Jon The Blogcentric

Okay, you remember how I mentioned a while back about the struggle of big budget action movies this summer? Elysium has been out for a while. Does it have what it takes to get things moving again? Or will it be another casualty?

 

Before I get into the plot, I have to give you a picture of the two worlds. It’s 2154 and Earth is a poor polluted overpopulated planet under anarchaic conditions. Out in space is the satellite Elysium:  a luxurious satellite full of sun, life and full cure from disease in the comfort of your own home. Earth isn’t even ruled by humans. Just ruthless androids programmed by computers. Elysium however has robots in their favor, as servants to them.

 

Max da Costa has developed into a rebel on planet Earth. He grew up an orphan and has lived in prison most of his life. Out on parole, he now works an assembly line of robot parts for Elysium in a wrecked-out Los Angeles. Max has a dispute with a robot that turns violent and lands him in the hospital with a broken arm.

 

In the hospital, he meets with a nurse named Frey. Frey was actually his childhood love in the orphanage. Despite his hard times growing up in the orphanage, he had the comforts of the love of Frey and a nun who served as a spiritual mentor to him and always believed he was meant to do something great one day. Frey is not only a nurse now but a mother of a daughter dying of leukemia.

 

Elysium is under a power struggle. It’s run by President Patel but Secretary of Defence Jessica Delacourt has power desires of her own. She orders the shooting down of a spaceship full of civilians from Earth which earns her a reprimand from Patel and her top security agent Kruger fired. That only fuels Delacourt’s desire for power as she connives a plan to have CEO billionaire John Carlyle design a computerized cybercoup to make her president which allows Carlyle’s company to override security for the next two centuries. Carlyle has the program implanted in his brain for safekeeping until his return to Elysium.

 

Max however is exposed to radiation at the plant one day and is given only five days to live. He desired to head to Elysium to cure himself and through the help of Spider: a computer hacker who builds illegal space caravans to Elysium. Spider agrees to send Max up there as long as he agrees to steal vital information. Max agrees and Spider gives him weapons, a fake Elysium ID, a bionic exoskeleton that can help him withstand force from android sentinels, and a cerebral data upload that can allow Max to steal data implanted in Carlyle’s mind.

 

However Carlyle and Delacourt know what’s going on and try to end Spider’s plan by shutting down the system. In the ensuing fight, Carlyle is killed along with most of Spider’s men. Max’s friend Julio sacrifices himself so that Max can get away. He does but only after being stabbed. Max goes to Frey for help but she wants to come along to get her daughter cured. Max tells her to stay out of it as this might be a suicide mission. Meanwhile Delacourt is in pursuit of Max as he holds Carlyle’s data implanted in his head. Spider wants to extract the data to make all people citizens of Elysium but can’t as long as the power is shut off in his place. The power outage can’t even get Max to Elysium just before he dies.

 

They are able to get a ship to Elysium through Max exchanging the program with Kruger but only to disguise Frey and her daughter as hostages and hold a grenade to his own head. Kruger agrees and Spider is able to sneak more people on board. During the trip, Kruger’s head is severely damaged by the grenade explosion and the plane crash lands in Elysium causing Delacourt to set off a state-of-emergency and fire Patel.

 

Right when Delacourt plans to get the program from Max and ‘bring him to justice’ Kruger’s head is reconstructed and he has mutiny plans of his own which includes assassinating Delacourt and making Elysium his own private playground. This allows Max and Frey to escape and get her daughter cured. However the ‘cure booths’ on Elysium only work on Elysians which her daughter is not made officially. It’s all up to Max to work with Spider to make everyone a citizen of Elysium and defeat Kruger from his regime in what little time Max has left. The ending is somewhat predictable but it works well for the movie.

 

The film seems to focus on the division of the rich and poor. It’s not an uncommon theme. Those who studied classic literature must have read A Tale Of Two Cities. Now we have Elysium where Earth is a hellhole for the 99% who can’t afford to live on Elysium while the rich 1% have it. It’s interesting that Neill Blomkamp is tackling such a common theme of the ‘other 99%.’. If you’ve seen his first big movie District 9, you’d notice how the transporting of aliens from one area of land to another echoes of apartheid. Now we see the separation of classes in Elysium. It’s unique to see Blomkamp make sci-fi movies that can get people thinking. It’s a welcome relief from most of this summer’s sci-fi with is mostly mindless. One unique twist from District 9 is that District 9 shows an outsider succumbing to the apartheid he’s participating in. Elysium is the opposite as it shows the lesser people trying to make the unfair fair. Good change of twist that works here.

 

This is another great sci-fi effort from director Neill Blomkamp. It’s not as well-written or well-directed as District 9 but it does make for a more intelligent sci-fi film than most of what’s been released this summer. The acting however was not that much of a standout. Matt Damon came across as a cardboard hero and Jodie Foster looked like she was trying to be a robot. Alice Braga wasn’t much of a scene stealer. Sharlto Copley however was quite good at playing the villain and Wagner Moura was a scene-stealer as Spider. The visual effects were very good and the satellite of Elysium was done excellently without flaw. It almost looked like a satellite capable of acting the same way earth does, with plant and sunshine, is actually a possiblility even in this century.

 

Checking out the box office, things don’t look so good. Elysium opened two weekends ago at the top of the box office with $29.8 million. Pretty somber since it cost $115 million to make. Last weekend also gave some bad news with only $13.6 million and this past weekend was more bad news as it didn’t even muster $7 million and ended the weekend at #7. I don’t know. Do you think it’s a victim of timing?

 

Elysium seems to be the right sci-fi thriller out at the wrong time. It is intelligent and does get you thinking unlike most of the sci-fi movies this summer but it suffers because of the current audience weariness of sci-fi movies. I think if it was released earlier this summer or even last year, it would have had more impressive box office results.