There was a time, when sci-fi was considered; “the thinking man’s genre”. That’s before JJ Abrams brought back lens fares, Starship Troopers brought the idiotic action and Prometheus the redundancy.
In the past few years movies like Children of Men and Moon have tried to bring the thinking man back into sci-fi. While Abrams, Orci and some dodgy executives have tried to up-the-ante on the dumb action, even bastardising Star Trek ( o the horror), almost making it seem that a good sci-fi cannot be a good action film too.
Neill Blomkamp - he who gave us and the world Sharlto Copley as Wikus van der Merwe in District 9 - proves that action and smart sci-fi are not mutually exclusive - just like Cameron did with the first two Terminator movies. With Elysium you get heart, brawn, brains and laughter.
If you’ve been living under a rock , you wouldn’t know that Elysium builds and can be seen as an extension to District 9. Two polarized societies, the have’s and have-nots and yes, the dirt, they're all present here like in District 9.
On one side are the rich, beautiful and clean who can cure any disease (and did I mention they live in space just to show how high and mighty they take themselves?).
On the other side is the other 99% who are meant to suffer in a human created hell called Earth which is dirty ,poor and one massive township. Elysium gives us a futuristic world that feels a lot like downtown Jo'burg-meets-the-favelas-of-Brazil. The hovering city is Dane-Fern-meets-Beverly-Hills-in-space.
Although the themes revolve around universal access more than xenophobia in the South African based District 9, the Elysium images of the third world resonate so much with SA - as they do with the US or Latin America and illegal immigrants.
It uses sci-fi to tap into the issue of universal access to health care - which has pissed off a lot of Americans who are calling the movie socialist-propaganda film but it sheds a hard light on the unequal society that lingers even though they have resources to mitigate the inequality in our own world.
The sci-fi creates a buffer that always comes back to talk to our current condition. You’d think this would make for a serious and heavy movie but the film has a dry sense of humour. The jokes are peppered everywhere and when Kruger aka Copley is on screen for more than 2 minutes the jokes keep piling on. He almost steals the show from the main “starring” Matt Damon’s Spanish speaking Max. He also shows his comedic skills at times but Copley is the man of this movie.
The humour is balanced with some cool action, and man, Blomkamp has a fetish for sci-fi guns that I really appreciate. The weapons and gadget on display make for interesting spectacles, as long as you don’t think too hard about them .Blomkamp is not afraid of guts and gore which helps to keep one on the edge of their seats, as if you're watching a horror flik as heads and limbs get blown off.
Most South African’s will appreciate the little shoutouts that pepper the film to South Africa yet the greatest thing about Elysium is not the special effects, Matt Damon’s acting or action sequences or Sharlto Copley as the maniacal Kruger.
The greatest thing about this film is when the credits roll it makes you think why in our world will we use profit/wealth as rationale not to help people? How we could actually solve most of the worlds problems if we learned to share our resources but we rather gloat and shine like IziSkhothane than help lift up our fellow brethren. This coming from a Hollywood movie was quite touching.
Do yourself a favour, go check this movie out, it will make you squirm, cringe, laugh, pump you with action but also make you think. Neill Blomkamp is a talent to watch out for - the world needs the likes of him more.