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

[Tim_Riggins]

How can Copley's accent be bothersome? He's from South Africa, he used a heavy South African accent for it, I just don't understand.

 

[DarKush]

^
Well for me there were some moments when I didn't understand what Copley was saying.

As for the film itself I enjoyed it. I don't think it was as good as District 9, but it was still a pretty good sci-fi film. The cast was solid for the most part. I liked Jodie Foster's character quite a bit. I didn't catch an odd accent from her, but I've read a lot of reviews that pointed that out.

 

[DoomsdayApex]

Judging from the 'casual' online reaction, it's a polarizing film because of the political subtext in the film. Apparently, a portion of the movie go'ers thought Elysium was Socialist propaganda. I guess they haven't been paying attention in their American Government and/or Political Science courses... or read for that matter.

 

[DoomsdayApex]

After watching it twice, I give Elysium a solid 8.5/10

I was impressed with quite a number of things (visuals, acting, fight choreography, allegories, etc) but I wish Blomkamp would have done away with the flashbacks, generic destiny dialog and predictable ending. Regardless, I loved this movie. I still hold District 9 higher, but Neill delivered here as well.

 

[flickchick85]

Well, this was yet another summer disappointment for me. Don't get me wrong, I liked it quite a bit, but I guess my expectations got too high, even after the mixed reviews. The visuals and acting were great, but I agree with most of the criticisms about the story. And I can't believe I'm about to say this, but...I think I actually liked Pacific Rim more. If you would have told me last month after I first saw PR that I'd be saying this now, I would have laughed in your face. Who knows though, maybe this one will grow on me with subsequent viewings like that one did. Right now I'd give it a 7-7.5/10.

Shame, it seems none of the big summer movies this year have delivered on their promise for me, even if I did really like most of them.

 

[DaRkVeNgeanCe]

Was Matt Damon that wooden in this to compare it to PR?

 

[jacobed]

No. He just isn't given much to do.

 

[nightwing06]

In Elysium,which takes place in the year 2154,the divide between the 99% and 1% has
expanded to such a great degree, that the rich have abandoned a deteriorating,disease filled and over
populated Earth for a circular paradise that floats above Earth called Elysium.This paradise also
contains homes that come with tubes that can cure the most terminal illness,this is all watched
over by an ice water in her veins security chief Secretary Jessica Delacourt (Jodie Foster / still not sure what
dialect she was using.)

Enter ex-con,blue collar worker Max Da Costa (Matt Damon)after being exposed to radiation at the robot
factory he goes to get help from a smuggler he has a history with named Spider (Wagner Moura /absolutely terrific !!),
who attempts to land ships on Elysium.Fitted with an exo-skeleton that will strengthen him and a brain reading
device to steal info about Elysium to override it's directives.Complicating matters Max's passion for an
an old friend,named Frey (Alice Braga), who works as a nurse in a rundown hospital and has a daughter, Matilda(Emma Tremblay),
who is dying of leukemia.

Damon is such a genuine presence on screen you instantly root for him.Sharlto Copley is so good at portraying a dastardly
and menacing South African merc named Kruger who works for Delacourt,i half expected him to start twirling his moustache.Also high praise
to Diego Luna and William Fichtner.
I loved the seamless SFX ,the robots,weapons, and the ships.

The semi love story is a bit underdeveloped.

The action sequences and their intensity are powerful,but they dont overwhelm,and i never stopped caring about
the characters.
As the smoke slowly lifted from all of the action packed metallic mayhem,writer and Director Neill Blomkamp's
message still comes shining through.

Scale of 1-10 an 8½

 

[Tim_Riggins]

Wooden acting is a common complaint to throw around these days when you don't know how to judge acting

 

[jacobed]

Or some of these just have bad writing and the actors aren't able to make it good. Pacific Rim is a huge example. Matt Damon is talented enough that he's able to do a little something with a script that gives him absolutely nothing to work with

 

[redhawk23]

I thought Elysium was just fine. It was straight forward to be sure, but that is not a problem. I've seen a number of people act as if their is some kind of great shift halfway through the film and that it completely forgets the first half or something, but that is not at all the case. The tone is pretty consistent throughout and almost the entire film is driven by Max's drive to survive, his actions roping in more and more people, all of them essentially acting out of self interest. I'm not entirely sure the film properly sets it up, but when Max finally finds himself in a position to act outside of himself, to make a decision that can either help other people or just run and fine a medbed and save himself. Actually, in retrospect I'd the film does do an okay job with this. Rather than Max being presented with a choice between saving himself or the abstraction of "everyone" or "saving the world" its a choice between himself and the daughter of someone he loves, who is in turn a representation all of that both figuratively and in effect. The choice there is properly dramatized. The stakes of that moment are rooted in the character's immediate concerns rather than abstractions, but his choices have larger effects. That works for me.

As an extrapolation, exaggeration and allegory, I thought Elysium, both the film and the concept of the ultra-rich cordoning themselves off in a space station worked just fine. The point is, how different really is Elysium from the already extant gated communities of Beverley Hills, which lie a mere 150 miles from the poverty found in Tijuana?

