Elysium (2013)
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
In the year 2159, two classes of people exist: the very wealthy who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. Secretary Rhodes, a hard line government official, will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the luxurious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium. That doesn’t stop the people of Earth from trying to get in, by any means they can. When unlucky Max is backed into a corner, he agrees to take on a daunting mission that, if successful, will not only save his life, but could bring equality to these polarized worlds.
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32 films that influenced Elysium
What critics say influenced Elysium
From Fritz Lang's classic "Metropolis" to last year's "Total Recall," the premise of a society drastically divided by class has been a model for many dystopian science-fiction stories.
Simmering or open class warfare has been a rich trope for sci-fi futurecasting as far back as Fritz Lang ’s 1927 “Metropolis” and as recently as “In Time,” “ Total Recall ” and Michael Winterbottom’s fine, underseen “Code 46.” Lang’s influence is particularly evident in “Elysium’s” army of industrious worker bees slaving away on the factory floor of the Armadyne corporation, whose slithery CEO, Carlyle ( William Fichtner ), developed Elysium and all the technology that makes it run.
Mix in an exoskeleton turning Max into super-strong robo-drone makes “Elysium’s” connection to Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” even clearer.
Max and his fellow wage slaves are thematic kin to the subterranean workers in Fritz Lang's " Metropolis " (1927), another science-fiction tale that literalized the notion of an upper and lower class.
By design, her performance is only slightly less robotic than the Maschinenmensch robot woman, Maria, in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," a major influence on Blomkamp's movie.
Whereas most science fiction today is all sleekness and impressive spaceships, metaphor comes first for Blomkamp, who sees "Elysium" in the tradition of Fritz Lang's similarly allegorical "Metropolis."
Somewhere in the clutter is a great sci-fi yarn in the vein of “Blade Runner,” but Blomkamp still seems to be finding his focus as a storyteller.
Later, as a downtrodden adult and recovering thief, bald-shaven Max toils on an assembly line in what’s left of Los Angeles, hauntingly rendered by Blomkamp in helicopter shots that recall the opening of “Blade Runner,” and on the ground in ways that suggest the most impoverished sections of contemporary Cape Town and Mexico City.
In addition to the aforementioned classics, you’re going to catch bits of another Dick-based work, “Blade Runner,” as well as “The Matrix,” “Mad Max” and “Escape from New York.”
The early scenes of Max negotiating his frustrating, ugly world, with its crowded buses, interminable lines and cheap pleasures, reveal Blomkamp's debt to such dystopian predecessors -- mostly from the 1970s -- as "THX-1138," "Soylent Green," "Mad Max," "Blade Runner," Richard Stanley's "Hardware," "Children of Men," even Spielberg's "A.I.
Elysium has some of the most striking sweeping shots of a future dystopia this side of Blade Runner.
The film is set in 2154, and much of it takes place in a crumbling shantytown Los Angeles that suggests the concrete ghettos of Rio--meet--Blade Runner with the sun up and the lights turned off.
With obvious references to the old "Mad Max" films and today's politics, " Elysium " becomes a compelling if less-lasting summer follow-up for writer/director Neill Blomkamp after his Oscar-nominated "District 9."
There’s also George Miller’s Mad Max trilogy, John Carpenter’s Escape From … films, and the museum-ready miserablism of Alejandro González Iñárritu.
The early scenes of Max negotiating his frustrating, ugly world, with its crowded buses, interminable lines and cheap pleasures, reveal Blomkamp's debt to such dystopian predecessors -- mostly from the 1970s -- as "THX-1138," "Soylent Green," "Mad Max," "Blade Runner," Richard Stanley's "Hardware," "Children of Men," even Spielberg's "A.I.
Blomkamp filters a lot of other people’s sci-fi ideas into this, from “Johnny Mnemomic” and “Mad Max” to “Blade Runner”, “In Time” and “Iron Man.”
The inhabitants eke out a Mad Max existence of hopeless poverty and barely adequate medical services provided by overcrowded, rundown hospitals.
Its central themes are nothing new - the haves-vs-have-nots concept has long gone hand-in-hand with sci-fi and in recent times has been wheeled out with varying success by In Time (good) and Upside Down (not-so-good).
And while Blomkamp's message is morally stalwart, his delivery system sure is a bummer: Andrew Niccol's similarly themed 2011 In Time was both more stylish and more effective, a serious movie that hit its mark without taking itself too seriously.
