Elysium was one of the movies I was looking forward to watching this summer and it turned out to be a disappointment. Not sure how it scored a 7/10 on IMDB, maybe I just don’t like Matt Damon. The trailer made the movie look really interesting and the story line of two different worlds where people live, a space station for the rich while regular folks lived on a decaying planet earth sounded epic but we just didn’t get to see enough of these two worlds in my opinion.
With movies like this I like to see and explore the worlds, I know a lot of people didn’t like Waterworld, The Postman or even the recent Oblivion but what I liked about those movies was they felt epic because of the amount of exploration we as viewers got to experience. I would have loved to have seen more of the space station in Elysium, how it worked, where they got their food from, maybe a history of how it was built etc.. and same with earth, it’s dying and it’s over populated, what are they doing about water, food, are there still any animals, did we over fish, did we poison all the waters? etc… It’s these kind of questions that I wanted answers to and I never got.
It’s a fast paced movie so you won’t get bored watching it, just don’t expect it to be very deep.
16 replies on “Review: Elysium”
Yea it felt incomplete.
I didn’t watch the movie yet , but I feel ya. Movies are not as good as they used to be. Creativity is there but the execution not so.
Oblivion like you said miss’s somethings , if it did fill those , it would have just been amazing.
I don’t know – I enjoyed the movie because I didn’t go there looking for a documentary or world exploration.
Mainly because I knew what the story was about.
I would give it a 6.5/10
If you haven’t seen it yet – upside down is more towards what you are looking for. Its the same premise (two worlds, one entitled the other struggling) and in terms of world exploration is a lot more comprehensive.
The story line is a lot better too, IMO.
I actually got bored halfway through to be honest
not to mention that most of today’s movies cool stuff are taken from games.
that Ring thing outside the earth, i remember the First Halo I’ve ever played..
games experience, are much richer than movies’s
The concept of a dyson sphere that Halo kind of re-did comes from books not games. 90% of games get their influences really heavily from movies as well.
Neill Blomkamp was originally supposed to direct a Halo movie before he went ahead with Elysium, he was pretty much set to make it before Microsoft pulled the plug.
The point of the movie wasn’t to explore the worlds though. You knew just enough to understand the plight of the protagonist and the people still living on Earth.
Neill Blomkamp isn’t James Cameron, Blomkamp tends to lean towards having science fiction movies that contain more substance than visual arts. District 9 was similar in the sense that it dealt with Apartheid issues similar to real-life South Africa. Elysium deals with issues that resemble problems in current day America. You don’t need to know how Elysium was built, where the rich get their food or if animals still exist on Earth.
I personally prefer imagining how these things were done than the director spoon-feeding me all this information.
Just my two cents, but I’m a big fan of Neill Blomkamp 😛
btw, you should check Rotten Tomatoes for reviews, not IMDB. It’s more accurate. (Elysium has a 68% on RT)
All the questions u asked can be answered if you research what the Illuminati agenda is.
lol
Mark.. if you are in to the whole 2 worlds thing, you should watch Upsode Down. hot sure if you already have.. but its a pretty cool movie.. it doesnt have any action though.
i havent watched elysium yet… but the concept of one world for rich and the poor seems a lot like Upside Down.. but the core plot of upside down is a love affair between a guy from the poor world & the girl from the rich world..
if any of you guys havent watched it yet.. you should really give it a go.. coz there are some scenes, specally with regards to the gravity in both the worlds, that’ll just make you drop your jaws.
edit *Upside Down*
i find it ironic that this blog and its readers are looking for ‘depth’ in Elysium when the main theme was about the difference between haves and have nots… can anyone say, biased approach to healthcare?
this movie is all about how rich and powerful chooses to have everything for themselves and deprived those in need for it, they made it less racists by putting different races in the Elysium so it doesn’t sound it’s racists, however picked citizenship as way of being racists, the movie is bad, honestly how can a machine cure anything that easily, thereis nothing but light, not even stemp-cell based, wow the powa of light is healing, so, what the hell is the lion on the machine is all about? an advance machine with lion’s artifact which looks very old and bronze which doesn’t go with compact of future.
i knew the end before it end, easily predicted, however it’s WAY better than Oblivion which was huge disappointed, but not as goof as World War Z 😀
I was really looking forward to this movie, mainly because I loved District 9 to bits. It’s a different beast though.
I found the movie to be a decent sophomore effort from Blomkamp, but I guess he still has some maturing to do as a director. I found the 3rd act of the movie to falter especially in terms of pacing.
Rating: Worth a rental.