Blomkamp fumbles his first studio project

Rating: 5/10 (24 August 2014)

After Neill Blomkamp's out of nowhere success with District 9, he gets a sizable budget increase and what feels like his financiers chipping away at his script, until there is no vision behind the final product, just a generic and accessible film. If you remove a couple of quick shots of blood and gore and a few bits of profanity, this would play out entirely the same and still feel like it's basically derivative kids stuff. The premise is intriguing, but the good ends there, as this is just a by the numbers bit of storytelling about the haves and haves not -- the rich who live in a giant habitat in space away from the hellish conditions on earth. Exploring this wonderful idea quickly gives way to silly action scenes, one dimensional characters and a waste of expensive vfx rendering the interesting Elysium. We never really see what life on Elysium is really like, just a few wide shots of a few people in a pool or a fancy gathering - it basically looks like a fancy resort and seems really boring. Our brief time on Elysium is spent with an awful character played by Jodie Foster who gives a crummy performance sporting an ear screeching accent. Another undeveloped subplot about Foster's character forming a pact with an underused William Fichtner to re-code Elysium so that she will be president just becomes a throwaway plot point that lazily gives Damon's character a reason to get to Elysium. It's this part of the film that ends up resembling Johnny Mnemonic, with Damon carrying important data in his head that everyone wants and cyberpunk visuals that feel like this is pillaging from other already derivative films. Sharlto Copley and his henchmen play pure evil characters, who aren't the the least bit interesting to watch and a standard take the girl and her daughter who is important to the main character hostage is even more forced and tired. Elysium is a film that presents grand ideas in the guise of a silly sci-fi actioner and has a narrative so full of holes and wasted potential, that it collapses under the weight of its own shoddy storytelling. As hard on the film as I sound, it's still watchable, it's just a step backwards for Blomkamp who didn't seem to navigate the minefield of studio filmmaking well at all.