Elysium

Caliane

Caliane

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Lightning Lord Rule_sl said:
Saw this last night, it was merely ok. Worth renting maybe, but no more.
The problem I have with the movie is that it attempts to make this a parallel with the US immigration problem, but fails utterly in understanding why it's a problem in the first place, leading to heavy handed and illogical "messaging".

First of all, the issue with the real life US/mexico border issue isn't an issue of place. In other words, if I'm standing near the border of mexico in the USA, there's very little difference between the actual land I'm standing on. It's all about the same dry desert land, basically. The difference is brought about by who lives where, and how they think and how they run things. USA government is (relatively speaking) uncorrupted and uses its resources well to generate prosperity, whereas Mexico's government is hugely corrupted and just doesn't do a good job providing its people with a chance for prosperity. Whereas in this movie, this concept is either not understood or just glossed over, in that all one has to do is reach a different place (Elysium), and then things are automatically better.

Second, if the problem of this time is really overcrowding, I don't think people would build the great place in space, I think it would be the other way around. People would make the planet great, and then ship off the "excess" people to be crammed into space habitats that are little more than prisons. This would be much cheaper, and facilitate an "out of sight, out of mind" rationale much better.

Third, as someone else said, the real thing the people on earth wanted was access to Elysium's advanced technology, not to have to live there. Why not just steal it? There would have to be a way. After a few decades, someone on Elysium would likely feel sorry for earth's plight and defect with the info, or someone would hack them, or whatever.

Fourth, whatever happened to nuclear weapons? At the very least, someone would have gotten pissed off over Elysium living so high and them living so low and sent a few nukes their way, an orbiting station would be incredibly vulnerable to something like this. Maybe they were equipped with a station sized shield gizmo like Kruger used, but still, you'd think someone would have just decided to destroy the place at some point.

The heavy handed terminology was what did it for me, "Deploy Homeland security!" On a space station it's still called Homeland Security? Give me a break.
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see yeah. THAT would have been great.

earth is a paradise, and everyone else is sent to fuck off on mars, or on stations. that is great. is there even a movie like that? every movie has Earth as the shithole, and offworld as the paradise I can think off, in a shitty eco message.
 
Tarrant

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Well in all honesty unless something major happens, the future of Earth being a shithole is much more foreseeable and believeable than a paradise.
 
D

DMK_sl

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Tarrant_sl said:
Apparently I'm the only one here capable of going into a movie and not worrying if its referencing anything outside of it and simply enjoying the movie itself and that's all.
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Agreed. Ok we get it you need to tell everyone you understood the symbolism and undercurrents of the movie so we think you are smart. It was a very enjoyable movie. Loved it. Honestly I don't how some of you guys get through life. Everything must fucken suck.
 
Arbitrary

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Like I said it looks great, the acting is good, but the story is eye roll contrived at times. The story doesn't flow organically from the premise and a number of times the characters make some very odd decisions specifically to set things up where they need to be. Things like the holy fuck cool rail gun scene get sabotaged immediately after. Yeah, the villain is going to be no match for that thing even with his shields and delta grade power armor.

Oh, it jammed and the hero tossed it aside. Of course. We've got a hand to hand final confrontation scheduled. You didn't need to have the rail gun set piece at all! It probably cost a bunch of money and it looked cool but it was entirely unnecessary and forced an action trope into the story where there shouldn't have been. It's those kinds of things that remind me I'm watching a movie. District 9 never did that. It was honest in a way that Elysium just wasn't.
 
Phazael

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Liked the movie a lot. I can't help but notice that a lot of the same people hating on this one are the ones who were jizzing themselves over Pacific Rim Job, which is hilarious to me. The tech was pretty much in the realm of believability, as was the human behavior in it. Shakeycam got a little excessive, but this movie made me really want to play shadowrun ofter seeing it. My overall takeaway was that the human race was more or less completely fucked for the foreseeable future, due to the largely self serving world views of all the major players in this film. Very cyber punk, though the ending was a bit positive for the genre. Copely as Krieger owned that fucking movie, though. Dude is an amazing actor with a great range to him and every movie I see him in I like him more.

