A cool world is not enough
Neill Blomkamp loves to build worlds. He talked about it in an interview for a Swedish web publication about his new film Elysium.
Answering a question about what he thought was most fun about science fiction, he said:
“The most fun is designing a lot of the elements, the props and the vehicles… I love design so I really enjoy the period of designing and realizing the world the film is going to take place.in.”
In the interview he also talks enthusiastically about the “coolest most amazing” footage they got as they recorded in Mexico, and how “the themes of the movie are embedded into the footage”.
At least you can’t blame him for not being honest about it. There’s no question about what matters to him most: the looks. And you can’t take it away from him that he’s good at it. While not exactly ground breaking, I have to admit that I liked his vision of a future Earth with its handsome mix of high tech and poverty. I can buy into this overpopulated, polluted and generally worn down world. That’s a imaginable future. The space station hovering in the sky above is a little bit puzzling in a few ways, but it’s only minor complaints that I easily would have overcome provided that the movie was engaging enough. Sadly it wasn’t.
No mind tickling
“Style over content” is usually not an expression I like. I recently defended Only God Forgives for this kind of criticism. I honestly think that sometimes style is a perfectly good reason to love or admire a movie. Unfortunately this is not the case here.
Elysium desperately lacks the one thing that I love most about science fiction: the ability to tickle my mind with ideas, visions, surprising twists and logical or ethical dilemmas. It certainly looks like a science fiction movie. People travel in space ships crossing space, there are the coolest machines that can instant-heal anything, way more efficient than those in Star Trek, and people improve their bodies with machine parts. All elements of sci-fi. But what difference does this make if you spend most of the time on action scenes that could be picked from just about any movie, set in the future, past or present? Bad guy and good guy try to punch or kill each other until they succeed. They run about a lot. That they run in space and in the future isn’t enough. My mind was craving for interesting questions the chew on. It got nothing, apart from a ton of action and a one-note message about the unfairness of rich being rich and poor being poor and that healthcare should be free and for everyone.
It’s not that I’m necessarily opposed to the political message. A good public healthcare is taken for granted in Sweden. But to be the carrying theme in a science fiction story, there must be more dimensions to it. A glitch, a dilemma, a conflict of interest, a question where we’re swaying between different answers, seeing different perspective. This was so heavy-handed that I lost my interest. I couldn’t help thinking about other movies that hade treated the theme about a conflict between the poor and the privileged in a much more interesting way. Movies such as Never Let Me Go, about the view on what constituted a human being, or Gattaca, where genetic perfection versus imperfection was discussed. Those are movies that stayed with me, made me think and let me see the world from different perspectives. But from Elysium I brought nothing, apart from the memory of some pretty cool images.
Lack of information
Apart from a brief voiceover backstory in the beginning, delivered too quickly or me to remember it, I never got to know a lot about either world. Especially the people in the space station remained a mystery. How did they think? What were their motivations? Why did they treat people on Earth as badly? What kept them from sending the spectacular healing machines to Earth in the first place? There’s never any mentioning of scarcity. It appears as if they’re evil for the sake of being evil, which is fine if you’re making a movie about aliens from outer space, but not if you’re making a movie about human beings in the future. How did they become this way? Are they all just evil? Isn’t there a single person who questions this at least once?
I’m usually not a fan of nit-picking, but as in the case of Elysium I just can’t help myself. The more I thought about it, the more details did I find to question and complain about. But I won’t make this post into a “25 reasons why Elysium sucks” post. There are enough of those posts already out there.
Instead I’ll make an effort trying to find something nice to say about it, apart from the design:
- I liked the villain, played by Sharito Copley.
- It’s not in 3D! There’s a ton of shaky handcam though, which made it pretty hard sometimes to follow what happened in the action scenes. But I was OK with it. I’ve got a soft spot for shaky cams.
- It was moderately entertaining. I wasn’t bored out of my mind and I didn’t fall asleep
- It’s way better than After Earth. I’m aware that this doesn’t say a lot, but it needs to be mentioned. Compared to other science fiction movies this year, I rank it higher than After Earth, but lower than Star Trek into Darkness, Pacific Rim and Oblivion.
What went wrong
All in all Elysium was a disappointment. I’ve haven’t seen the last movie by this director, District 9, but the praise for it has been so loud that it had raised my expectations to perhaps an unhealthy level.
So what went wrong? Perhaps it’s just much harder to make a good, idea based science fiction movie if you’ve got access to a big budget. A big budget means that more people probably will want to have a say in the productions and there will be less willingness to be daring in any way. It’s almost as if there’s a reversed connection: the lesser budget a science fiction movie has, the better it gets. And I think of Moon and La Jetée, to shiny examples of what good sci-fi can bring in form of moments of sense of wonder.
Elysium had nothing of this, only some good set pieces, which brings it up to 2,5/5 on my rating scale, but no further. And yes, I’m pretty generous with my ratings.
Elysium (Neill Blomkamp, US 2013) My rating: 2,5/5
Edit: If you haven’t had enough of discussion already about this movie I recommend you to listen to a recent episode of the LAMB podcast,where I and some other movie bloggers teared it apart.
My Swedish fellow bloggers in the network Filmspanarna also watched this movie. Here’s what they made of it:
Fredrik on film (in English)
Har du inte sett den? (podcast)
The Velvet Café 
Oh, that was really generous! Reading your review I would have guessed a 1,5/5 – tops! 😉
Fiffi
August 21, 2013 at 10:47 am
Hehe. Yeah. Saved by its good looks.
