Now for the critical analysis. Lurking in the bowels of this film is a sophisticated argument against robots. In the future everyone who is good at anything is a robot. The police, the doctors and even the gardeners are all robots. As Matt Damon is transformed into a half and half, he undergoes a significant character arc that will be mirrored by the future; What exactly are we giving up when we're giving up our humanity? I think only a pragmatist would argue that old age is a good thing, everyone else would insist that everyone can live forever in robot bodies that grant us super intelligence and super strength, maybe other super abilities, but in this film especially the vague contraption that Matt Damon wears enhances him morally. At the start of the film he's nothing more than a lowly yokel working at a factory for free. He even robs a kid in the first few minutes of the film so he can get himself a future sludge butty. But as soon as his robot suit is enabled, he can run faster than a car and shoot his bullets even quicker with bigger explosions. The entire movie is like, one big videogame! In fact, heh, sometimes I felt like I could have been sat in the cinema with an x-box controller in my hand! And I'd lick the sweat off it to chase some kind of pubescent hormone buzz, all the while training my brain to use a computer to affect what was happening in front of me. Hello? We're all cyborgs now. Put that as your guardian headline for some clicks dawg.
Another important aspect of the film is medical care. In the future we will invent beds that will pour glitter on us whilst giving us full body MRI scans. This is the cure for everything, from bad teeth all the way up to blood cancer. For some reason Sarah Mildew, the president of Elysium, doesn't want anyone on Earth to have a billion dollar smile and keeps all of the medical pods in space to herself and her robot pals. In the vacuum of space we see similarities to the ocean, where Americans often flee to England for our free healthcare. Unlike us, the Elysium class bourgeoise blast them with rocket launchers. I felt as if the movie was putting across the message that this was okay and after thinking about it, I agree. What is the best way to cure sickness than death? A lot of thought is also given to the economic status of the Elysites versus the Earthlings. In one hand there is an entire planet of people, on the other there is a space station full of nob heads. Why don't the Earthlings simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become a little more self sufficient, rather that relying on constantly falling billionaires for...something? Jobs? They may as well just go colonize the moon for all I care.
Now onto a hot button topic; the special effects extravaganza! H. R. Giger was roped in to doing the designs for the robots, whilst Gary Gygax designed the actual Elysium space station. I have seen the model in real life and I don't think I'm giving any industry secrets away when I say the model isn't in space. All of the scenes that involved the Elysium space station was actually filmed in Gygax's garage. Half of the frame would be covered and the space station footage was filmed, they rewound the camera and then filmed the Earth in the other half of the frame. What you end up with is one slick piece of visual effects that will leave your eyes watering for weeks!
I like to think that Elysium is probably one of my most favourite films, at least recent films, the action is gorgeous, Matt Damon absolutely kills it with his half-silent hero and the blossoming romance that happens on screen will keep the broads awake in between the spectacular shots of people being literally ripped apart by bullets and explosions and their faces being reconstructed in magic machines only to be mashed into burger meat moments later! There is also a good moral message to the film; make sure you get rich now so your kids don't have to live in a third world hell-hole by the time they've lost their milk teeth. If you enjoyed this movie I would also recommend Real Steel because it is also about robots but in that film the robots just fight each other, only a few people die. Aslo check out the movie 'Rocket Dad'.
