Escape to the Movies: Elysium

NeedsaBetterName22

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Steve the Pocket said:
You know -- and this is just based on the information presented in the review -- if "the one percent" can just up and move to a space colony removed from the rest of humanity where they never have to work again, and the result is that everything goes to hell down below... doesn't that kind of validate the ideas presented in, of all things, Atlas Shrugged? You know, where all the rich people pack up and move to Rapture Galt's Gulch and everyone else is like "Oh noes, the people who actually knew how to run things are all gone, whatever shall we do?" because apparently "the 99 percent" are all idiots who need to be led by the hand by their, ahem, intellectual superiors.

What I'm getting is that this is a really obnoxious viewpoint no matter whose "side" of the conflict you claim to be on.
I personally find the dumbest political thing from the movie is that Matt Damon, after going on and on about gun control and media for months, is now paying the bills with a movie that seems to love gun imagery.

I think that presenting Elysium as 'meaningful' in any way is really an insult to your intelligence. The entire movie runs on Hollywood Economics, that is to say:

1. It makes zero sense.
2. Corporate people are greedy, except when greed or profit margins would actually stop them from just being cartoonishly evil (i.e. "Hey, we have super cheap medical technology that could ensure our workforce is always healthy and productive! ....No, we need to keep it to ourselves even though it's cheap and we could make them pay massively for it. So, you know, it can be a commentary on public healthcare, which is NOT the same thing as a magic medicine machine.")
3. Wealth is a finite resource that can't be created, only shifted around society (central to the 'rich stealing from everyone else' narrative).
4. Paul Ehrlich, rather then being completely discredited, was totally right. Overpopulation and resource depletion will occur before the 23rd century (and of course the movie ignores the fact that they have the space technology to mine the solar system).
5. Despite the fact that they have the technology to mechanize almost all manual labour cheaply they don't and just keep using third-world class workers (in reality this is actually happening, the rising middle classes in India and China are beginning to force companies to stop investing in sweatshops and start investing in more mechanized operations with less, but better paid workers).

This is the 'Bioshock is a good criticism of Objectivism' nonsense all over again. The writers don't have a solid grasp of economics and can't write them into the script effectively. When I got out of the early screening I thought it was a mess. The technology designs were solid though.
 

johntheescapist

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Apr 27, 2013
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I saw the movie today. It sucked balls due to a lot of things to be frank.

A. The cast is shit. I can not say I liked one character in that movie, everyone was so damn forgettable, including Damon himself. Also if almost everyone in Los Angeles is Mexican in the movie would it had killed the movie to have a Mexican main character? I mean I love straight white males playing my protagonist when it makes sense as much as the next guy but seeing Damon speak Spanish...meh kind of drags you out of it all.

B. The plot is really really really predictable. If you do not see what is going to happen 30 minutes in then you have never seen a movie in your life. Seriously you can guess the whole thing 30 minutes in.

C. The action scenes are boring, partly because of the color Platte, partly because you can already guess what the result of them will be.

D. The plot is full of too many damn holes. I am not going to spoil specifics but will instead give an example about the world that you saw in the trailer. The medicine machines work on an atomic level, meaning they are nano-machines that can create or kill or modify living flesh. If they have nanotech that can cure cancer or whatever then why don't the rich on Elysium just use nano-tech and create whatever they want instead of relying on factory workers on earth like Damon?

E. The ending is not only predictable but will destroy any good feelings you have about the movie. Seriously I thought In Time and the Running Man movie had world breaking endings but the ending to this film...it's just pathetically horribly shit.

DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE, just go read the Running Man or the Economist or something
 

Makabriel

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Ihateregistering1 said:
It has nothing to do with thinking about how you might "subscribe to their views" or be "brainwashed". It has to do with film-makers with very clear-cut beliefs making movies that take complicated ideas that are chock full of grey areas and reducing them to black-and-white fantasy, where everyone falls into convenient categories of "if you think this way you're smart and righteous and wonderful, and if you think this way you're a vile and disgusting human being". As you can imagine, people don't really like being insulted, and they especially don't like it when you insult them by presuming to understand their views when the film-maker clearly doesn't (or just ignores them).
But how does this make sense in a fictional movie? A documentary I can understand. But imagine debating these points while disusing Judge Dread, which has a lot of the same views. Hell, the remake of Total Recall even...
 

TheProfessor234

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CelestDaer said:
The thing that has been bothering me about the trailer since day 1: If they had this exoskeleton that would allow them to infiltrate the upper crust, why haven't they used it before NOW?
Not to spoil anything, but it's not the suit that's special. It's just an exoskeleton suit to help Max move because of his failing body.