Simmering or open class warfare has been a rich trope for sci-fi futurecasting as far back as Fritz Lang ’s 1927 “Metropolis” and as recently as “In Time,” “ Total Recall ” and Michael Winterbottom’s fine, underseen “Code 46.” Lang’s influence is particularly evident in “Elysium’s” army of industrious worker bees slaving away on the factory floor of the Armadyne corporation, whose slithery CEO, Carlyle ( William Fichtner ), developed Elysium and all the technology that makes it run.
(Check out on Andrew Niccol's underrated " In Time ," in which the haves and have-nots use the minutes they have to live as currency.)
Blomkamp stitches patches from a bunch of other sci-fi films — the rich-poor futureworld of Gattaca , In Time and Upside Down , plus the mind-melding caper from Inception — that devolve into a numbingly familiar series of chases and fights.
Blomkamp filters a lot of other people’s sci-fi ideas into this, from “Johnny Mnemomic” and “Mad Max” to “Blade Runner”, “In Time” and “Iron Man.”
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In Neill Blomkamp’s “Elysium,” the writer-director’s follow-up to the 2009 feature debut “District 9,” Jason Bourne is born again in a dystopian near future when the 1 percent have long since abandoned a blighted Earth to live in luxury-resort splendor in Elysium, a giant, orbiting space wheel, recalling Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” listening to Bach and Beethoven.
Neill Blomkamp knows a great deal about these ideas, already displaying certain skill with the concept in “District 9,” and now takes the approach a step further.
Though that might sound suspiciously similar to the plot of this spring’s dual-gravity fable Upside Down , it’s actually the new brainchild of District 9 director Neill Blomkamp, who apparently never met a metaphorical high concept he couldn’t reduce to genre-flick window dressing.
Writer-director Neill Blomkamp, whose “District 9” (2009) was a space-alien tale with stark parallels to the rifts in his native South Africa caused by racial segregation, has created another sci-fi parable with charged political and social overtones.
As someone who found South African director Neill Blomkamp’s first film “District 9” only moderately entertaining and socially relevant (except for the rancid stereotyping of Nigerian gangsters seemingly inspired by a Steven Seagal movie), I wasn’t expecting very much.
Director and screenwriter Neill Blomkamp’s incredibly realistic backgrounds, machines, weapons and vehicles are reminiscent of his even finer “District 9.”
That might betray the director’s personal views, but it also reveals his deficiencies as a dramatist, one who can’t manufacture a compelling rationale for the actions of his villain – one is reminded of Burt Lancaster’s treasonous general in John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May , whose argument was so persuasive you found yourself rooting for the overthrow of the American government.
Furthermore, if you think that setup sounds generally similar to any number of other dystopian sci-fi movies, from the “Logan’s Run” and “Soylent Green” era on up through “Robocop” and both versions of “Total Recall” (not to mention Ari Folman’s unreleased “The Congress,” which I saw at Cannes this year), you’d be right.
The early scenes of Max negotiating his frustrating, ugly world, with its crowded buses, interminable lines and cheap pleasures, reveal Blomkamp's debt to such dystopian predecessors -- mostly from the 1970s -- as "THX-1138," "Soylent Green," "Mad Max," "Blade Runner," Richard Stanley's "Hardware," "Children of Men," even Spielberg's "A.I.
" Elysium " has some really cool concepts that include shades of " Terminator 2 ," " Aliens ," and the more obvious choice of " District 9 ," but the disappointing aspect is that it just doesn't live up to " District 9 ."
Unlike Terminator 2 —another sci-fi shoot-’em-up that begins in Los Angeles, and to which Elysium is clearly indebted—the movie never varies the nature of its run-and-gun spectacle.
What’s left to enjoy are the visuals and some visceral hand-to-hand combat, which is nice (think “Terminator 2,” with humans), but this is a movie that had bigger fish to fry, and let them off the hook.
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Simmering or open class warfare has been a rich trope for sci-fi futurecasting as far back as Fritz Lang ’s 1927 “Metropolis” and as recently as “In Time,” “ Total Recall ” and Michael Winterbottom’s fine, underseen “Code 46.” Lang’s influence is particularly evident in “Elysium’s” army of industrious worker bees slaving away on the factory floor of the Armadyne corporation, whose slithery CEO, Carlyle ( William Fichtner ), developed Elysium and all the technology that makes it run.
Not only does Damon's Max have tattoos that remind me of Pearce's character in "Memento," but Pearce's recent performance in " Lockout " just seems to be the perfect prep for this role.