Elysium

RIDICULOUSLY SHORT VERSION: 2145. The rich live in Elysium: an orbiting, Ringworld-style arcology -- basically, a gated community in space. There's a reason the rich are up there. Earth is an overpopulated, multicultural hellhole. (We see shots of the Earth from space. It's not totally dead, but it's getting there.) The deserts have eaten most of Africa and South Asia. The cities resemble the nasty parts of Johannesburg. No accident. The director is, of course, Neill Blomkamp, who made his name with that subversive Apartheid fable, District Nine. His latest fable is no less subversive -- or ballsy. In simple terms, a workingclass slob (played by Matt Damon) gets fried with radiation at the robot factory. Fatal dose: five days to live. In order to plug into the healing booths on Elysium, he gets a crimelord to wire him into an asskicking exoskeleton and fire him off to Elysium with the codes to the whole show in his head. He starts with selfish motives, then turns into a robo-Christfigure. Asskicking and self-sacrifice ensue. (Not to mention a few glaring plotholes.) No matter. It's a ballsy movie and an original vision. In the guise of a gee-whiz sci-fi movie, subversive Blomkamp gleefully slaps the one-percenters in the face. They, of course, funded his movie. Irony aside, it's still fun to watch.

LONGWINDED VERSION: Stream of consciousness impressions not yet edited into coherent narrative.

South Director Neill Blomkamp South African director previously directed district nine which was a very original groundbreaking movie.

Elysium is a ballsy movie.

Multicultural hellhole.

Elysium. It’s a very original movie though it deals with sci-fi themes that go back a long way. Basically it was

This pictures the earth the earth as over populated and its ecosystem is ruined. You see shots of the earth from space and it’s not totally devastated. There are some forests, there is some greenery but all of the deserts have expanded. Most of Africa is a desert it’s rather grim

It’s grim but it’s believable

What’s happened is that the elite of this world have moved to a ring shaped arcology where there – it’s basically like a gated community in space

They’re only 19 minutes away in a shuttle ride from the peasants

People still work basically they build robots and for the people in space

Matt Damon is a working class slob

Earth is over populated like 40 billion people

Rich people

It’s not dead it’s over populate desert like and rotten

It’s basically like the suburbs of Johannesburg extended to the entire planet

So the rich people live up there

It’s supposedly Los Angeles but I know Johannesburg when I see it it’s got to be filmed in joberg

So rich people live in space in idyllic (named for paradise) Elysium

It’s a very pristine

You see all these mansions in this ring shaped thing and it’s like all the shit we see on bird key

It’s basically med rev in space

Jodi foster play s the security chief of this space station

She was criticized for her accent but I think an elite person on this world she would have an artificial accent that says she’s upper class

It’s a sign of pretentiousness and social climbing I think it was a conscious choice on the actor's part not a mistake. If she got the accent wrong it’s because it’s an affectation.

Matt Damon plays a working class slob who works in a robot factory and the boss something breaks and the boss send shim into the robot paint room and he the door shuts and he gets flooded with lethal dose of radiation and he’s got five days to live

So in Elysium they have these booths that’ll heal anybody of anything. They "re-atomize" you supposedly. And his old girl friend from his days in the orphanage is now a nurse and her daughter is dying of leukemia and she wants to figure out a way to get her daughter to Elysium

So mast Damon has five days to live and he bursts into the lair of this crime lord who helped him in the past .now he‘s trying to go straight he says I’ve got age up there the crime lord says

Ok I'll send you to Elysium but you got to do this job for me

To heal himse3lf initially he doesn’t know about the daughter at first

So what happens is – I think it’s Christian Bayle

He steals the data

Jodi foster is trying to instigate a coup and take over the space station

Secret reveal. No she’s a bitch

She uses her mercenary to blow up some refugees who land th3e4re  and it’s like they’re elitist but they want to disguise their brutality she went a little too far so they rebuke her. Now she’s planning to become the pres of this thing by rebooting the system

So matt Damon’s boss on earth who looks like Christian Bayle b has download codes to reboot the system in his head

So when matt Damon in an act of Indus espionage assaults the4 guy and uploads it

He inadvertently uploads the key to the kingdom to make everybody on earth a citizen of Elysium

So – Jodi foster sends her mercenaries to kill them by the skin of his teeth matt Damon escapes and reconnects with the woman and finds her daughter dying of leukemia

She begs him to take her to e matt says no but bastard SA mercenary captures him on his ship and they call go back to E so she can instigate her political coup

At the end there’ s a chase scene a fire fight and matt Damon uploads the data in his head and everybody on earth becomes a citizen the daughter is healed but he

He dies because the software has a lethal software protection

So whoever uploads the cod in your brain you die3 so there can never be two copies of it

So matt becomes an inadvertent Christ figure – and th3e logic flaw is that

The scarcity is either real or artificial. There are they’re either rich bastards holding out or there’s a limited amount of stuff. The last scene after matt Damon Christ figure sacrifices himself. They’re landing all these medical ships to heal all the people on earth so ok would they have enough pods for everybody why wouldn't they build pods on earth?

If you can forgive the movie it needed. Its happy ending and illogical conclusion if you can forgive it that gaping logic hole it’s a great movie

It’s in the lineage of cyberpunk but doesn’t have cyberpunk tone but the idea a elite society the people

And to do the job matt Damon goes thru a painful op to get an exoskeleton

Very cyberpunk theme enhancing a human being through mechanical means

But the tone isn’t the street level sneer of cyberpunk

Cyberpunk elements with more elegiac tone

Very ballsy movie one of the few films confronting there are these really rich people who are hogging all the resources for themselves

They happen to be living on a space station aside from that SF 3lement the movie is a documentary

Very well-done

Libertarians might not dig it

If you look at the lineage of SF in Star Trek had an episode the cloud minders. The rich people lived in a city in the clouds called Stratos and the poor people mined zienite or whatever. Kirk solves that society’s problem by Deus ex mechaiae beginnings of sf – the Ur sf movie that inspired blade runner and everything else – the one with the pseudo Virgin Mary robot metropolis rich people like in sky scrapers poor people under grounds

Right back to that lineage

Who did the design of everything – sci-fi movies when don’t quite work suffer two flaws

One: style defeating substance the shit you see in the movie is a look art director is going for but if you analyze it it doesn’t make sense they would build this shit

Second major flaw ah let’s just copy blade runner

What’s good about this movie very original look poor shitty earth and rich Elysium very believable in their look deserves ac award