I think a lot of the bitching by the internet hate brigade could have been quashed if certain things had been spelled out for the mouth breathers, rather than simply implied. There was obviously a lot of back story that people were supposed to work out for themselves, but that never goes over well with the short attention spam audience that the summer sci fi crowd has become in recent years. The only real leap of faith to me in this movie is the coincidence that the guy the protagonist picks as the mark for the data jack happens to be the guy involved with Foster's character and the timing of it all. Rest of the story made solid sense to me, especially as I thought about it afterwards. This is in stark contrast to Pacific Rim, where things make less sense the more you analyze them. Also, the solid acting helped this movie a fuck ton.
 
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Phazael_sl said:
I can't help but notice that a lot of the same people hating on this one are the ones who were jizzing themselves over Pacific Rim Job, which is hilarious to me.
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Not this guy. I didn't much like Pacific Rim. I think Elysium is much, much better than it. It just could have been amazing rather than alright with a little better writing.
 
Phazael

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Well one thing with this director/writer, is he likes to let people fill in the blanks a lot with their own imagination. D9 did that and this one did it more. I guess, as was stated earlier, another 20 minutes of fleshing out background might have helped some people, but then you have problems with pacing. I do feel that Jodie Foster and "generic middle eastern sci-fi actor dude" from Star Trek/WH13 were underutilized and a bit more of Krueger background would have improved the movie substantially, however.
 
Caliane

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Arbitrary_sl said:
Like I said it looks great, the acting is good, but the story is eye roll contrived at times. The story doesn't flow organically from the premise and a number of times the characters make some very odd decisions specifically to set things up where they need to be. Things like the holy fuck cool rail gun scene get sabotaged immediately after. Yeah, the villain is going to be no match for that thing even with his shields and delta grade power armor.

Oh, it jammed and the hero tossed it aside. Of course. We've got a hand to hand final confrontation scheduled. You didn't need to have the rail gun set piece at all! It probably cost a bunch of money and it looked cool but it was entirely unnecessary and forced an action trope into the story where there shouldn't have been. It's those kinds of things that remind me I'm watching a movie. District 9 never did that. It was honest in a way that Elysium just wasn't.
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haha. are you for real?
 
Arbitrary

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We don't have any idea why Jodie feels the way she feels and acts the way she acts. You've got hoards of brown people paying anything and risking everything just to get access to a magical medical machine and you have no problem with your sleeper agent murdering all of them. Why? What happened to you? Have there been full scale terrorist attacks against Elysium and you can't take any risks? We aren't ever given the impression that Elysium is in any actual danger from anything, not even in exposition. When some brown people get to Elysium the police bots round them all up almost instantly.

What about if brown people used to be able to use the magical medical machines on a lottery basis or through the charity of Elysium citizens? Rich people like doing shit like that. Look, I'm contributing because I helped one cute little brown girl walk again! Now I know how Joan of Arc feels! Some bullshit like that. Then one of the charity medical transports is hijacked by terrorists who crash it in to something or shoot a bunch of people or something bad that doesn't look too much like 9/11. Jodie Foster's mother/child/dog was killed during that attack and NO MORE CHARITY ZERO TOLERANCE CAN'T TAKE ANY CHANCES YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THESE PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF OUR WAY OF LIFE IS UNDER ATTACK. Maybe we get some additional dialogue between Jodie and Krueger where he's telling her how cutthroat and evil all the brown Earth people are and giving her false intel and otherwise reinforcing her wrong impression of them. He wants to keep his job and thwarting potential (imaginary) attacks does that.

If the story was just a little more organic we'd have something really great. I've only seen WWZ, Pacific Rim, and now Elysium this year in the theater and Elysium was the most enjoyable of the three.
 
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DMK_sl

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Arbitrary_sl said:
Like I said it looks great, the acting is good, but the story is eye roll contrived at times. The story doesn't flow organically from the premise and a number of times the characters make some very odd decisions specifically to set things up where they need to be. Things like the holy fuck cool rail gun scene get sabotaged immediately after. Yeah, the villain is going to be no match for that thing even with his shields and delta grade power armor.

