Elysium (2013) Review

I hate falling into the hype trap. You know what I mean, a movie looks and sounds really, really good in trailers and promotions, has a ton of talented people attached to it, has sky-high ambitions and ultimately falls short of our expectations. Wait a moment, haven't I been here before? I'm sensing a deja vu...


Let's start with the facts. Elysium is the follow up project of writer/director Neill Bloomkamp's much acclaimed sci-fi/action/mockumentary/social critique mash-up District 9, an enormous feat for a first-time director. Snatching 4 Academy Award nominations in 2010 and making more than $200 million worldwide, it promised great things for Bloomkamp. Quite understandably the pressure was on.

Enter 2013's Elysium starring Matt Damon, again a science fiction/action hybrid peppered with social criticism. In the futuristic year of 2154 the divide between the poor and rich is greater than ever. While the majority of mankind is rotting with diseases on dirty planet Earth, the wealthy are living on a space station called Elysium, spending their time giving dinner parties, playing tennis and hanging around pools a lot. Max, played by Damon, is a worker on Earth who has dreamed all his life to go up to Elysium. During a freak accident occurs he gets exposed to a lethal dose of radiation, giving him less than a week before he will die. He takes that as an opportunity to go on a suicide mission for local crime lord Spider in order to get a ticket for one of the illegal shuttles going up.

In the tradition of most good science fiction movies (the emphasis is on FICTION, it's not fantasy, we're not talking Star Wars here) Elysium uses the world it creates as a way of addressing current issues. And to the maker's credit, for the first half hour the film works perfectly. Bloomkamp proves himself a visually inventive filmmaker who understands the language of film much better than many of his contemporary peers. The setup of the poor-rich divide is not subtle at all but the world we are presented with is fascinating to say the least and ripe with potential. By the half hour mark I was so excited to see where they would go with it. Unfortunately the best idea they had was to degenerate it into a generic action flick draped on top of yet another savior story.

First of all, it's just quite sad to see such a rich universe go to shreds in favor of simplistic pleasures. What it builds up initially in brains, it cannot make up for with brawns later on. It's as if Bloomkamp was afraid that he'd lose the audience if he doesn't provide them with some obligatory gunfights and action sequences. Those might be technically well done but cannot hide the fact that a good chunk of potential is being wasted. On top of that it just emphasizes the logic holes and vast blanks the script draws. What do the rich actually do up on their space station? Where does their wealth come from? How do they sustain it? Why don't they have some kind of defense to deal with the illegal shuttles? Why do they have to call Jodie Foster's secretary of defense to deal with EVERY occurence of those shuttles? Why are the shuttles only launched from Los Angeles, aren't there any other cities left on Earth? Why does it end up being so ridiculously easy to invade and take over Elysium? Why is Max supposed to be Hispanic if he is played by Damon? It's not like there is a shortage of good Hispanic actors to fill the role. Couldn't they have changed the script or simply cast somebody else? Why does Sharlto Copley's mercenary character kidnap Max's childhood sweetheart?

All these questions (and a whole bunch more) kept popping up in my head the longer the movie ran and that is normally not a good sign. I know that you can point out plot holes and logical mistakes in pretty much any film but the better ones have you so entranced that you won't notice those until after repeated viewings. That being said I regard Elysium as a missed opportunity. Bloomkamp shows that he is a good director but what he needs is a better script to work off of. If you're looking for a simple distraction then Elysium will do the job but it won't give you much more than just that.