Elysium (Neill Blomkamp)

[TGM]

ELYSIUM

Director: Neill Blomkamp

imdb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

http://media2.firstshowing.net/firstshowing/img7/elysium-firstposter-full2.jpg

[eternity]

What starts as a weak but watchable allegory devolves into an incomprehensible mess. Meh.

[wigwam]

:|

[TGM]

"Whelp, this movie fucking exists." -My immediate reaction upon leaving the theater. It's not bad, but it does nothing to stand out from the endless wave of mediocrity we've been bombarded with this year. It is what it is...

[Sxottlan]

Yeah kind of a disappointment.

But I loved the production design work on the station itself. Very well done.

[Dukefrukem]

Loved this as a sci-fi. Hated this as an action movie. Loathed this as a dueling message on political purpose.

I don't remember the action being bad in District 9, but was Blomkamp getting pointers from Megaton? The shaking cam action shots were exhausting. And it was even weirder because just as quickly as the camera started shaking, after the scene the camera would go back to normal.

Also, I was pretty shocked this was rated R. Wasn't expecting that at all.

All of my anticipated movies this year have been met with mediocrity or worse (except Iron Man 3) which makes me sad. The Hobbit and Gravity are the few remaining.

[Ezee E]

Lots of potential. Some fascinating stuff here actually. However, the weaknesses will certainly bog it down.

The seamless special effects are simply the best of its kind right now. Neill Blomkamp may be the best special effects director right now. He's only 33, which is also pretty astonishing to look at. And the ideas that he has certainly have some potential, but there simply are a lot of flaws with it. Why wouldn't Elysium send their units to earth? If it's due to a lack of supply to only heal the ones currently in Elysium, that would have been good enough for me. It never is explained. Instead, it makes everyone on Elysium look like a bad person. And that shouldn't be the case.

The movie also suffers from the "kid ruining the story" progress that hurts a lot of movies. Forced conflict. Alice Braga, typically a good actress, has nothing to work with except to be the determined mother. Boo.

It's a shame that a movie that has such great ideas, effects, and production design gets weakened by following cliche story progression. The end doesn't develop the wallop that it should either, despite its huge attempt.

... With that said, Sharlito Copley's Agent Kruger may be the best villain in quite some time. A very cool design, mean as hell, and I wanted way more out of him. Heck, I'd be fine with a comic series about his missions beforehand. That's a great character.

I guess I should say that I enjoyed myself. Everything that takes place on Earth is actually pretty fun to watch as Damon tries to get to Elysium, and Elysium tries to find Damon. Original action sequences and designs. Very cool.

[Dukefrukem]

Coolest part?

head explosion and facial reconstruction?

[Stay Puft]

But I loved the production design work on the station itself. Very well done.

It looked exactly like the Citadel in Mass Effect. That was all I could think about while watching the film (and then specifically that scene with the assassin and the crashing shuttles in Mass Effect 3, as there ends up being a similar action scene in Elysium).

But yeah it's a lot of impressive craftsmanship (production design, special effects, etc.) in service of a muddled concept with overwrought dramatics (that score, those childhood flashbacks, the slo-mo... good grief). And as duke says, some pretty weak camera work, too. There's one shot where a robot cop is punching Matt Damon after it flips him onto the back of a truck, and Matt Damon isn't even in the shot. It's framed too tight, with an overreliance on shaky cam to make it exciting. Eh.

[Dukefrukem]

It looked exactly like the Citadel in Mass Effect. That was all I could think about while watching the film (and then specifically that scene with the assassin and the crashing shuttles in Mass Effect 3, as there ends up being a similar action scene in Elysium).

But yeah it's a lot of impressive craftsmanship (production design, special effects, etc.) in service of a muddled concept with overwrought dramatics (that score, those childhood flashbacks, the slo-mo... good grief). And as duke says, some pretty weak camera work, too. There's one shot where a robot cop is punching Matt Damon after it flips him onto the back of a truck, and Matt Damon isn't even in the shot. It's framed too tight, with an overreliance on shaky cam to make it exciting. Eh.

Ah you're right!! I meant to remember that as I was watching it but forgot. Stay Puft wins in that regard.

[TGM]

I worked hard on this one, but finally, here it is, my 100% accurate and in depth review of Elysium: http://cwiddop.blogspot.com/2013/08/elysium.html

[megladon8]

Enjoyed it. Found a lot of the violence surprisingly icky. Damon and Copley were both great.

But damn. Please hold the camera still for more than a microsecond.

[KK2.0]

How big is Wagner Moura's role in this? He's quite popular in Brazil after the Elite Squad movies and the studio is advertising him along with the main cast.

