Elysium

[Ghambit]

There's a reason I didn't necro this thread (as you all know I saw it at release).  Twas 'ok.'  But definitely not as good as District 9.  As Vel said, tremendous lost potential.  I almost wished he tied the two movies together somehow and went deeper into his visions.  The templates he uses for ethical exploration are pretty awesome, but in this movie especially, they weren't fleshed out enough. 

Someone needs to give him a huge budget and set him loose.

[Pennilenko]

Eh, Matt Damon was good.

I can't say that I recall him ever acting poorly.

[Velorath]

Someone needs to give him a huge budget and set him loose.

I'd say almost the opposite. He had four times the budget here that he did on District 9 and made a movie that wasn't nearly as good. Give him a budget that brings limitations and unknown actors, and even if he doesn't end up always making good movies I imagine they'd at least be interesting.

[shiznitz]

There is a reason this is underperforming at the box office.  While it had some decent elements with the backdrop, the character motivations were really rushed.  I was also not sympathetic to the hamfisted "everyone deserves free healthcare" theme.  At its most basic though, it seemed too easy to get to Elysium illegally.  It is one thing to stop ships coming up from LA, but what about the rest of the world?

[Tannhauser]

Well, I disagree.  A 33.3% success rate isn't that easy to me.  There a lot of things to nitpick about here, like how everyone seems to want to go to Elysium JUST to receive medical attention.  Really? "OK guv'na, me gouts cured, when's the next shuttle back to the shithole?"

[Ginaz]

Very disappointed with this movie considering how good District 9 was.  Very heavy handed message movie.  Mercenary dude, who was the lead in District 9, was way over the top and this is possibly the worst performance I've ever seen from Jodie Foster.  She's almost unwatchable.  Matt Damon was good.

[HaemishM]

There is a reason this is underperforming at the box office. 

At least one guy I know had no interest in seeing this movie because it was "another Matt Damon message movie." Take that unscientific poll for what it was.

[Paelos]

What's the message? We all deserve nice things? Because that's a big ole heap of Hollywood Horseshit.

[Margalis]

Even the trailer comes off as simplistic pandering. The people who live up in the sky above the normal folk are also above them in social class. Get it?

Edit: Isn't this also the setup of the Total Recall remake?

[Velorath]

I was also disappointed that never any explanation as to why they didn't have these miracle medical station things on Earth. I had assumed that it was a matter of resources through most of the movie, and that they were either too hard to mass produce, or they required a shit ton of energy or something. At the end though we see that there are easily dispatchable med ships full of them capable of traveling from Elysium to Earth. I was hoping to see that Matt Damon's actions at the end came with some sort of cost, but nope.

[shiznitz]

Very disappointed with this movie considering how good District 9 was.  Very heavy handed message movie.  Mercenary dude, who was the lead in District 9, was way over the top and this is possibly the worst performance I've ever seen from Jodie Foster.  She's almost unwatchable.  Matt Damon was good.

She was awful.  What was the accent she was putting on?  Also, it seemed terribly un-politically correct to me to have les miserables speaking spanish while the Elysium dwellers spoke French.

I do have to agree that Matt did a good job with it.  The only reason I got my wife to go was because she likes him from all the Bourne movies.

[Khaldun]

There are examples in world history of elites or aristocrats more or less keeping shit to themselves and flaunting it (at least in law or on paper) because of sadism towards the poors rather than any kind of economic or technological rationality. Keeping huge wooded areas off-limits to malnourished serfs and townspeople just so the aristocrats could hunt for boars and deer whenever they wanted comes to mind, even if in practice there was lots of 'poaching' going on.

If you go for a walk in Malibu today, you will see a great variety of elaborate techniques that rich homeowners use to block or impede people from getting to beaches that are at least technically and legally required to be accessible to the public. There's a lot of stuff like that around us, we're just so used to it that we don't see it. But imagining that kind of thing in a future where the set-up is both viscerally obvious to us (present-day viewers) and yet plausible/subtle/lived for the fictional characters is pretty hard to do. The medical stuff in particular only makes sense as a kind of sadistic sumptuary requirement, e.g., the rich are deliberately restricting access out of ideology and cruelty not because it's crazy-expensive or requires the infrastructure of a space station. Which is not the way the film views it.

