Elysium Review

I love science fiction. Good, hard, earnest science fiction. Sci-fi that creates an entirely new world. Sci-fi that promises good action and character development wrapped in an interesting premise. But what I love most about sci-fi are the ideas it brings. I watch "Blade Runner" and I wonder about what it means to be human. I watch "The Matrix" and I speculate about the nature of reality. You know what I wondered when I saw Niel Blonkamp's new sci-fi opus "Elysium"? Why is there nothing to this world beyond the cool ships, weapons and satellites.

It's a shame, really. I had such high hopes for this film, especially coming off Blonkamp's previous effort, the fantastic "District 9." That film was one of the most original sci-fi flicks I'd seen in years. As intelligent as it was action-packed and heart-wrenching, the film used aliens, and a man who was transforming into one, as a metaphor for humanity's underlying racism. "Elysium" also aims to use sci-fi as a metaphor for a current social problem, namely the gap between the rich and poor. It's just disappointing that, unlike its predecessor, this film doesn't nearly deliver on the clever premise it sets up.

We open in the year 2154, where Earth has become an overpopulated ghetto planet, the equivalent of a third world country. The rich have evacuated to a pristine, high-tech satellite colony called Elysium, where robots tend to their every need and med pods can cure any disease. On Earth, a worker named Max (Matt Damon) is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. In order to save himself, he needs to get to one of Elysium's med bays.

Desperate, he agrees to have an exo-suit implanted to his nerves, allowing him to download information directly from the mind of his former employer, the CEO of a giant corporation. Things turn ugly when Jodie Foster's Security Director, who wants to stage a coup on Elysium, drafts the CEO into creating a program that could reboot the satellite's entire system. With Max now possessing the information, he's the subject of a manhunt led by Foster's agent Kruger (Shartlo Copey), a psychopath who will stop at nothing to bring Max in.

This is a fantastic set-up, not only for the premise but for how Blonkamp visualizes this future world. The effects are jaw dropping, creating some of the best visuals in a film this year. We are led to believe that this will be more than just an average summer blockbuster because this set up has so much potential. Of course the stage is set for some amazing action, but by having a protagonist trying to break in to a utopian society run by the rich, we could have gotten a cool sci-fi take on the Occupy Movement, or any other timeless tale about the economic gap.

Ultimately, it fails to deliver. The more action Max gets involved in, the more the film becomes about the cat and mouse game between Max and Kruger and less about the societal issues set up, or the world they occupy. We never get to really see the society of the titular satellite, or what really drives Jodie Foster's character into becoming an evil, manipulative harpy. She mentions having kids to protect, but we barely see them. No amount of insight is given into how the rich actually live or how they think.

Of course the rich look down on the poor. But how does living on a satellite with med bays change your way of thinking? Do you see the people of Earth as vermin, biding your time until they all kill each other so you can retake the planet? Are you less cautious because the med bay can heal any injury? (I mean literally-a man's face is completely reconstructed after a grenade blasts it off). We spend so much time with the poor down on Earth we never get to see the perspective of the rich. Blonkamp just assumes the audience knows how the rich are thinking, making the overall conflict very one dimensional.

Compounding this is the fact that Jodie Foster is set up as the main villain, but is quickly overshadowed by Kruger. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing- Copey's sympathetic performance made "District 9," and here he makes for a completely ruthless villain. The film comes alive whenever he is on screen. The problem is not necessarily how his character is written, but how he fits into the plot. Max and Kruger's conflict and the resulting action goes against the themes introduced at the beginning of the film. Kruger is a sleeper agent for Foster on Earth. He seems to have no personal stake in protecting Elysium; all he wants to do is kill people.

Unlike "District 9," where the action progressed the film's story and characters by showing our protagonist side with and protect the aliens, here the action is there for the sake of action, nothing else. There is no social or political subtext about the widening gap between rich and poor, only two men fighting each other in mech suits. The entire film comes across as a visually realized, very well done sci-fi actioner that throws in the rich-poor conflict haphazardly to come across as deep.

Not only that, but aside from Kruger none of the other characters are very interesting. Foster, as I said, is severely underdeveloped. She has no real motivation other than gaining power, and we never get to see her real view on why the citizens of Elysium deserve these resources more than Earth. Max seems developed at first, but devolves into another generic action hero once he puts on the exo suit.

He gets a rather predictable arc about accepting the inevitability of death, and it's no surprise what he does at the end to try and hammer home the suddenly resurfaced social themes. This also raises even more questions about the availability of Elysium's resources. It completely took me out of the film, as I began to ask why a severely polluted Earth would allow a satellite of rich people to hog all the cool tech while the rest of humanity suffers.

In short, "Elysium" is a science fiction film that focuses more on action and visuals than on story or characters, setting up an intriguing world ripe with possibilities but never bothering to explore it in depth. It's disappointing, yes, but at the very least the action is well staged and Copey's entertaining performance made it an exciting thrill ride. It just breaks my heart to see a film with such a brilliantly realized world completely waste its storytelling potential. Blonkamp, either improve your storytelling craft or start working on that "District 9" sequel.

And speaking of sequels, "Kick-Ass 2" is the last film remaining on my summer movie hit list. Tune in this weekend for my review, which will be included in a rant that looks back at all the films I've seen this summer.