Jessica
August 23, 2013 at 12:21 am
The feedback across the board on this one isn’t entirely positive Jessica. I always respect your views so I think I’ll wait a while before giving this my precious time.
Mark Walker
August 21, 2013 at 11:05 am
I definitely think you can wait.
Jessica
August 23, 2013 at 12:22 am
I wasn’t a huge fan of District 9. It was an overblown short/novellfilm if you ask me. I’m kind of curious about this one now after reading yours and Fiffis posts on it. How was the other Matt Damon film by Gus van Saint that you watched this saturday? I have been more interested to see that one instead of this one.
Joel Burman (@joelburman)
August 21, 2013 at 11:31 am
I thought Promised land was very good. A straight forward story, a woman who was a human being, not a sex symbol and a lovely soundtrack. Among other things. I haven’t yet written about it, apparetly, but I will soon. I was glad I got around to see it.
Jessica
August 23, 2013 at 12:24 am
A lot of people seem to be let down with this, especially after District 9. Maybe that was the problem, that expectations were high. There’s a slight lull in what’s out over here right now so I might give it a whirl if I get chance.
Terry Malloy's Pigeon Coop
August 21, 2013 at 12:32 pm
At least it looks good. Really good. Perhaps you’ll find it enjoyable for that thing only.
Jessica
August 23, 2013 at 12:25 am
Yes, you certainly are generous with your ratings! 😉
Other than that, I pretty much agree with your take on this film. I found it enjoyable for the action, the fun future view of Los Angeles and Matt Damon (he is as always very good), but everything about the philosophical elements in this movie was badly written (including many of the things you bring up).
I gave it a pass in the end, and a rating of 3/5 (on my rating scale)
Henke
August 21, 2013 at 1:45 pm
I think a 3 on your scale is a 3,5 on mine. And my 2,5 is probably a 2 on yours. Or something like that. But yeah, I think we share a lot of views on this.
Jessica
August 23, 2013 at 12:26 am
Ouch, this was harsh indeed. While I didn’t love the movie it certainly feels like I liked it better than you. Or at least I didn’t like different elements. As I said, I have no problem with accepting that Elysium had no interest what so ever in supplying eath with expensive medical technology. They are not evil, but they are human. Priviliged humans…
But aren’t you contradicting yourself somewhat? Your introduction makes it sound like there is no content in the film but then you say that you think the political message is too heavy handed.
Sofia
August 21, 2013 at 2:08 pm
When the political message is so blunt and single noted, it feels very thin on content. The cardboard figure feeling you know.
I refuse to think that people forget everything about ethics and compassion once they get rich. I find human nature more complicated than that.
Jessica
August 23, 2013 at 12:30 am
But maybe a high percentage of those who are rich didn’t have much ethics and/or compassion to start with? 😉 The unbalanced distribution of resources that Blomkamp portrays exists just as much with today’s standards, don’t you think?
Sofia
August 23, 2013 at 6:32 am
Well put, Jessica! Basically I agree with what you’re saying. The difference is that I I had a good time while watching it. Like Blomkamp himself, I enjoyed the world building enough to really enjoy the movie. Regarding the need for a twist/dilemma/idea/vision in a sci-fi movie, I think the film delivered enough. The idea of the space station, the exo skeletons suits, the magic pills, the med-pods, the artificial atmosphere at Elysium was enough for me. The political message is heavy-handed, yes. So rather than not having any content at all, the content in the form of a message is too strong, too forced (at least in the end).
But the main reason I liked the movie is that it was an exciting action flick with nice gadgets and visuals and a good set-up. 3+/5 from me.
Jojjenito
August 21, 2013 at 7:13 pm
I’m not all that much of an action lover I guess. Or that was a lie. I genuinely loved Skyfall, which was another prolongued fight between the hero and his protagonist. Maybe it’s got to do with my expectations on this type of science fiction movie. I demand more ideas to feel satisfied.
Jessica
August 23, 2013 at 12:32 am
I was curious as to whether it might be worth going to see this film – I think now I will avoid it until I happen to catch it randomly on TV at some – if even then.
stnylan
August 21, 2013 at 11:03 pm
Catch it on TV. Actually I wouldn’t advice against renting it. But don’t expect an interesting story. Do it for the wold aspect.
Jessica
August 23, 2013 at 12:33 am
I think District 9 came at a perfect time. At a sci fy dry. With a style that was kind of unique and you expected it to be mindless action but it had a message. The message in district 9 is very on the nose too and i think the problem i had was that i expected Elysium to be like District 9 but with better action and better message but it was slightly better action, the same heavy handed executed message but with amazing visuals.
johan
August 21, 2013 at 11:23 pm
I’m sorry to hear that District 9 is as simple in regards of message. I had been hoping for better from what I’ve heard about it. I still think I want to catch up with it. Lower budget is a good thing in the case of sci fi!
Jessica
August 23, 2013 at 12:34 am
Really great review! The lack of world building in Elysium reminds me of the lack of world building in YA fiction. There needs to be more reason as to why a teenage girl has special powers than can over throw a government. Science fiction is great to explore but the world just can’t be thrown together to look or sound cool.
Katy
August 23, 2013 at 4:21 pm
Thank you! Yes, I’m a big sci-fi fan myself but I think it’s a shame when an opportunity is wasted like in this case. Just a little more of idea exploration and it would have been a much better movie.
Jessica
September 1, 2013 at 11:32 pm
Thank you Jessica! There seems to be a lot of sci-flicks that aren’t fully fleshed out. Prometheus comes to mind…I look forward to giving it at least giving it a shot. 🙂
Katy
September 2, 2013 at 2:52 am