Starring:
Matt Damon, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Jodie Foster, Diego Luna, William
Fichtner
Directed
by: Neill Blomkamp
Written
by: Neill Blomkamp
When James Cameron’s magnum
opus ‘Avatar’ was released, it quickly became derided – in certain circles –
as ‘Fern Gully with guns’, due to the similarities in message and broad plot.
If that statement is taken as true, then ‘Elysium’ can perhaps be taken, as my
unfortunate viewing partner scoffed, as ‘Wall:E, but without the coherent plot
and well-constructed world’.
In his last film, ‘District 9’, which actually came out in
the same year as ‘Avatar’, Blomkamp took the idea of Apartheid and retold it
with aliens. It wasn’t a terribly subtle film but it worked well, in large part
because of some fine performances, a well thought out setting, and some
thoroughly entertaining if occasionally nauseating set pieces. He brings many
of the same building blocks to ‘Elysium’, but they somehow don’t quite stack
together as well.
For a start, you’ve got the story. On the surface level,
it’s quite similar to ‘District 9’, perhaps too similar. Matt Damon’s ex-con,
Max, is a low level worker in an important corporation who winds up with fatal
injuries. As a result, he goes on a quest for something to heal him, which may well
end up in the downfall of an entire way of life, for good or worse. It’s
nothing original, but in and of itself it isn’t anything particularly awful.
However, there are certain things that really let it down; the shameless use of
a sickly child as a device for plot and character development, not to mention
the fact that if you sit down and think about it, the world of ‘Elysium’ makes
absolutely no sense.
The basic premise is that over the course of the next
century, the world has become so over-populated and polluted that the 1% have
fled the planet to live on the titular space station, a place so
technologically advanced that their med-pods can cure everything right up to
and potentially including death (can you see where those ‘Wall:E’ similarities
come in yet?). Everything down on Earth has gone to hell, with people
scrabbling for jobs and money in a desperate attempt to survive or, more
pertinently, to buy an illegal ticket to Elysium in a crushingly obvious
parallel on immigrant smuggling, that parallel being contained within the
broader parallel that rich people are bastards. This is the films overall
message. Blomkamp allows nothing as adventurous as shades of grey in the film,
and as such literally every character living on Elysium is either so cartoonishly
villainous that Lex Luthor would scoff, or criminally apathetic to the point
where it’s essentially a philosophical question as to who is worse.
It’s hard to really discuss this without going into spoiler
territory, but an early example consists of Elysium’s defence system.
Naturally, the citizens and government of Elysium don’t want those dirty poor
people getting onto their nice clean space station, so there are systems in
place to stop the shuttles arriving. Fair enough…if it weren’t for the fact
that this system seems to consist solely of a hobo with a rocket launcher. Even
worse, said hobo is actually living on Earth. When he’s called into action, he
has to shoot down shuttles that have broken the atmospheric field, while
standing in downtown Los Angeles. SF films that take loose approaches to the
laws of physics are commonplace, and as a long-time fan of ‘Doctor Who’ I’ve
learned to take such niggles in my stride, but ‘Elysium’ presents itself as a
serious piece of work, and as such is held to a different standard;
unfortunately, this example is the first of many niggles that jerk you out of
the film. It’s even worse because there’s no reason for it; if people do get
through, they’re escorted off the station with literally no effort or fuss, which
brings us back to the cartoonish characterisation.
It’s hardly the first film to suffer from problems of logic –
it isn’t even the first film this year to be undermined by such flaws; ‘Iron
Man 3’, while an excellent film, relied upon the willingness of the audience to
accept that on this occasion, none of the other super-heroes were going to show
up, because…it’s an Iron Man film. ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ had a whole host
of logical issues, not least of which was why there was a need for Star Fleet
in a universe where you can teleport between planets. However, there are a few
key differences in this. In the case of ‘Iron Man 3’, you could overlook
niggles because it was a genuinely excellent film. In the case of ‘Into
Darkness’, they were harder to overlook, but it wasn’t anything more than it
claimed to be; an entertaining if shallow blockbuster. ‘Elysium’ is trying to
be something different, a serious, ‘hard’ science-fiction film which might have
big action scenes, but is fundamentally about political and social commentary –
and that’s fine, but ‘Into Darkness’ has more nuance and subtlety, and whatever
its merits, it is not an intellectual film.
However, there are other aspects of the film to consider.
The story is clichéd and sledgehammer obvious, the characterisation is thin, but
it isn’t entirely bad. The performances are perfectly adequate, although the
only one that stands out as being especially engaging is Copley’s psychotic
Kruger; given that he’s a murderous, gleefully insane mercenary who is also probably
a rapist, it’s not necessarily a good thing that his is the most distinctive
performance. Still, kudos to him for playing so thoroughly and successfully
against his role in ‘District 9’.
Equally, there are some entertaining set pieces, some of
which use slow-motion to better effect than anything since the original ‘Matrix’,
and for all that much of the world doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny, it is
beautifully designed and shot.
Sadly though, adequate performances and entertaining action
don’t make up for the flaws. A sad disappointment.
Trailer fail as well, considering that the girl's fate is very clearly revealed in the first 5 seconds of the trailer. I really raged out about that!
ReplyDeleteSorry, hadn't seen your comment! I wasn't aware of that, I have to be honest, but then the only time I saw the trailer it was on an IMAX screen, and I was too busy wincing as the reverberation rattled my ribcage (I'm not even kidding). Sadly though, that sort of thing seems to be a growing trend with trailers. Irritating, isn't it?
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