Elysium

Maybe I'm Getting Too Old For This

The latest action movie starring Matt Damon is a Sci-Fi number set in the near future where Earth has gone to pot, but somehow rich people manage to build an orbital arcology to literally rise above the fray and live in distant comfort while the whole earth degenerates into one big barrio. It's one part Mad Max one part District 9 and 2 parts random action movie.

What's Good About It

I've been reading reviews that this is refreshingly new and that it's great that a writer director was able to bring this kind of vision from scratch rather than adapt some other property such as a novel, comic or computer game. It might be a fine caveat but I didn't really see it that way. The good bits reside in the performance details and the odd bit of details in the props.

What's Bad About It

It's a fun movie but there's something familiar about rolling around in the squalor of the future junk-culture domestic zone. It looks a little like Tijuana that goes for miles and miles. And the future may indeed be like that in many places but it's hard to believe when you're watching it.

The plot stays with you but the characters don't and the central tragedy sinks into the artifice of the design. If I see another movie with people running around with rifles in futuristic corridors I think I might just groan and switch off. I think we're at a point in cinema where that image is so done to death there's really not much mileage left in it.

What's Interesting About It

When this film first hit the cinemas, I happened to tune in on the ABC's radio reviewers talking about this film. From the way they were talking, you'd think somebody had opened a new sub-genre or presented something so stunningly new it was going to change science fiction forever. When you watch this film it's nothing like the idiot reviewers are raving. In that sense it reminded me of Australian films The way reviewers talk about it you'd think the Australian film had somehow transcended traditional genres or broke open new ground in the way an Eisentein or Kubrick might have done, only to find it's the same old state-sponsored pap.

The fact that it happens that way is not very surprising because Australian critics are so invested in Australian cinema coming good at some point, but they do over do it and they do end up peddling a lot of crap. What's interesting about this one is that it can't claim the same support given that it's not an Australian film. Why were the critics praising it o the sky when in fact it was merely serviceable?

You also worry about films that come with caveats like "this is the first original science fiction movie that isn't based on an adaptation". Is that such a good thing in of itself? I know I'm the first to grumble about the fact that we're inundated with comic book adaptations but are we at the point in cinema history already that directors and producers get credit for coming up with something original? If that's the case, then all I can say is God help us all.