Envy

Rating: Null/10 (15 April 2014)

Envy.
The writers, the producers, the actors, nor the actors probably intended that one word to be the defining feature of the film, but that is what it is. Envy. As much as they wanted to create a rich fabric, a tapestry of social commentary of the current state of political affairs, they failed.
Though they dress it up with stock themes from left wing fantasies, the plot is simplistic. In about 140 years from now, the Earth has fallen into ruin. Why that happened is not explained, simply that Earth is now polluted, diseased, and overpopulated. As this degradation occurs, the rich and successful flee the planet and build a habitat in the sky, an "Elysium" – a variety of heaven from Greek Myth.
One can hardly blame them, since what they have left behind has become an admixture of the Road Warrior movies and the Gaza Strip. The story never quite explains what happens to most of the planet since the scenes only occur in southern California. That is of course offset by plot lines involving heartless and Machiavellian politicians, mindless robots, a faceless profit driven corporation, and a protective nativism (if one can call a space habitat refuge a native home).
Among the many parallels between this fiction of the future and the facts of the present, the denizens of this earth have little inclination to better, to improve, their own places, but would rather look to a place others have built in the sky, or look over the walls, and try and get there any way they can. Perhaps they believe it is easier to climb in through a window to illegally live in someone else's mansion than to build one's own home.