with it for me was that I never really cared about any of the characters other than Kruger. I think I would have enjoyed an entire film based around him alone instead. Its not that Damon was bad, he did fine, but I just never really cared about his fate which I think comes down to the writing in the end.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

I enjoyed the story, never found the problems that a lot of people are having. My biggest problem is the filming of action, I'm sure it was amazing but I couldn't see any of it. That was worse shaky cam than Quantum of Solace and the Bourne movies which I use to find to be the worst out there. Also he needs to find a new of killing people other than blowing them up. It gets old and tiring very quickly.

I mostly agree, but I did think the best kill in the movie was on Elysium when Max shoots the chemrail gun at one of Krugers men through the wall and we the bulletts taking him apart bit by bit in slow motion.

 

[BlackFox]

I enjoyed the story, never found the problems that a lot of people are having. My biggest problem is the filming of action, I'm sure it was amazing but I couldn't see any of it. That was worse shaky cam than Quantum of Solace and the Bourne movies which I use to find to be the worst out there. Also he needs to find a new of killing people other than blowing them up. It gets old and tiring very quickly.

Also he needs to cut out bad guys sticking their middle finger up when killing people, that was a real for me.

 

[dark_b]

i remember there was a shot where the camare rotated around the character like in a video game. looked new and unique.

it was in a way video game cinematic movie

 

[dark_b]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paQvKRPXTno

 

[jacobed]

There were a few shots like that and I freakin loved them and then he went back to awful shaky cam

 

[747]

Apart from the visuals, I can't believe the same guy directed and wrote both District 9 and Elysium. What a disappointment this was.

The style/feel is often too heavy and self-important compared to the plot, dialogue and characters that plays out like a bland direct-to-DVD action flick. It's all so jarring, and sometimes just weak.

2/5

 

[Hyde]

Managed to see this movie today unexpectedly and... Ehh. While it wasn't awful it wasn't incredible either. Expected more from the writer and director of District 9...

 

[hopefuldreamer]

What exactly are the plot problems people have?

Absolutely nothing stood out as jarringly bad to me... and i'm usually the first to admit if a film's plot is badly written and insults my intelligence.

At it's center is one man simply struggling to survive but is ultimately faced with the opportunity to do more.

 

[Hyde]

I don't think it was so much the plot, more so the editing and pacing dragged and bored me to death for the first two acts. Honestly, Copley carried the entire movie and was the damn standout. Plus, maybe it was just my crap local cinema, but I couldn't make out what any of the characters were saying for most of it. Funnily enough I could only really hear Foster's character lol

 

[Thundercrack85]

Well the central plot is kind of... strange? Apparently rebooting Elysium allows Foster to become president. How exactly that works is never sufficiently explained.

 

[Donut]

I thought that was pretty simple. Rebooting it would give Foster complete control. She would control all passwords & the like & Im sure even she was not involved in everything. She wanted complete control & power over the other guys in charge

 

[redhawk23]

Well the central plot is kind of... strange? Apparently rebooting Elysium allows Foster to become president. How exactly that works is never sufficiently explained.

Its shown that the systems and security bots respond to whomever is programmed as being in charge.