Even Elysium's director thinks his film is a mess – but a decade on, it deserves a second chance
When director Neill Blomkamp followed up his acclaimed debut feature, District 9, with the cyberpunk dystopia Elysium in 2013, it was met with a resoundingly mediocre reception. It's a movie that even Blomkamp has disavowed. 'I fucked it up,' he said bluntly in a 2015 interview. But I think he's too hard on himself: a decade on, Elysium might be worthy of re-appraisal.
In 2154, Earth is an overpopulated, polluted dust bowl. The wealthy elite live on the luxurious space station Elysium, where they have access to advanced medical technology and other essentials denied to the surface population.
Max (Matt Damon) has a workplace accident and is given a lethal dose of radiation and a five-day prognosis. His company provides medication … and the sack. At the hospital Max encounters his childhood best friend, Frey (Alice Braga), and discovers her daughter has leukaemia – a condition that, like his, could be cured on Elysium.
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So Max makes a deal with local crime boss Spider (Wagner Moura) to steal data from his former employer in exchange for transport off-world. Standing in Max's way is Defence Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) and psychotic security agent Kruger (Sharlto Copley), who will stop at nothing to recover the information.
The first thing to note about Elysium is that it looks incredible. We inhabit a dusty, threadbare, garbage-strewn universe that looks like a meld of Wall-E's trash-pile Earth and Blade Runner's sleek future tech. Elysium aligns aesthetically with Blomkamp's District 9 and his much-maligned 2015 robot romp, Chappie, and I'd be very surprised if it did not influence recent dystopian blockbusters such as The Creator and the bestselling video game Cyberpunk 2077. Everything is on the verge of falling apart or breaking down and Elysium takes the Star Wars ethos of a lived-in, well-used future to its ramshackle conclusion. The visuals alone tell us everything we need to know about the haves and have-nots in this society.
This integration of future tech with the run-down world makes things feel believable – from the budget surgery that sees Max fitted with a painful exoskeleton to the security droids that move with a lithe fluidity hidden by their boxy appearance. When Max blasts one to smithereens with a pulse rifle, nuts and bolts are scattered to the wind in a beautiful, slow motion arc.
Elysium's pessimistic viewpoint, too, strikes a chord, extrapolating the end result of eroded civil liberties, prohibitively expensive healthcare and spiralling wealth inequality. As the ruling class panics over undocumented arrivals, Delacourt enforces tighter security controls to 'protect our liberty'. It all depressingly familiar.
Elysium argues that better technology will not improve life for everyone if that technology is in the wrong hands. When Max gets an unjust fine from a robot cop – but cannot communicate with his electronic parole officer and is docked a half day's pay – Elysium nails the dead-end bureaucracy and perpetual frustration of dealing with corporate dysfunction or an immutable system.
Some characters, to be sure, feel a little underwritten – but they're easily overlooked in light of the imagination on display elsewhere. Besides, the cast breathe life into roles with limited dimension: just look at Copley having the time of his life with a boisterous performance as the villainous Kruger, hollering threats at ballistic volume and somehow surviving getting shot in the face.
I've never understood why Elysium isn't better appreciated. But with global wealth inequality on the rise, it feels more relevant than ever; this entertaining and politically conscious sci-fi is worthy of a second chance.
Elysium is streaming on Stan and Prime Video in Australia and available to rent in the UK and the US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
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