Neill Blomkamp's Elysium (Post-release)

While I still liked the movie very much, as others have said it was kind of generic in terms of the story. But a couple of things really ruined it for me.
one was Jodi Foster. She did not need to be in that movie at all! Putting a no-name in her roll would have been much better. Having such a well known A-list actress for such a nominal roll really pulled me out of it. I was expecting some major character development from her. But she's not even really part of the story, but rather just the button pusher with a forced accent.

The other thing that really bothered me was

Kruger putting on another exo-skeleton at the end. It seems like such a cop-out to me when the bad guy does the same thing as the hero (thing Stane vs. Stark at the end of IronMan). We got the wow factor and the unique character abilities with Matt Damon having the exo-skeleton, then here comes the big fight, let's put another one on the bad guy so they're evenly matched. Just seemed cheesy to me.
 
Trooper_trent said:
The other thing that really bothered me was

Kruger putting on another exo-skeleton at the end. It seems like such a cop-out to me when the bad guy does the same thing as the hero (thing Stane vs. Stark at the end of IronMan). We got the wow factor and the unique character abilities with Matt Damon having the exo-skeleton, then here comes the big fight, let's put another one on the bad guy so they're evenly matched. Just seemed cheesy to me.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that was kinda weird, especially since
they had to knock Max out to install his suit, yet Kruger is unphased by the installation. But perhaps his previous implants made it easier on his body or he has preinstalled input jacks or something. plus it seemed to be a state-of-the-art model exoskeleton too :lol)
 
I am not even going to pretend that I didn't walk into this movie without bias. The previews made it clear this was a 99%er vs 1%er story, no matter how much Blomkamp claims it isn't (and I too found his statement that implied the opposite of "liberal" is "racist" as highly objectionable). Knowing that was the story I was going to get, I still tried to go in and enjoy it for what it was worth and for the good things the movie had to offer.

While I could easily focus solely on "the message" I ended up feeling very similarly to a number of other memebrs here. Overall, I liked the look and feel of the movie. For a big budget film, I was actually a bit surprised at how similar the look was to District 9. It was striking... right down to the movement of the CGI characters.

I was really disappointed that there was no real heart to the movie and even though Max was somewhat sympathetic, I never felt for him the way I felt for Wikus in District 9. I never really cared for anyone. The movie simply lacked sincere emotional depth. As many others have pointed out, it felt very fomulaic and you ended up just waiting on things to happen that you already knew HAD to happen in a story like this.

SPOILER: Don't read further if you haven't seen the movie.

Even Max' sacrifice at the end felt less than heroic and didn't get an emotional response because you just never cared that much for him.

And to me... the last few moments of the movie completely undermined the entire story. If the wealthy went to Elysium to escape the wreck that was Earth and to seperate themselves and the people of Earth primarily tried to sneak onto Elysium to be healed... AND Elysium had all of these medical ships on standby... wouldn't have been cheaper and easier just to send the ships down and heal the people so they wouldn't try to come to Elysium? This made absolutely NO sense and ended the movie on a really lame point.

As with others, I liked the guns, loved the Raven and liked Krueger (although I thought he was seriously underused), but those elements couldn't save this movie from mediocrity and you just not caring because we have seen it a million times before. When you add the us vs them message... it becomes a film that I will be ulikely to watch again. :(
 
While there were a couple of story/character hiccups for me, the one that really stood out was when Max walked out on Frey and her daughter with, "I'm sorry, I can't help you." Their kidnapping by Kruger felt more like a "moving the chess pieces" plot device simply to get them up to Elysium (and so Max could "earn" what, redemption? Beyond that moment, was there something he needed redemption for?) - I dunno, it didn't feel organic with who and what I thought we were supposed to believe the character was like.
 
What the movie needed was Jimmy Kimmel at the end apologizing to Matt Damon he was out of time. ;)

Pretty good movie, but predictable. I still want a District 9 sequel.
 
Art Andrews said:
The movie simply lacked sincere emotional depth
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Gotta agree...thought it was an 8/10 simply because pacing and action was top notch.

I really felt the final fight between Kruger and Max was underwhelming. It was alot of rolling around and fast cuts...

Jodie Foster gets a 10/10...how can she look so smoking hot from the waist down? Her calves were out of control...:love
 
Well, what should have been a unique and interesting movie was remarkably dumbed down and one note. The story was one note, the characters were one note, the action sets were one note. And it wasn't a very good note. This is yet another film this summer that looks great, like Oblivion and Pacific Rim, but fails to deliver. Going with the absurdly heavy handed story telling of the 1% vs. the 99%, at the end of the film, they are all just douchebags. Every character was a simple archetype, the worst offenders being Kruger and Jodi Foster. Both make HUGE efforts to chew up scenery but come off looking like absurd. The only one to escape this is Damon, who is pretty solid and clearly giving it his best. The action was so rote, the slow mo old and tired, and what's with the technology?! Late 21st Century and they can do stuff that is out of control and yet, as Rico mentioned, can't square away **** on Earth? WTF?

Also, did anyone get the impression that Jodi Foster somehow knew Max? There was that scene where she see's him qausing mayhem on the video feed and he is identified and she has a reaction shot....that went no where. Maybe a dropped storyline to explain why Max is such a bad ass beyond being a car thief?
 
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was it my imagination or for in the climactic fight did they try to zapruder-ize the shaky cam making that extremely odd and painful to watch "fixed-shakey cam?"
 
crabra comander said:
I really felt the final fight between Kruger and Max was underwhelming. It was alot of rolling around and fast cuts...
Click to expand...

Did anyone have a WTF moment when there was that one random matrix-style rotating shot in shaky-cam during the Max/Kruger fight? It felt so out of place.
 
Elysium: a practical, miniature and digital fx odyssey | fxguide

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weird, I don't see a post from you on the 3rd page. Good to know I'm not the only one. I don't think I've ever seen calves like that on a woman...or most men for that matter.
 
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