[megladon8]

How big is Wagner Moura's role in this? He's quite popular in Brazil after the Elite Squad movies and the studio is advertising him along with the main cast.


Pretty major. One of the central characters.

I really liked him, but I found at times that he spoke so fast it was hard to decipher what he was saying. There was at least one line of dialogue that went right over my head.

[megladon8]

It's kind of amazing seeing the difference in Copley's stature between the two Blomkamp films.

I've only seen him in these two (never bothered with The A-Team), and so after District 9 I thought he was a little nerdy dude.

He looks quite large in Elysium (obviously due in part to the fact that he bulked up for the role), but I looked at his IMDb profile and he is 5'11-1/2 - just a half inch shorter than me.

I honestly thought he was, like, 5'5.

[Boner M]

Now that Neil Blomkamp has opened our eyes not only to the ills of his own country's colonialism and apartheid but now our own's immigration and healthcare, I hope next he turns to solving world hunger. And I don't mean by making another eye&ear-sore of a shitty scifi film, I just mean by unclenching his gargantuan fists of ham so that all may feed!
Golden.

[Skitch]

Lot of positive. Plenty of negative.

The special effects were astounding. Absolutely gorgeous to look at. There was one scene that wasn't quite shaky-cam, but had blurred edges, and looked as though Damon was wearing the body-mounted-cam (ala Requiem For A Dream) but as though it was mounted to his back. It was a quick scene, but made him appear to move faster than normal. That single shot was amazing.

The shaky cam was way too overused. I understand using it spots, but damn, it was almost impossible to tell what the hell was going on when there was any close combat going on.

The flashbacks at the end to nail the points home were like kicks to the groin. Yes, we get it!

The first half of the movie I kept thinking "Get Neil working on Star Wars VIII RIGHT NOW", and by the half way mark I rescinded the thought. He would be great for the aerial/space work, but the on-the-ground stuff he lacks a deft touch.

[Fezzik]

Somewhat enjoyable with good effects, but ultimately it feels like a let down.

I like Copley and Damon in this (I really want to see Copley branch out a bit, to be honest. I'm curious as to what he can do), but Foster was horrible.

The effects work was great. I even liked the pace it moved, but it felt lacking, like someone cut the heart of it out somewhere, plus...


The flashbacks at the end to nail the points home were like kicks to the groin. Yes, we get it!

This bothered me SO much. It was made even funnier by the fact that right after this was over, I attended the "RiffTrax Live" event where they riffed Starship Troopers, and one of the running jokes was how repetitive the scenes were (bug attacks, ship flybys). It seemed funnier to me that it normally would have been I think.

[Skitch]

We really debated on which to see, this or ST Rifftrax, finally deciding we could always get the trax later. :)

[Rowland]

Starship Troopers Rifftrax, blech. You guys suck, that's a great movie.

[Morris Schæffer]

Less preachy and message-y than I expected, this is first and foremost a breahtlessly paced, fat-free, kickass sci-fi adventure with FX that are convincing, eye-popping and original. Well, not wholly original perhaps, but for once I'm not going to hold that against it. I was reminded of Mass Effect more than once with the space station, but since there's no cinematic version of the Bioware classics, I'm cool with that. The score was omni-present, but likewise, I thought it was propulsive rather than overbearing. I dug how the universe felt lived in, grungy and dilapidated on terra firma, but got really high-tech up in Elysium. Max's harness might not look out of place in a Radio Shack 50 years down the line. This is not a dull movie, certainly not visually even if it eludes me why nearly every single director is unable to film a close-combat showdown coherently.

[Rowland]

Hmm, I'm more of a very mixed nay than the mild yay I was when I initially voted, but this is still one of the more solid releases from a weak summer.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I think this might have been about health care.

[Dukefrukem]

I think this might have been about health care.

But of course it was.

[Skitch]

I think this might have been about health care.

Whaaa? There were so many subtle interpretational ideas, I'm not sure how you got there. :|

[Kurosawa Fan]

To be honest, I saw this three weeks ago and all I can remember is how awful Jodie Foster was. And that it was about health care.

[Derek]

Now that Neil Blomkamp has opened our eyes not only to the ills of his own country's colonialism and apartheid but now our own's immigration and healthcare, I hope next he turns to solving world hunger. And I don't mean by making another eye&ear-sore of a shitty scifi film, I just mean by unclenching his gargantuan fists of ham so that all may feed!

