Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Elysium

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Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 08-17-2013, 08:41 PM:

The problem with Neill Blomkamp's first feature, District 9, was how blatantly political it was. The problem with Elysium is how blatantly political it is. Watching Blomkamp's films you get the distinct impression that his political message is more important than his movie. Because there is so little substance to his story, the film comes across as little more than blatant socialist propaganda.

The story follows Max (Matt Damon), a downtrodden underclassman vying for asylum in the privileged celestial city of Elysium. Like his poverty-stricken brethren, Max is an oppressed would-be saint crushed under the iron heel of an elitist upper class which is evil beyond redemption.

Emotionally-laden key words such as "homeland security" and "no-fly zone" are bandied about to ensure we don't miss the point and one of the bad guys is Apartheid incarnate with his penchant for authoritarian violence and his thick South African accent; he even has a South African flag on his assault ship just in case you missed the reference. Subtlety is not a brand Blomkamp trades in but social and racial stereotyping apparently is.

Of course cautionary tales of social injustice are almost de rigueur for science fiction film and literature but they work best when embedded within the story. With Blomkamp, the political message dwarfs the story.

On the plus side there is one great action scene in the middle of the film which is nail-biting stuff before launching back into mediocre faux sci-fi action territory for the final showdown between good and evil.

Amazingly Jody Foster foregoes her native Southern accent - who would have thought that possible? - and delivers the best performance of the cast despite having little to do beyond being an evil elitist authoritarian bitch. The rest of the cast which includes Matt Damon, Sharlto Copley and William Fichtner are serviceable if unremarkable. Every character here is composed of a singular dimension with the exception of Damon's rough diamond. I suppose Blomkamp deemed this character the only one worthy of being fleshed out.

As a practical rerun of District 9, those who enjoyed Blomkamp's first feature will probably glean some enjoyment from Elysium; others will do well to avoid it.

4 out of 10

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 08-19-2013, 03:56 AM:

I've watched this yesterday, in D-IMAX. That wasn't my prefered choice, since the scope format renders most aspects of D-IMAX entirely useless in my opinion and I'm not the biggest supporter of this particular format anyway... At least, someone decided to turn the volume down a few notches, which was great, because now it didn't feel like everybody was screaming all the time. Unfortunately, it also totally destroyed the high-impact bass that D-IMAX is known for, so much for sophisticated eq [Wink]

.

For whatever reason, my expectations of this movie were rather high. Maybe because of the rather slick looking imagery that was also present in the trailer, yes it worked on me, even if I should've known better. It is rather obvious that some of the concepts behind Halo slipped into this movie: Giant Ringworld-esque space stations with central computer cores that control everything, where have we seen that before?

Unfortunately, none of the more sophisticated story elements made it into this movie, the story is entirely bland and void of any interesting developments. The worthwhile stuff is already on the table once you've seen the first trailer...

Just like District 9, the in-your-face political message is conveyed trough the whole movie and it wears quite thin after a while. Combine this with some questionable plot elements and the end result is nothing very exciting.

I guess Neil Blomkamp as a director and story writer will go down as a one-trick-pony, his next movie, Chappie, will be based on another one of his shorts: Tetra Vaal*. Essentially a Robocop remake in the style of District 9 and Elysium, yawn.

Maybe Blomkamp and his team should focus more on visual concepts and set design and just let others do the story and directing?

* Notice that his obsession with the VGA text-mode font and old-school MS DOS interfaces was already present in this short movie from 2003.

Posted by Elise Brandt (Member # 5552) on 08-19-2013, 06:08 AM:

Sadly, my expectations were high as well. But the main irritation for me with Elysium was the damned shaky camera and blinking lights. Towards the end there is this 10-minute (or so) scene where the camera shakes all the time (it does a little throughout the movie, too much!) and to boot the lights blink rapidly too.
It was either give up watching entirely and exit the auditorium in a quiet and unintrusive manner, or be sick in the popcorn bin. Chose former. Felt nauseous for hours, thankfully no migraine resulted from it.

Is this how some people react to 3D? [Eek!]

Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 08-19-2013, 06:34 AM:

^ You had Elysium in 3D?

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 08-19-2013, 09:49 AM:

I guess she was comparing her experience to how people react to 3D in general. This movie, luckily wasn't in 3D.

But I agree on the shaky cam part, it often makes you wonder if the cameramen all suffered from Parkinson...

I hate it, for most parts. It must have started somewhere around Saving Private Ryan, that utterly raw style. But at least, in that movie, it worked.

But this movie wasn't really the worst offender in this regard, if you ask me. Although there also was this raw, somewhat unpolished look to it, just like District 9. Probably also a RED5 giveaway [Wink]