Also, loved the movie, sure it has its faults but I still had a great time. If anything, I hope to see Copley in more roles and the next big film from Blomkamp.
 

Casual Shinji

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Magog1 said:
Casual Shinji said:
We're never gonna get that Battle Angel Alita movie, are we? :'(
OOooooOoooo that takes me back.....
Yeah, the good old days when the robots were awesome and the punk was cyber.
 

DugMachine

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Magog1 said:
Aww is bob mad he thought he had sway over the audiences? awwwww.
oh look a critic blowing matt Damon. People don't fall for this. it's a b movie with a face lift.
if you can't beat a crappy comedy your not that good of a movie.

i'm glad to see the 2 posters above me saw this movie for the piece of crap that it is.
Because 2 posters that disagree with him is the whole of the audience? I've not seen this movie and have no plans to see it as I'm not interested in the plot but what a childish post. Awww it's funny how you think movie critics can't add their personal opinions and bias in THEIR reviews aww
 

Brockyman

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Gee, MovieBob likes a movie dripping with liberal propaganda. Who didn't see that coming....
 

MarsProbe

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Copper Zen said:
Bob has as much of a track record for going overboard liking certain directors or movies as he does for reflexively hating others (I never listen to Bob when he talks about JJ Abrahm's work, anymore).
Yeh, I actually looked away from the screen this time when he started talking about what summer films he didn't like this year (as I just knew the last pic to appear would most likely be of Star Trek: Into Darkness) It's a shame that Bob hasn't been able to enjoy any of the new Star Trek films but if he just get over the fact that they aren't like the old Star Trek movies (just as well, as we otherwise wouldn't have got a Star Trek movie with set pieces that actually look impressive) and are directed by JJ Abrams. If you're going to be angry at any incarnation of Star Trek, at least have the decent to make it Enterprise. If that series had kept going any longer, it wouldn't have surprised me if Archer and co ended up having a tussle with Species 8472...

Anyway, Elysium, I'll be going to see this anyway. I enjoyed District 9 a lot, so hopefully will be able to get a kick out of this as well.
 

Darth Sea Bass

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kickassfrog said:
Darth Sea Bass said:
August 21st in the UK?... ************.

Yeah, but we got the chance to see The World's End before the [I actually don't feel like insulting americans right now so insert your own derogatory but ultimately good-natured insult of choice] got to. So there's that.
Good point sir! We should be magnanimous in these situations.
 

Scarim Coral

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I kind of suprise that the film is good (well depending on the other review) since I thought it would of fail since the whole undertone/ reference it way too obvious that it embeded into my eyes! Oh gee the rich get super medical treatment while the poor are in dire need of help? Where have I heard of that before?
 

Ihateregistering1

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Makabriel said:
Ihateregistering1 said:
It has nothing to do with thinking about how you might "subscribe to their views" or be "brainwashed". It has to do with film-makers with very clear-cut beliefs making movies that take complicated ideas that are chock full of grey areas and reducing them to black-and-white fantasy, where everyone falls into convenient categories of "if you think this way you're smart and righteous and wonderful, and if you think this way you're a vile and disgusting human being". As you can imagine, people don't really like being insulted, and they especially don't like it when you insult them by presuming to understand their views when the film-maker clearly doesn't (or just ignores them).
But how does this make sense in a fictional movie? A documentary I can understand. But imagine debating these points while disusing Judge Dread, which has a lot of the same views. Hell, the remake of Total Recall even...
You can mine meaning and significance out of pretty much anything if you try hard enough, but you have to remember that Judge Dredd is supposed to be an over-the-top parody (Dredd himself is essentially a giant parody of Dirty Harry and other "tough cop" characters) and doesn't take itself particularly seriously.

And the new Total Recall? Well...no one really cared about it because it sucked compared to the old Arnold one, and the old Arnold one didn't take itself particularly seriously either.

Also, if we're going to get really in the weeds, Dredd actually sort of presents two-sides of the coin. On the one hand, it shows that the world essentially needs the authoritarian Judges to hold everything together, on the other hand, it shows how those who take charge simply begin to give themselves more and more authority and essentially become responsible for the destruction they claim to be trying to stop (you'd have to get into the comics to see more of this, not just the movies). The vast majority of "message" movies don't present two sides of the coin, or if they do, they make one side completely, ridiculously noble and the other side completely, ridiculously evil.
 