:lol:

This could have been one of the funniest films of the year had I not been unconscious for the half the film having been so consistently bludgeoned by ALLEGORY and EMOTION. Jodie Foster's performance is Razzie-worthy w/Finchner not far behind, but I blame Blomkamp for his absurdly cliched and shallow representations of both classes and generic script even more than the actors. Truly atrocious.

http://cdn.meme.li/i/p177l.jpg

[Irish]

To borrow from Qrazy, "This was bad."

In addition to what's already been mentioned: What really bothered me was how far the movie goes to stack the deck in its favor. All the villains are unquestionably evil and all the heroes almost angelic, and the movie never bothers to explain anyone's motivations beyond immediate physical need.

The other thing: Those med bays are as ubiquitous as washer/dryers are today. So why is there no concept of a "laundromat" on Earth?

Also found it hilarious that they've got all this kick ass technology -- shuttles that go from earthside to low orbit in 20 minutes, automated med bays that can heal anything instantly -- but CEOs write code line by line & all the "hackers" are using command line interfaces.

[Qrazy]

Yeah it's too bad all this world building is in the service of terrible plotting. This had the potential to be good but wasn't at all, falls apart in the final act in particular just like District 9 did.

Also forget Mass Effect guys, all of that design dates back to Niven.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld


There was some pretty cool sound design work in this though.

[KK2.0]

Very disappointing.

Maybe if the film kept a more satirical tone like District 9 it would be easier to digest, but only Sharlto Copley seemed to be having fun here.

[EyesWideOpen]

This was terrible. Besides Damon the acting was pretty universally bad. I don't know what the hell Jodie Foster was doing but it was laughable.

[Ezee E]

There's no way or knowing, but it sure seems like Foster either had a more substantial role in older drafts of the script, or there was quite the hackjob in editing. On reflection, the movie is all types of horrible when it goes into space. I'd almost have been completely fine if it stayed on Earth the entire time.

And could you have imagined if it were Eminem in that role instead of Matt Damon.

[Henry Gale]

Oh right, I finally watched it a couple of weeks ago.

I gave it a yay, because that was my borderline reaction at the time. Blomkamp has enough assured visual command to keep everything superficially interesting, and keeps so many potentially rich allegories floating around that even if they feel a bit undercooked individually and don't really merge in a revelatory way at the end, they keep it on its toes to be a unique endeavor even if it doesn't feel like a fully-formed one.

But it's fun enough, more in the world-building and those thematic musings since even the action is surprisingly sparse and pedestrian, though the look and feel of its and sometimes violent aftermaths are often stunning and unique. It's very self-contradictory like that all around, down to it grounding itself in sentimental childhood flashbacks that end up being referenced and replayed more than they were ever initially presented and developed.

And we can all agree that Jodie Foster's already notorious performance was entirely ADR'd and that's the major thing that adds to the awkwardness of everything about the look and actions of her character? I'm so curious about what the hell she did on set that they felt the need to re-loop so insanely and clumsily (and seemingly at the last minute considering how it looks and fails to visually match). Seems like they forced this on Fichtner's character too. Maybe they just made a late decision to give everyone on Elysium this "accent", or they had one while filming that test audiences found even incomprehensible than this final product? It is sad that these are the questions this movie has left me with and not anything it was actually trying to say...

It's a weird odd movie, it may not really be that good, and maybe its most interesting production design and effects are just as good as they are because they're borderline plagiarizing old Syd Mead art, but it's at least singular enough in its unfulfilled potential to have made it worthwhile for me in the moment and remain excited for what Blomkamp does next. Also, Copley is insane, terrifying and hilarious in every bit he's involved, so maybe he was a bigger help to things that I'm giving him and his director credit for, especially in how starkly different a character they crafted from their Wikus van der Merwe.

The ultimate 6 out of 10, borderline pass film if there ever was one. Where the remaining 4 points are the thing that sticks out instead of what it does undeniably well, even if it's without too much of a wowing impression or fruit for deep reflection.

[dreamdead]

Loved this as a sci-fi. Hated this as an action movie. Loathed this as a dueling message on political purpose.

Abmirable in its willingness to discuss politics, but there's no subtext in this film, which makes the allegory so blunt and obscene that it undercuts its own point. All the people in Elysium are evil, all the people on earth are basically virtuous, and all businessmen on earth are evil. Bland script beyond belief and undone by egregious flashbacks. With three or four more rewrites this could have been serviceable.

[megladon8]

I really want shaky-cam hand-to-hand fighting to disappear.

The Bourne films dd it quite well and it added to the visceral, brutal quality of the situations. Then everyone jumped on board, and no one really had the command that Greengrass and Wood had.

In Elysium, the camera shakes so badly that it actually points away from the action at times. It's utterly maddening, and I don't get the appeal.