I think there will be some interesting anatomical dissection of this film in a few years--is the weakness of the script and the character work/acting all on the director, or is some of this studio meddling?

[Tebonas]

Really? You live in a country were healthcare is already denied to many people and almost half of your politicans try to restrict that even more. What makes you find the setup in the movie unrealistic. A simple "the ground dwellers didn't earn it, we are against giving away things for free" would suffice and be totally realistic. Build a free clinic in one of your gated communites and you have the setup of the movie.

[SurfD]

I think the general premice was sort of along the lines of Take the current divide between the rich / powerful and poor.  Where most of the wealthy / powerful are more interested in preserving their wealth / power and enjoying the luxury it provides.  Now advance that divide by 150+ years of increasing the seperation, untill you achieve a point where the wealthy are able to completely seperate their living environment from the poor and are therefore able to pretty much disregard them as well.  It is the ultimate gated community.  

However, i think the whole "earn a ticket" to elysium thing is giving people the wrong idea since it confuses what i believe was the message.  I don't think there is any element of "they dont deserve it becaue they havent earned it" in the movie.  I honestly don't belive that you could actually earn a ticket up there.  That was most likely the fairy tale pipe dream that the Elysium crew had set up to give the earthies hope, and a reason to keep slaving away as cheap labour.  The people of elysium were most likely never going to let someone from down on earth become a citizen legit.

My personal take on the thing is that ot is looking at the kind of society that "has it all" and intentionally decides not to share it.  The people of Elysium had technology that could have turned earth into a veritable paradice.  If they have medical technology that advanced, one can only imagine what their recycling tech and other tech must be like.  They pretty much intentionally chose to keep that technology to themselves behind the walls of their personal walled garden, instead of share it with the rest of the world.   I look at it as an observation / commentary on the rich actively trying to stay rich and protect their own interests, instead of using their wealth and power to improve the world as a whole.  

You had the acting President, who was a moderate, who just wanted people kept out.  Round em up, kick em back to the curb.  Then you had psycho security chick, who believes that their little paradice is better protected if you just make it clear that if you dont belong here, we will simply summarily execute you (her overall plan was to turn the Walled Guarden into an Armed Fortress).  And all the people on earth really wanted was a life that didnt suck ass simply because the people upstairs didnt even view you as human (the executive who was more concerned with the cost of replacing the bedding then he was with the fact his foreman got someone irradiated to death).

Sure, there is a lot more under the surface, but I really dont think the core message had anything to do with medcare.

[Velorath]

Really? You live in a country were healthcare is already denied to many people and almost half of your politicans try to restrict that even more. What makes you find the setup in the movie unrealistic. A simple "the ground dwellers didn't earn it, we are against giving away things for free" would suffice and be totally realistic. Build a free clinic in one of your gated communites and you have the setup of the movie.

Because what would have made Elysium better is more preachy oversimplification...

[Tebonas]

Maybe its a preachy and heavy-handed, but the average action movie goer doesn't respond all that well to subtle hints. And this seems something that is important to Matt Damon.

The only thing I am against is the idea that the movie is unrealistic. People are selfish bastards even today, and that trait tends to increase in people that have been rich for generations. The lack of empathy in people that were raised with a silver spoon is astonishing sometimes. That is not something US-specific either, I only used that Medcare example for a lazy shortcut. I could use obscure examples from over here instead if you prefer.

I dare you to find one character motivation that doesn't fit human nature in this movie.

[Velorath]

I dare you to find one character motivation that doesn't fit human nature in this movie.

The problem isn't just that it's unrealistic, it's that it doesn't even pretend to offer up a counter-argument. It's easy to argue "free magical health chambers for everybody with no negative repercussions!", but if they're trying to use that to equate to real world issues like health care, and upper class vs. lower class stuff, it's simplified to the point of uselessness.

If they had positioned denying magical health chamber access to everyone on the grounds that say, the earth would rapidly become even more of an overpopulated shithole, they would have at least created some potential downside to the ending.

[Tannhauser]

What Vel said.  The only time the rich are portrayed as sympathetic is with the President and the techs who don't want the immigrants to die.  Show us why Elysium doesn't send the med pods down, despite having custom made med ships.  At least toss in a throw away line about not having the resources to treat the world. 

[Tebonas]

Maybe the rich are not meant to be portrayed as sympathetic?