Oh, it jammed and the hero tossed it aside. Of course. We've got a hand to hand final confrontation scheduled. You didn't need to have the rail gun set piece at all! It probably cost a bunch of money and it looked cool but it was entirely unnecessary and forced an action trope into the story where there shouldn't have been. It's those kinds of things that remind me I'm watching a movie. District 9 never did that. It was honest in a way that Elysium just wasn't.
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This is just stupid man. You could nit pick EVERY movie and find shit like this. Movie are supposed to be about things that happen that are extremely lucky/unlucky to make the story more exciting. Yeah his gun did jam... What are the chances of that? Extremely small but we are watching a movie that is supposed to be about an epic story that is very unlikely to happen but when it does it is worth telling.

You say D9 didn't have these moments.. He just HAPPENS to run into the ONE alien in the WHOLE refugee camp that has been trying to build the power necassary to get the ship up and running. There's millions of aliens and he just happens to run into that one. What a coincidence.
 
Hateyou

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DMK_sl said:
Yeah his gun did jam... What are the chances of that?
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I disagree. I have shot some very well taken care of guns that jammed more than once during a single magazine. That AK he had looked like a pretty beaten up piece. I doubt the have much gun lube lying around in the future.

Anywas, I really enjoyed the movie. I thought Jodie Foster was overacting too much, and yeah there were some bad parts in the story, but I was engaged and had a good time. I say it's worth seeing in theatres.
 
Caliane

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Arbitrary_sl said:
I am always open to the possibility that I have gone stark raving mad somewhere throughout the day and not realized it.
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oh, weird. sorry. meant to quote Phazael.

his post was full on nuts. I agree with you, on most of your points.

Most of the entire ending was weak. Kreugar being brought back was lame and dumb. If Elysian had an army of medical units, just ready to go at all times. why exactly where they held back? We didn't they engage to go resurrect the CEO. Why didn't they go to heal, and resurrect the Secretary of Def the moment she was injured, as the SYSTEM clearly identified her being injured. Where did all the droids and guards go, when she put the place on lockdown? How was kreugar able to walk around the station, considering he was not actually reinstated, she had him working on the side?
The entire final act was stupid. Station goes from impenetrable, to ZERO defenses instantly and inexplicably.

Shoulder launched orbital missiles are a technology that would change everything in terms of military power. warlords like Spider would get their hands on that kind of thing. And Elysium would not be able to exist in a world where shoulder launched missiles can take out ships in oribit, satellites, stations.. that scene should not have been in the movie either.
Much like the rail gun noted earlier.

Robots.
Why are police on Earth robots? Why are robots NOT building other robots? If they are cheap enough to be used as police. then they are certainly cheap enough to be used on an assembly line, so people don't accidentally get nuked.

Kid didn't add anything to the movie as noted. Neither did the girl. The entire dialogue begging to take the girl was stupid. "I'm dying. So I took a job, in order to get a ticket to Elysium. But it went bad, I got stabbed, everyone else died, and I'm being followed by bad guys." "TAKE MY DAUGHTER SHE HAS LEUKEMIA!" "lady, did you not hear the part about getting stabbed, everyone dieing? the job failed, I dont have a god damn ticket." "TAKE HER WITH YOU!, HERE IS A STUPID STORY ABOUT A HIPPO!" "ffs.."
 
Arbitrary

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I feel I need to be clear that of the films I saw this year I liked this one the most. I'm just disappointed in it. It could have beenamazing.I honestly think if Blomkamp had less money to work it may have been.
 
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DMK_sl

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Hateyou_sl said:
I disagree. I have shot some very well taken care of guns that jammed more than once during a single magazine. That AK he had looked like a pretty beaten up piece. I doubt the have much gun lube lying around in the future.

Anywas, I really enjoyed the movie. I thought Jodie Foster was overacting too much, and yeah there were some bad parts in the story, but I was engaged and had a good time. I say it's worth seeing in theatres.
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It doesn't really matter how high or low the chances are of a gun jamming the point of the post is still the same.
 
Drinsic

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For me, the best part was Kruger and co. flipping people off after they exploded.
 
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