There are a number of complaints I've seen thrown at the film that I really disagree with or simply don't understand. When in the film are the citizens of Elysium vilified for their lifestyle? Their life style is held as the goal for the people on earth. The only ones who are vilified are those who treat others inhumanely or who seek to illegally concentrate power for themselves. The film doesn't vilify the rich, it vilifies the corrupt.

Another thing, I've seen commented and complained about the film are portrayals of race. Where in the film does it say that the whole world is Hispanic? Except for a moment at the end, we only see Los Angeles. They made a choice to portray a future Los Angeles that is predominantly Hispanic. Is that a problem? Today Hispanics make up almost 50% of LA's population and are among the fastest growing group in the country.

On the otherhand, I've seen comments and complaints that everyone on Elysium is white, but that is not true. It is true that most of the people on Elysium are shown to be white, but of the very few citizens that we ever actually see, we are shown several Asians as well. When Delacourt is under review by the President of Elysium and his council, 4 out of 5 people on the council are non-whites. The population of Elysium is simply not as monochromatic as the complaints I've seen on this board have described.

There are a number of other considerations of course.

The special effects and design work were expectedly top notch. I really loved the droid designs. The design sense in the movie just seemed to make sense. The police and body guards were certainly function oriented designs but with little touches like Fitchner's character's guards being gold plated. I liked that the butler robots and the like, rather than being pseduo-realistic androids, leaned more towards being sleek humanoid consumer electronics, like walking Apple-products. Something about Fitchner's red personal transport just seemed perfect to me. The design was completely believable as some kind of future Corvette. I could just imagine it on a showroom floor.

While the effects were nice, I really must say that I was thoroughly unimpressed with the action in this film. While it was fine when the fight scenes were relying on fire arms, anytime things switched to hand to hand combat it devolved into the worst sort of shakey cam to the point that the fights were fairly incomprehensible. Did they just want to skip choreographing? After the great, refreshing action of District 9, that aspect was a huge disappointment.

I thought the acting and dialogue were mostly okay. Damon in particular I thought did a fine job, particularly with the scenes in the factory and immediately after. I was also impressed in how well he sold Max as a character for whom talking to faceless robots was an everyday occurrence. I saw a number complaints about Foster's accent. It really bother me. For the most part it was just a slight inflection and didnt' really effect the cadence of her speech. That's when fake accents get old, when the actual pattern of speech gets weird and stilted like with Will Smith in After Earth earlier this summer. Actually if anyone's accent stuck out to me it was Fitchner's, but even that wasn't bad.
None of the acting really bothered me. If there was an issue with anyone though it would probably Wagner Moura as the guy who ran the illegal spaceport or whatever. He just played everything as being completely exasperated.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. It is essentially the story of one mans fight to survive that has implications for many other people. It's simple but overall I thought it was effective. I thought the movie was well crafted with the exception of the camerawork in a few scenes. The story itself as well as many of the deisgns had a very 70's scifi feel to them that was enjoyable to see brought to the screen in a modern big budget movie. I enjoyed it. I thought it was good. If the movie has any fault it is in being merely good. It seems in our current discussion of movies, everything is binary. Everything is either the greatest thing ever or the worst thing ever. The acting is either academy award worthy or people are predicting the razzies. You can no longer simply make a solid, effective movie. Which is exactly how I would describe this movie ultimately. 8/10

 

[redhawk23]

I wouldn't go that far. It helps if done right. I don't think this movie did it fully right

What specific complaints do you have with how the film laid out its subtext?

 

[redhawk23]

Did anyone else spot the straight-out-of-Blade-Runner pyramid building in the background of LA?

To the left.

 

[DaRkVeNgeanCe]

Wooden acting is a common complaint to throw around these days when you don't know how to judge acting

I judge acting vey well and when I say wooden I mean untalented overrated hack, an example of that would be Charlie Hunmann in PR, I have personally never seen Damon on that level of bad in any film.

 

[redhawk23]

I judge acting vey well and when I say wooden I mean untalented overrated hack, an example of that would be Charlie Hunmann in PR, I have personally never seen Damon on that level of bad in any film.

Hunnams hardly even well known, its kind of hard for him to be "overrated."

 

[redhawk23]

Sidenote: I don't think the childhood falshbacks were particularly effective or wholly necessary for the most part. That said, the child casting for young Matt Damon was pretty damn good on looks alone.

 

[redhawk23]

http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/fe...mps-first-five-films-right-here-right-now.php A collection of Blomkamp's short films and commercials.

