Elysium

As a huge fan of what I’d refer to as “near-future soft sci-fi and/or horror*,” I was really looking forward to seeing Elysium. Give me some dystopian future where people are fighting THE MAN and I’m a pretty happy camper. So I was wildly disappointed when this film ended up being a weird ham-handed mash-up of better-than-you-might-suspect In Time and pretty appropriately critically-acclaimed WALL-E.

A hundred or so years from now, the earth is essentially a big trash bin and all of its wealthy residents live on a stunningly gorgeous paradise of a space station called “Elysium.” How big the space station is and how many people it can accommodate we never learn. (I kinda wanted to know as this is movie unsubtly tackles the issue of immigration.) Max, an unlucky Earth-dweller, sustains a lethal dose of radiation at his crap job and tries to hitch an illegal ride to Elysium so he can get access to a Medi-Pod, a miraculous device that instantly cures you of any ailment (up to and including having your face shot off by a hand grenade). This journey basically turns into an hour-long fight scene between Max, various robots and a largely unintelligible Sharlto Copley playing what I can only imagine was supposed to be a mentally-challenged, psychotic mercenary.

The movie suffers from what I call “Avatar Syndrome.” That is, it took an infinitely interesting premise (how issues of class division and immigration could play out on a large scale in an era of devastation and technology beyond our wildest dreams…with the amazing sci-fi backdrop of Elysium and Earth) and instead of building on that premise it reverted to what was essentially a formulaic war film.

I  wanted to know why–with such amazing ubiquitous and readily available technology–Earth came to be such a hellscape. Were the residents of Elysium that sociopathic? Did they not think they’d eventually need to save Earth (if only to mine its resources)? I mean, Earth was such a shithole, I’m honestly surprised everyone didn’t commit suicide en masse. And nobody–on Earth or on Elysium– seemed to be making any effort class up the joint, which seemed extraordinarily unrealistic to me. I really wanted more insight into what was driving everybody, what was driving the sociopathy of Elysium and the apathy of Earth.  Instead I got interminable fight scenes. How disappointing.

*See: “The Hunger Games,” “In Time,” “Daybreakers,” “Priest,” etc.

UPDATE QUESTION: What was up with Jodie Foster? Was she attempting to do some sort of accent or was she having a very long, drawn-out stroke?