"Elysium" Topic

Just got back from seeing this one. Not bad – had some holes, but overall was pretty good. Very, very straightforward and kinda predictable. Not nearly as much political fingerwagging as I expected, what with the 1st/3rd world dichotomy being directly personified, if you will.

Gaming/scifi nitpicks:

The medical tech is generations beyond everything else, and what they can and can't do seems a bit inconsistent at times.

The station is an open ring, with tall curving walls but no interior bulkhead, atmosphere is held in by centripetal force. That's…confident, for their engineering level.

The political/governance relationship between Elysium and the rest of the world is unclear.

Gaming/scifi great stuff:

Future Los Angeles is amazingly well done – vast urban blight, towers built up and over and connected. At one point there was a long 'matte' shot with higher-tech towers in the background, and it made me think, 'Oooh, Blade Runner beginnings!'

The bots were slick and well-realized, and the exoskeleton tech was neat. Vehicles were superb from start to finish.

Overall, worth seeing.

Yeah, the major plot point wasn't so much a "point" as a gaping hole you could fly a SuperStarDestroyer through, but as an action adventure flick, it was worth the popcorn.

It's definitely a MST3K mantra movie

Thanks for the review, but it doesn't seem like it is worth my $25 USD bucks.

Tickets, popcorn and water.

Saving my cash for "Kick Ass 2".

For the LA urban blight, did they film in Detroit?

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Can't bring myself to seeing a Matt Damon film. But good reviews here, guys. Thanks

My friend suggested seeing this one but I'm not sold on it. From what I've seen of the trailers it's going to go like this:

1) Matt Damon is a down and outer who gets fixed up with some super duper tech thing.

2) Being now powerful, he destroys the bad people

I'm not a fan of this type of movie. I don't care how cool the special effects are (That's why the Resident Evil series lost me). Am I under the wrong impression with this one?

I too enjoyed it Doyal. I agree with all of your thoughts. You need to suspend relief a bit for the med tech.

Aside from a few week plot/ script points the story holds up well.

I thought the military tech was outstanding. Loved the future assault rifles, the up-ammo'd AK, the mercenary ship, and especially the security/ police bots were a strong point.

Overall in my opinion its worth the ride.

I…. Liked it, I guess, but I ha problems with it and I've had new and more the more I think about it.

From a pure "SF inspiration/gaming scenarios" standpoint it was good.
- the different environments would make for cool tabletop inspiration and also highlight some cool SF concepts (though the "Atmo held in by centripetal force" thing seems, like you said, questionable).
- some of the action scenes felt like 5150 new beginnings scenarios, which were fun and interesting to watch even if the movie they fit in had problems.
- with some imagination even flawed plot elements can easily help inspire better scenarios or campaigns.

Some problems (spoilers):
- obviously the magi tech med bays. If they have no cost their rationing makes no sense… Even if earth is still a slum, it'd be a healthy slum in a setting with no cost medical care. Now obviously it's possible it does have a cost, but that would imply that there is an actual real world reason that the entire world can't have it that will likely screw everyone over (perhaps the cost of the med pods at the end with drain the entire resources of the world and prevent space flight, dooming the human species?)
- it seemed a little odd that 3 guys, badass surprise attackers even, could basically take down Elysiums defenses for long enough that they and some Earth criminals can fight it out in the HQ of Elysium without interference… It wouldn't have hurt the action sequence to have Elysium bots and commandoes also in the mix, either. It just seemed oddly empty…
- relates to the first point, I don't think Elysiums motivations are clear. Preventing illegal immigration makes sense if it has to do with limited real estate but that's never stated, and the medical element feels tacked on. And why is Delacourt so crazy? She just felt like an underdeveloped character.
- would've liked more clarity in the later LA sequences… It seemed like the no fly zone was more a form of jamming than an air superiority thing. Merely for worldbuilding this could've helped explain the relationship between elysium and earth.

So when do we all get to move into Matt's mansion(s)?

Loved it. 'Activate Kruger!' Sharlto Copley was maniacally villainous as the unhinged SOF. If you liked D9 you'll enjoy Elysium too, I think. Gritty, hard-edged sci-fi actioner with a conscience.

link

Matt king of the Morlocks.

Saw it.
Wait til Netflix.
Better ones out there.

So when do we all get to move into Matt's mansion(s)?

As soon as I saw the first trailer, I knew I wouldn't be bothering with this movie.

To quote a lyric by a songwriter friend of mine: "I don't but the fake sincerity/of millionaire celebrities/telling me they understand my pain."

I also hate sledge-hammer message movies. Yes, I get your point. And it's stupid, illogical, and half-baked. And wrapping more CGI explosions around it won't help.

Honestly its not even the basic premise thats the problem, part of what is so frustrating about this movie is that it would have been totally workable without magi-tech medpods that kinda break the whole movie down… but even WITH the magi-tech medpods there is also element of "so, what?" to the ending, because while the ending is naively optimistic as an allegory (everyone can live the good life if the bad Elysium folks just stopped hoarding it for no reason!) its simultaneously naively optimistic within the setting (So everyone is now considered a citizen and therefor gets free access to the costless medpods… great, everyone is healthy. But you still have massive over population, pollution, crime, poor labor conditions, etc etc etc that basically would leave Earth as a slum STILL, for all the reasons it presumably was in the first place). Basically it tried to simplify the issue of socio-economic imbalance down to an issue of citizenship and healthcare and then simplified those issues down to "just give it to people, there is no cost."

Totally lacks the complexity that made D9 so cool.

Just wish they'd taken the idea of a powerful, rich space station (which makes sense) and a poor, over populated Earth (which also makes sense) and kept the themes of economic and military imperialism (in a modern sense) and dependence on technology and went with it in a more interesting direction… maybe have it play out that the main flaw in Elysium is that because it values humans so little (with a few exceptions) and puts so much power in bots and such (to make up for manpower) that the system eventually collapses… easily could have used the same basic plot to do this.

Netflix!

My take: the dystopian future was excellent, as was the first major set-piece action. I found I'd been holding my breath during it. Then it started to become more formulaic, down to the de-rigeur final mano-a-mano between Damon and the bad guy.

I think District 9 was better but this was pretty good. I wish they had kept the edge of the first half all the way through.

Minor aside: I know I'm getting old but was surprised to see Jody Foster is middle aged. When did that happen?