Elysium Movie Blurb by Shale August 9, 2013 I knew from the trailers that I wanted to see this flick. Also, I really enjoy seeing Matt Damon onscreen in every movie he's been in. This movie is about class warfare where the ruling class is in collusion with the industrialists and live in comfort, with financial security for life, pleasant housing in beautiful neighborhoods and good medical care. They are isolated from the impoverished masses who toil in dreadful jobs, but must keep them because there are more unemployed workers than jobs and someone is always there to replace them. All this is enforced by heavily armed pigs, who abuse the citizens with impunity. OK, that is the world in 2013. Our sci-fi world is in a dystopian future a century or so away, 2154, when the Earth is finally trashed to the point that it is barely livable and cities are overpopulated and in ruin. Los Angeles 2154 The rich have left. They are on a beautiful space station called Elysium hovering off earth. They don't even need servants or gardeners or mechanics any more - jobs replaced by robots, so immigration is non-existent. Defense Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) sees that no shuttles violates the space around Elysium, lest they get blown away. Oh yeah, poor ppl don't matter in this world either. Defense Secretary Protecting the Rich Back on Earth, among the poor ppl in the barrios of Los Angeles is Max (Matt Damon) working at a plant assembling robocops for his own suppression. He is on probation and is wearing an ankle monitor and is trying to stay out of prison. Max Gettin' Dressed for Work He makes a joke to a robocop and gets his arm broken, which almost costs him his job and also extends his probation because the uncaring computer officer won't take a broken arm as a reason to miss an appointment. (A futuristic Les Miserables) Then, at work he has a dangerous situation and his foreman tells him to risk his life or he'll find someone who will. So, Max gets irradiated, has about 6 days to live, is given some dope and told to go home and die. Max goes back to his partners in crime to find a way to get to Elysium, where the med machines can cure him. Max is weakened by the radiation so his friends fit him to a mechanical assistive device that gives him robotic strength and he manages to fight his way to Elysium. On the way he runs into Frey (Alice Braga) an old childhood friend from the orfanage. She has a dying sick child and ends up on the same shuttle as him but is taken prisoner. In the ensuing fight with sociopathic Agent Kruger (Sharlto Copley) and his men, Max locates Frey. Max Rescues Frey & Daughter I left out a lot of stuff here, but you can get that when you see the movie. I enjoyed it - a summer sci-fi extravaganza that also had commentary on current social conditions and where they could head. I also enjoyed seeing the classic wheel space station that was the model from my childhood (the way to create gravity in space using centrifugal force). Much more impressive than the interconnected trailers in space that we have for a station now.
I actually love the plot. But I must fess up that I will see ANY movie Jodie Foster appears in. She is a star within a star (IMO). She can turn trash into gold with a single glance. And I admire her for it. Even a silly script cannot keep her down. She's got that movie magic (like Garbo, Marilyn, Gable, Dean, etc). It's a pity she has not made more movies. I consider her one of the last greats of Hollywood. QP
I lol @ this.,, I think in the future , they will be more advanced in probation devices.. like implants, or nanotechnology that would disable the probationer...
Yeah, considering what the med machines were able to do an old style ankle monitor would be antique. Oh well, dramatic device to show how underclass ppl in future would be the same as today.
Reminded me analogically to THX 1138, in that the drones (poor or regular folks) are in service to the rich. Surprise-surprise. All that mechanization on his body was off-putting to me. I like Damon a lot--he's always good, but I prefer the Bourne series.
I finally saw this. I though it was great for about the first hour or so... and then it went straight downhill and by the end turned to absolute garbage. It could have been a fantastic commentary on the wage gap and instead turned into a boring action movie. The thing that bothered me the most was that somehow the poor people on Earth could afford to have doctors and nurses and hospitals, but they couldn't afford ONE healing machine? Considering people had them in their houses, I'm assuming they would be a lot cheaper than a multi-million dollar hospital. Big businessmen might be heartless, but they're not stupid enough not to sell advanced tech like that to the poor... they couldn't even make a 'discount' or 'mini' version?? They have tech geniuses hacking into the spaceship network thingie and they couldn't find the blueprints for a healer device? Seriously... people in Africa have cell phones. Hospitals all over the world get charity... Bill Gates travels all over the world trying to cure AIDS! The biggest issue I had was *SPOILER* that they made the most boring character in the whole thing into the final boss. Jodie Foster's character could have been great-- the concerned politician who recognizes that there isn't enough to go around and built a utopia to save as many as she could... she could have explained why things are the way they are and it could have even made sense in some way, but instead the rich people are completely demonized as selfish and evil. And Kruger was just a boring action-movie type villain who is pure evil and rapes people... this could have been a true sci-fi masterpiece and instead became a disappointing action film that abandoned its ideas in favor of a 'character' moment and some sentimentality about a sick girl. And why weren't there any robot guards in the Elysium White House? That was just ridiculous.