Ukomba

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I hear what Bob is trying to say, but it comes off more like a massive Straw-man. Like, this makes Avatar look subtle and balanced levels of Straw-man.

While I couldn't agree with you more about how amazing Pacific Rim is, I think your love of this movie is more because it's an echo chamber of your views.
 

Woodsey

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Copper Zen said:
Funny. Bob's cheering this movie on while other reviews I've read are canning it. Time gave it 2+1/2 stars out of 5 and it only gets a 47% on Rotten Tomatoes.
It's at 67%/61% now. Worth bearing in mind that all that number's good for is telling you that it's divisive.

Steve the Pocket said:
You know -- and this is just based on the information presented in the review -- if "the one percent" can just up and move to a space colony removed from the rest of humanity where they never have to work again, and the result is that everything goes to hell down below... doesn't that kind of validate the ideas presented in, of all things, Atlas Shrugged? You know, where all the rich people pack up and move to Rapture Galt's Gulch and everyone else is like "Oh noes, the people who actually knew how to run things are all gone, whatever shall we do?" because apparently "the 99 percent" are all idiots who need to be led by the hand by their, ahem, intellectual superiors.

What I'm getting is that this is a really obnoxious viewpoint no matter whose "side" of the conflict you claim to be on.
I think the idea is that everything had already gone to hell down below and so the rich left.

In which case, it's not particularly.
 

KeyMaster45

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Jun 16, 2008
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The trailers alone made the message in Elysium seem hamfisted, I can only imagine that going to watch it is like being hit in the face by said fist of ham. I'll be skipping this movie.
 

btbushi

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Mossberg Shotty said:
I'm a bit confused here. If you consider something "good" that implies that you have the inclination to enjoy that something. I certainly thought it was a good movie, even though being difficult to watch was kinda the point. I think y'all are missing the forest for the trees, so to speak.
Being difficult to watch is the way I interpreted the previous statement saying it was good but not something they enjoyed, rather than it being a masterpiece but not of a genre they enjoy. I loved the hell out of Spec Ops: The Line and have recommended it to several people, but that doesn't mean I enjoyed playing it for example.
 

Deathfish15

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Neill Blomkamp is this generation's Steven Spielburg or George Lucas (before either of them went completely bonkers and ruined their prime intellectual properties). He's made great stories centered around a character that isn't all good, but certainly not all bad either. In the end, they show human qualities of compassion, selfless sacrifice, and the the shear willing push to accomplish the impossible. Above all, the situation is completely relateable on many fronts.



This movie better again push Blomkamp's products into an Oscar nomination.



P.S. I agree with Movie Bob in that most likely that shit movie of "We're the Millers" will bump it up in the box office.


P.P.S. Holy shit! It's the first time in nearly 10 years that I've gone to a movie theater and not seen/heard a cell phone during the movie. It's a miracle! (or the movie was that captivating to the audience).

edit: Captcha: go further
 

Ukomba

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CelestDaer said:
The thing that has been bothering me about the trailer since day 1: If they had this exoskeleton that would allow them to infiltrate the upper crust, why haven't they used it before NOW?
Probably because they were waiting for one of these
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhiteMaleLead
to save them.


CelestDaer said:
Also:

Expected 'special' announcement is expected.
Ya, I respect Bob for actually writing and publishing a book, but, I'm sorry, the pitch for it comes off like a rather boring idea for a Lets Play let alone a book.
 

tratorix

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SOCIALCONSTRUCT said:
Liberals don't eat their own dogfood. It turns that Matt Damon (much like Rahm Emanuel) has decided to live in his own Elysium and put his own kids into private schools [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/matt-damon-private-school-public_n_3714091.html]. How is that for your "fist pumping call to arms for social justice"?
I love how anything with an even slight political slant turns into a "conservative v.s liberal" pissing match and eventually starts to have nothing to do with the movie/game/book/throw pillow being discussed.

Interesting review, though I've been taking Bob's opinion with a fair grain of salt since he proclaimed Iron Man 2 to be a great movie. Will probably still check this out since I really liked District 9, though.
 

Kittyhawk

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@Casual Shinji

Dude, when I first read the plot of Elysium, the first thing I thought of was Battle Angel Alita, cause Elysium is a cookie cutter style plot of BAA. Maybe someone got a look at James Cameron future BAA movie script and planned their own version.

Either way, I'd go and watch Elysium because Blomkamp is a talented guy and should be applauded and rewarded for bucking the mediocre and safe hollywood trend of late. Besides, the best movies have good message behind them. Good to have something else to watch before Enders Game and the Hobbit