Why was this plot less of a problem when the movie was called Metropolis? Or when the rich were called Eloi and the poor were called Morlocks?

This is an ages old Sci-Fi setting. What is new in this movie that it get lambasted for anything but it being a tired old idea?

Was it too much on the nose? Granted, but average moviegoers today need that to understand the message.

[Velorath]

Maybe the rich are not meant to be portrayed as sympathetic?

Why was this plot less of a problem when the movie was called Metropolis? Or when the rich were called Eloi and the poor were called Morlocks?

This is an ages old Sci-Fi setting. What is new in this movie that it get lambasted for anything but it being a tired old idea?

Was it too much on the nose? Granted, but average moviegoers today need that to understand the message.

Wait, you want to know why I'm not on message boards complaining about a movie that came out over 50 years before I was born?

Edit: Also,

Maybe its a preachy and heavy-handed, but the average action movie goer doesn't respond all that well to subtle hints.

The average action movie goer also doesn't like sitting through 40-45 minutes of set-up to get to any action. I'd be hard pressed to call this an action movie. They spent plenty on set-up, they just didn't do a particularly good job of it in many aspects.

[Margalis]

Why was this plot less of a problem when the movie was called Metropolis? Or when the rich were called Eloi and the poor were called Morlocks?

I'm going to assume you haven't actually watched The Time Machine, because Eloi rich and Morlocks poor is a laughable take on that. The Morlocks eat the Eloi! (Spoilers!!!)

Anyway the rich treating the poor badly can work in a movie but that doesn't mean it works in every movie. Sometimes material is just poorly done. There are few high-level plots that always or never work, but there are certainly more or less successful takes.

[Ironwood]

Whut ?

Actually, The Time Machine can be quite easily viewed as Rich Versus Poor, except that the Poor end up winning.  The Morlocks were the chaps that made the machines run and the Eloi were the chaps that took advantage of that Leisure Time machinery created.  As they evolved, the chaps who ran the machines became Morlocks and the Lazy Fucking Eloi ended up being so lazy they got cattle-ised.

It can also work the other way, of course, but you have to reach for it a little more.

Like many of Wells themes, it was never really properly explored nor terribly well thought out.  He thought that the Martians could evolve simply by being clever, which was a severe dose of old bollocks.

[Margalis]

But he said the rich were Eloi!

Neither side was "rich", but the group with power was the Morlocks. Either way rich vs poor is not a good way to view it at all. The Morlocks had the real power but shitty dwellings and did work, the Eloi had easy lives except for being powerless and the whole getting eaten thing. At least in the movie neither side had much in the way of material possessions, and both sides were shitty in their own way. You can either be a fucking troll that lives in a cave or you can be a wimpy dipshit who gets served for dinner. The protagonist is a member of neither group, and the moral of the story is basically "stop being fucking pussies."

The concept is much less rich vs poor than a classic sci fi "what if in the future humanity evolves in a weird way?" story where future humanity lacks the vigor, drive and emotion of modern man. It certainly doesn't map neatly to everyday life - the rich in our world don't live in shitty dwellings and coddle us.

[Tebonas]

Is there a censored version of the Time Machine I don't know about you are referring to Margalis?

Eloi = Upper Class
Morlocks = Working Class

After a few millenia of parallel evolution. Both in the books and in the movie version (although it was a bit harder to catch there).

[Khaldun]

The Time Machine is a classic in part by virtue of occupying a relatively empty niche at the time. One of its weaknesses is in fact Wells' ham-fisted lack of subtlety.

Metropolis gets by largely because its visualization is so powerful: it's not exactly known for the wonderful cleverness of its plot.

But like I said, you can also make Elysium work better simply by saying more forcefully, "What Elysium has is being denied to everyone else because they want to deny it, not because they have to." That's true to real life in many ways, including in our own society. There was a little kerfuffle earlier this week when Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In Foundation was caught out advertising for an unpaid intern who would essentially be doing a demanding full-time job with some significant skills requirements. They defended it on the grounds that the intern was a personal assistant and hey, this is valuable experience isn't it??? Really what that is about is symbolic: we want someone to work for us for free because we know that someone will feel they have to: they're getting off on the idea of someone being that desperate and of themselves being that powerful. They could totally afford to pay the person being described in the advertisement a good salary.