 

[Persona]

good review, redhawk, i agree almost completely with everything you said. i might rate the movie just a half point higher than you (8.5 out of 10, then) because, personally, i totally dug the action. the "shaky cam" didn't bother me, and in fact i think all the handheld and in-your-face aesthetic really added to the visceral impact for me, whereas so many other CG-heavy modern blockbusters are focused on smooth or staid camerawork for the ease of the compositors and 3D techs that it results in a lot of modern action having basically the same style. with Blomkamp he still has a lot of CG elements in his action but he knows how to keep things gritty and intense...and, actually, i didn't think there was as much "shaky cam" as there was in District 9, there were just a lot of different filmmaking techniques used in the action...maybe it was more the quick editing that bothered some people (not saying you, but i really didn't think the handheld camerawork was that bad or overused, i thought Opaloch did an all-around good job with the film).

i can understand why some would be bothered by an action sequence that include a quick establishing shot, then some handheld, then various geography shots capturing different angles of the action, then slow-mo, then that camera rig that maintained a focal point in the action while moving, then more handheld...but, for me, it was all executed with a natural flow and rhythm and without redundancy in the visual information and with due pauses for emphasis at the right moments before going back to the flurry of shots. Neill approaches the action like Michael Bay in terms of using a lot of different tools at his disposal, but he puts the grit way ahead of the gaudy, and unlike Bay, Blomkamp has a knack for keeping this outlandish action feeling naturalistic and coherent despite all its visceral immediacy whereas Bay is constantly pumping everything up to 11 on the volume scale and aiming for 100% ridiculous maximalism. or, at least, i had no trouble at all following the action in Elysium, though i know some found it hard to.

 

[Kane52630]

Did anyone else spot the straight-out-of-Blade-Runner pyramid building in the background of LA?

It also reminded me of the buildings from Dredd.

 

[addison81]

Just saw it a 2nd time. Held up very well for me. In the past I could tell when I was "trying" to like a film ( Blade 2, Matrix Revolutions). I say this because everyone seems to dislike it. I think it's great for a sci-fi action movie. I do think it's too short and less shaky cam woulda been better. It definitely has some of the best cgi I've ever seen. I'd say it's my favorite film of the summer.

 

[Tim_Riggins]

I judge acting vey well and when I say wooden I mean untalented overrated hack, an example of that would be Charlie Hunmann in PR, I have personally never seen Damon on that level of bad in any film.

You clearly vastly overestimate your capability to judge good acting as you consider Charlie Hunnam to be an untalented overrated hack when he's proven himself repeatedly by giving fantastic performances whether in Nicholas Nickelby, Green Street Hooligans, and of course Sons Of Anarchy for now FIVE seasons where he owns the screen.

You were saying?

 

[Tim_Riggins]

good review, redhawk, i agree almost completely with everything you said. i might rate the movie just a half point higher than you (8.5 out of 10, then) because, personally, i totally dug the action. the "shaky cam" didn't bother me, and in fact i think all the handheld and in-your-face aesthetic really added to the visceral impact for me, whereas so many other CG-heavy modern blockbusters are focused on smooth or staid camerawork for the ease of the compositors and 3D techs that it results in a lot of modern action having basically the same style. with Blomkamp he still has a lot of CG elements in his action but he knows how to keep things gritty and intense...and, actually, i didn't think there was as much "shaky cam" as there was in District 9, there were just a lot of different filmmaking techniques used in the action...maybe it was more the quick editing that bothered some people (not saying you, but i really didn't think the handheld camerawork was that bad or overused, i thought Opaloch did an all-around good job with the film).

i can understand why some would be bothered by an action sequence that include a quick establishing shot, then some handheld, then various geography shots capturing different angles of the action, then slow-mo, then that camera rig that maintained a focal point in the action while moving, then more handheld...but, for me, it was all executed with a natural flow and rhythm and without redundancy in the visual information and with due pauses for emphasis at the right moments before going back to the flurry of shots. Neill approaches the action like Michael Bay in terms of using a lot of different tools at his disposal, but he puts the grit way ahead of the gaudy, and unlike Bay, Blomkamp has a knack for keeping this outlandish action feeling naturalistic and coherent despite all its visceral immediacy whereas Bay is constantly pumping everything up to 11 on the volume scale and aiming for 100% ridiculous maximalism. or, at least, i had no trouble at all following the action in Elysium, though i know some found it hard to.

Blomkamp says in the art of the film book that he established two clear distinct visual styles for Earth & Elysium: Earth: all handheld, gritty, Elysium: glidecam, dolly shots, as smooth as possible. So at least, for those who complain about the shaky cam, there is an artistic approach here.

 

[redhawk23]

There may be an artistic approach but that doesn't mean it was a good one. Other directors and even Blomkamp himself have employed the whole shakeycam thing far more effectively not to mention several featuring Damon himself.

 

[Tim_Riggins]

Have to see it for myself to determin if it's really bad, didnt shock me in the desert clip though, the only time it was too much was in Battle Los Angeles, like the guy is shaking the camera on purpose

 

[DaRkVeNgeanCe]

You clearly vastly overestimate your capability to judge good acting as you consider Charlie Hunnam to be an untalented overrated hack when he's proven himself repeatedly by giving fantastic performances whether in Nicholas Nickelby, Green Street Hooligans, and of course Sons Of Anarchy for now FIVE seasons where he owns the screen.

You were saying?

I was saying he's terrible I don't know how else to phrase it so you understand, he's terrible in SOA and was terrible in PR, who knows maybe you enjoy bad or mediocre acting but I sir, do not.