In the late 21st century Earth was diseased, polluted, and vastly over-populated.
(The camera shows over-crowded, garbage-riddled, crumbling dirty cities with smoke-filled skylines)
Earth's wealthiest residents fled the planet to preserve their way of life.
(This is where the camera pans out moving away from Earth and focusing over a massive ring shaped structure orbiting the planet Earth... This is...)
ELYSIUM...
(Supported by a star shaped spike structure that extends from a central core to the the massive ring. The inside of the massive ring made up of huge curving landscapes consisting of beautiful grassy lawns, huge white houses and sparkling water bodies. A virtual paradise compared to the hell that earth has become...)
So starts Elysium. An artificial space habitat built by the "have"s, to keep away the "have-not"s and still enjoy the best that money and technology can offer. Sterile air, open beautiful spaces, Robot servants and Medical technology that can "re-atomize" your body to heal any and every disease or injury within minutes...
And there is the Earth. The abode of the "have-not"s. Congested, over-populated, polluted. Tightly controlled by robot police, and many of the population serving the companies that enrich the "have"s who are the Elysium citizens, even the basic necessities like medical care are hard to come by. The squalor and the living conditions are clearly apparent in the garbage-riddled landscape, the crumbling buildings where people live, the over-crowded hospitals and public places...
One such have-not is Max. As a kid he has always dreamed of buying a ticket to the beautiful and fabled paradise of Elysium. Once involved in criminal activities during his early youth, now he works hard as an assembly worker in Armadyne Corp, an armaments company that provides not only the weaponry for Elysium and the police force on earth, but also designed the controlling system of Elysium itself. One day he meets with an accident while at work. Exposed to lethal dose of radiation, he has mere five days to live. And all the company gives him as compensation is a vial of capsules that would make his final days painless, and relieves him of work.
The only thing that can save him is a Med-bay - a near magical technological marvel that can re-atomize your body cells and cure any disease within minutes. The only med-bays available are on Elysium. So he approaches a smuggler named Spider, for whom he has worked before, hoping to get himself smuggled into Elysium. But Spider asks him to perform a last job for him. A job so daring and dangerous, that no person in his right mind would take it up. But Max would. He is going to die anyway. What has he got to loose? They plan to steal secret information off a high-profile Elysium citizen, and use it to buy their way into Elysium. But they land up obtaining information that's so confidential that soon they are being man-hunted for it...
The movie succeeds pretty nicely as an action flick. Though it starts off slow, it soon picks up pace and hardly ever slackens thereafter. Some slow motion action shots are quite breathtaking. Though it is not your run of the mill action flick that starts off with a bang and involves superheroes and over-the-top action sequences, it does offer some nice sci-fi action eye-candy - some pretty cool futuristic armaments, fighter droids, and some very good action sequences.
Most of the actors have acted pretty well. Which was to be expected considering that the star-cast boasts such brilliant actors like Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Alice Braga and William Fichtner.
But I liked this movie more for its concept. There are few sci-fi movies that succeed to present ideas that are possible in the foreseeable future. To make you realize with horror and trepidation that - "OMG, this may happen; it may really happen in a few years"... (One such movie I had seen before is Repo Men [2010] - another dystopian sci-fi action flick). Elysium is one such movie. If you look beyond the action and the sci-fi entertainment it offers, you may realize that what has been portrayed in the movie may very-well happen in the near future. The way our population is growing exponentially, and the economic divide between the haves and the have-nots widening every day, the day is not far when we might be thrust into just such an exploitative dystopian social structure... Maybe we already are living in such an exploitative economic system - economic slaves enriching the already rich "haves". The over-population will simply make it worse in the the near-future...
The writer and director Neill Blomkamp says that it is a comment on the contemporary human condition. "Everybody wants to ask me lately about my predictions for the future," he says, "No, no, no. This isn't science fiction. This is today. This is now."... In a way, he is right...
(The camera shows over-crowded, garbage-riddled, crumbling dirty cities with smoke-filled skylines)
Earth's wealthiest residents fled the planet to preserve their way of life.
(This is where the camera pans out moving away from Earth and focusing over a massive ring shaped structure orbiting the planet Earth... This is...)
ELYSIUM...
(Supported by a star shaped spike structure that extends from a central core to the the massive ring. The inside of the massive ring made up of huge curving landscapes consisting of beautiful grassy lawns, huge white houses and sparkling water bodies. A virtual paradise compared to the hell that earth has become...)
So starts Elysium. An artificial space habitat built by the "have"s, to keep away the "have-not"s and still enjoy the best that money and technology can offer. Sterile air, open beautiful spaces, Robot servants and Medical technology that can "re-atomize" your body to heal any and every disease or injury within minutes...
And there is the Earth. The abode of the "have-not"s. Congested, over-populated, polluted. Tightly controlled by robot police, and many of the population serving the companies that enrich the "have"s who are the Elysium citizens, even the basic necessities like medical care are hard to come by. The squalor and the living conditions are clearly apparent in the garbage-riddled landscape, the crumbling buildings where people live, the over-crowded hospitals and public places...
One such have-not is Max. As a kid he has always dreamed of buying a ticket to the beautiful and fabled paradise of Elysium. Once involved in criminal activities during his early youth, now he works hard as an assembly worker in Armadyne Corp, an armaments company that provides not only the weaponry for Elysium and the police force on earth, but also designed the controlling system of Elysium itself. One day he meets with an accident while at work. Exposed to lethal dose of radiation, he has mere five days to live. And all the company gives him as compensation is a vial of capsules that would make his final days painless, and relieves him of work.
The only thing that can save him is a Med-bay - a near magical technological marvel that can re-atomize your body cells and cure any disease within minutes. The only med-bays available are on Elysium. So he approaches a smuggler named Spider, for whom he has worked before, hoping to get himself smuggled into Elysium. But Spider asks him to perform a last job for him. A job so daring and dangerous, that no person in his right mind would take it up. But Max would. He is going to die anyway. What has he got to loose? They plan to steal secret information off a high-profile Elysium citizen, and use it to buy their way into Elysium. But they land up obtaining information that's so confidential that soon they are being man-hunted for it...
The movie succeeds pretty nicely as an action flick. Though it starts off slow, it soon picks up pace and hardly ever slackens thereafter. Some slow motion action shots are quite breathtaking. Though it is not your run of the mill action flick that starts off with a bang and involves superheroes and over-the-top action sequences, it does offer some nice sci-fi action eye-candy - some pretty cool futuristic armaments, fighter droids, and some very good action sequences.
Most of the actors have acted pretty well. Which was to be expected considering that the star-cast boasts such brilliant actors like Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Alice Braga and William Fichtner.
But I liked this movie more for its concept. There are few sci-fi movies that succeed to present ideas that are possible in the foreseeable future. To make you realize with horror and trepidation that - "OMG, this may happen; it may really happen in a few years"... (One such movie I had seen before is Repo Men [2010] - another dystopian sci-fi action flick). Elysium is one such movie. If you look beyond the action and the sci-fi entertainment it offers, you may realize that what has been portrayed in the movie may very-well happen in the near future. The way our population is growing exponentially, and the economic divide between the haves and the have-nots widening every day, the day is not far when we might be thrust into just such an exploitative dystopian social structure... Maybe we already are living in such an exploitative economic system - economic slaves enriching the already rich "haves". The over-population will simply make it worse in the the near-future...
The writer and director Neill Blomkamp says that it is a comment on the contemporary human condition. "Everybody wants to ask me lately about my predictions for the future," he says, "No, no, no. This isn't science fiction. This is today. This is now."... In a way, he is right...
My Ratings: 3.5
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