So it's not unrealistic, it just needs to be more forceful in one sense and more dreamlike and allegorical in another (that's what saves The Time Machine or Metropolis in some ways). Anything that implies economic rationality or necessity is bullshit.

[Margalis]

Is there a censored version of the Time Machine I don't know about you are referring to Margalis?

Eloi = Upper Class
Morlocks = Working Class

The "working class" literally eating the "upper class" is not a traditional upper / working class dynamic.

Anyway that's probably enough Time Machine talk.

[Ironwood]

Because you weren't right ?

Don't worry, we'll have this discussion again when they remake The Time Machine.

AGAIN.

 

[Hoax]

How is he not right? The working class turned into farmers who eat what was once the upper class who turned into cows, too stupid to care that they are being eaten. Because cows. Unless you are saying because they don't have to work hard and live in a place the traveler says is nicer they are still the ruling class?

[Ginaz]

Maybe the rich are not meant to be portrayed as sympathetic?

Why was this plot less of a problem when the movie was called Metropolis? Or when the rich were called Eloi and the poor were called Morlocks?

This is an ages old Sci-Fi setting. What is new in this movie that it get lambasted for anything but it being a tired old idea?

Was it too much on the nose? Granted, but average moviegoers today need that to understand the message.

Have you even seen this movie or are you taking this as an opportunity to ramble about social injustice?  Its a bad movie with some really bad performances that tries way too hard trying send us a message.  Period.  End of story.

[Kitsune]

The Eloi were lazy useless fucks who got everything for free, so they became mindless cattle.  In the book at least the Morlocks were actually providing for all of the Elois' needs, leaving food out for them and whatnot.  Plus eating them.  Despite the movie siding with the pretty people, neither group were supposed to be 'good guys', they were both supposed to be horrifying for different reasons.

[Stormwaltz]

The movie was rife with plot holes, but I'll mention the one in my area of expertise, because no one else would.  

You have giant Stanford Torus habitat in orbit, and then you don't put any defenses on it. You give unreliable mercenaries the ground hand-held SSTO rocket launchers that have to laboriously climb up out of the planet's gravity, then catch up to ships moving away from them, and then blast them into high-speed debris that peppers your station with holes. Oh, and don't forget you have to have a network of these borged-out psychopathic chucklefucks all over the world for this to work. A worldwide network of mercenaries with missile launchers that can shoot you, but you can't shoot back.

Or, you could install a single missile launcher on the station and chuck missiles down into the gravity well at oncoming attackers, giving them virtually no time to evade, and most of the debris sprays back into the atmosphere and burns up on entry.

[Tebonas]

Have you even seen this movie or are you taking this as an opportunity to ramble about social injustice?  Its a bad movie with some really bad performances that tries way too hard trying send us a message.  Period.  End of story.

Nothing I said here disputed that. But the trying of sending a message isn't a singular fault of this movie. Its what Scifi movies tend to do. Social commentary under the guise of distant future or alternative dimensions is one of the reasons why some SciFi was and is created.

You can blast them for doing it bad or hamfisted. Blasting them for even trying it shows a severe lack of knowledge in Scifi history which is the thing I pointed out here.

[Tannhauser]

The movie was rife with plot holes, but I'll mention the one in my area of expertise, because no one else would.  

You have giant Stanford Torus habitat in orbit, and then you don't put any defenses on it. You give unreliable mercenaries the ground hand-held SSTO rocket launchers that have to laboriously climb up out of the planet's gravity, then catch up to ships moving away from them, and then blast them into high-speed debris that peppers your station with holes. Oh, and don't forget you have to have a network of these borged-out psychopathic chucklefucks all over the world for this to work. A worldwide network of mercenaries with missile launchers that can shoot you, but you can't shoot back.

Or, you could install a single missile launcher on the station and chuck missiles down into the gravity well at oncoming attackers, giving them virtually no time to evade, and most of the debris sprays back into the atmosphere and burns up on entry.

Was that a plot hole?  My understanding was that the ground merc system was based on 'plausible deniability'. 

[Khaldun]

Yeah, but in that world why do they even need that any more?

[SurfD]

Yeah, but in that world why do they even need that any more?

Well, they dont, really.  That was one of the reasons the Security Head wanted to stage her coup.  She wanted to arm the place to the teeth.