Reactions to Neill Blomkamp ’s first celluloid after his tie bang District 9 have been mixed , to say the least . Elysium is a flick with a lot of aspirations to sizeableness , but it fails miserably to populate up to its hope . Still , it has some incredible scenes and idea . Here ’s the dislocation .
There are major spoilers for Elysium ahead .
Worldbuilding
Wrong : A lot of the unfavorable judgment of Elysium sharpen on its worldbuilding . The story takes place just about 150 yr in the future , in a world where the Earth is contaminated and/or overpopulated and/or diseased and/or impoverished . Meanwhile , rich people have built themselves a blank habitat called Elysium that ’s full of robot servants and magical wellness technology that can cure anything . Already , there are problem . Blomkamp hasinvoked too many dystopias at once . Earth suffers from too many complaint , and the unequal distribution of resources is too unlined . Even in the most authoritarian regime ( which we have no evidence that this is — it ’s more like anarcho - capitalist ) you ’d see some technologies filter down to even the most impoverished classes . People living in today ’s slum have smart phones , for deterrent example .
https://gizmodo.com/7-deadly-sins-of-worldbuilding-998817537
As cameras sail over Earth ’s aerofoil , we see evidence of massive cities that have fallen into disrepair and given room to favelas . These cities , plus the insane levels of technology in Elysium , indicate that there was a vast economical roar , followed by a bust that is never explained . So we have stark category naval division that make no sentiency , and a monumental economic catastrophe that ’s never explained .
I am all for dystopia whose origins are hazy — Looper is a great exemplar of an first-class moving-picture show where there ’s been a delicate apocalypse that ’s never explain . The problem with Elysium , however , is that the plot centers on the results of economic bust and class warfare . Our dying hero Max ’s intact motivation is catalyse by the fact that people in this future have inadequate access to health care technology . As Alyssa Rosenberg has already argue over at Think Progress , the wellness concern scarcity in this future world makes no common sense . Why is something so on the face of it plentiful and easy to manufacture being hoarded on Elysium ? What kind of economical system is this ? With no resolution we are n’t left with an challenging whodunit . rather , it ’s just a giant raft .
Right : Despite these problems , there are a lot of incredible scene and moments that effortlessly capture the feeling of a post - crash future that is a nearly gas-tight surveillance body politic . Though health care tech and golem are not spread realistically through the human universe , surveillance tech and weapons are . In just a few quick vista - setting import , Blomkamp reveals how everybody — from the runner Spider to the Elysium government — have access to real - time satellite imagery that countenance them to identify everybody on the planet , any time .
We get the feeling that Spider has hacked into a satellite feed to get his information , and again this is solid worldbuilding . We see how surveillance technology would be used by a mixture of masses in different ways , ranging from illegally hacked to lawfully deployed . The same goes for the exoskeleton technical school that Max wears to win the strength of a droid . While Max get a hacked - together , former - generation exoskeleton , the Elysium mercenary Kruger has a state - of - the - art articulated lorry . Max ’s weapons are also like clone of Kruger ’s .
This is how technological advances really work in a class - stratified society . There is no impermeable barrier between haves and have - nots — instead , it is a tattling membrane , where technical school receive through to the lower classes , who chop and reverse railroad engineer it for their own America . True , the robust have newfangled technology . But often the resistance can cut up into this new technology and take advantage of it too . We ’re go away inquire why Spider smuggle citizenry up to Elysium to steal metre on the medical pods when it would be a deal easier to slip the med pod and chop them for use back on Earth .
Character Arcs
Wrong : Just as there are too many dystopia happen at once in Elysium , there are too many opposer for our hero Max . The field is cram with bad cat , from the merc Kruger and his employer the Secretary of Defense Delacourt , to the defense mogul Carlyle . Plus there are the various law policeman and manufactory boss who randomly pervert Max , just so we get the melodic theme that he ’s really , really abused .
The trouble is that each of these bad guys seems to belong to a unlike kind of motion picture , and unfortunately Elysium proceeds to move through each of these movies one by one . First , there ’s the distressing futurist labor drone crushed by body of work motion-picture show , featuring Carlyle and the honcho and the cops as bad guy . Then there ’s the deathly heist movie , featuring Kruger as a forged cat . And in conclusion , there ’s the political revolution flick , featuring Delacourt ( and a confusingly transform Kruger , which we ’ll get to in a arcminute ) as the main uncollectible guy . As Max whiplashes his fashion through each of these movies , he evolve from a car thief who would do anything to survive , to a self - sacrificing revolutionary . We never understand why . No , his childhood protagonist Frey whom he wants to osseous tissue is n’t enough need .
Max ’s character spark is downright credible compare to the arc dissemble out by smugger Spider and merc Kruger . Spider begins the movie as a self - concerned thief and moon curser , who does n’t mind selling his neighbour passage on illegal ships bound for Elysium — ship that are shot down 2 out of 3 times . So he ’s a killer whale , and he cares nothing for human life . Fine . But by the end of the moving picture he surge up to Elysium so that he can chance his lifetime to overthrow the unjust system and “ save the humans ” for the neighbors he once sent to almost sure demise en itinerary to Elysium . Huh ?
likewise , Kruger goes from being a brutal , dumb mercenary who fuck nothing more than killing and raping , to a man with political aspirations so enormous that he desire to take over all of Elysium . Why ? Why would this take place ? What pee-pee these ego - interested men — Max , Spider , and Kruger — all of a sudden become political subversives and subverter ? There ’s a lacuna at the center of these reference arcs that is comparable to the lacuna in the movie ’s worldbuilding .
correctly : OK , you got me . There are no character electric arc that are done well in this movie .
Allegory
Wrong : establish on the apartheid fable of District 9 , it would seem that allegory is Blompkamp ’s strength as a storyteller . And I think that we can all agree that Elysium is , at its warmheartedness , an allegory about class conflict in our humankind today . We see a arrant section between rich and poor , projected into a variance between space - farers and Earthlings . The movie concentrate on inadequate access to resources , with health care highlight as the most obvious . The problem ? In a password , resolution .
We understand the social class battle allegory — the message comes in perhaps too loud and open . But what about the resolution allegory ? Spider hack into Elysium , reboots it with the push of a push , and abruptly everybody has free wellness charge . cue stick footage of kids running through field of study on Earth , laugh and healthy . So we can resolve class conflicts with a undivided technical fix ? The problem is the software , not the people ? This is what you might call an allegorical bootleg hole , from which no particles of substance can miss .
right on : Despite all the problem I ’ve explore so far , I reckon Blomkamp started with a very inflexible allegory when he choose to map out course divisions onto literal divisions between the the great unwashed of Earth and the people of space . The effectuation was clumsy and the ending did n’t work , but he still managed to pose an of import question , which is what our class divisions will face like 150 twelvemonth from now .
Like the very best futuristic dystopian stories , Elysium wangle to defamiliarize our conversant human race , allowing us to ask questions about the way economic inequality works . For example , why do citizenry like Max work against their own interests , manufacturing police robots who mistreat them ? What kind of selective blindness allows the seemingly bounteous president of Elysium to ignore the troth of masses on Earth ? How do the people in between the upper classes of Elysium and the favelas of Earth , like Frey and Kruger , assist to maintain the organisation despite not really gain from it ?
In Elysium , we see flashes of thoughtfulness and brilliant moment of dystopian worldbuilding . But it ’s out of the question for us become to the full emotionally affiance with the picture when the basic electric arc of the principal characters makes so short sense . bad of all , Elysium fall over on point when we require it most . Without any sense of this world ’s economic foundations , we are denied a satisfying ( or even logical ) payoff during the narrative climax .
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