Plot is collateral damage-TV movie cheese

Rating: 3/10 (10 August 2013)

They did a fantastic job on effects, particularly the rebuilding of a face, and bodies breaking apart. The characters and storyline were collateral damage. OK, Matt Damon and Jodie Foster cannot be brought back to life?? The villain was brought back to life after being dead two hours and half his head cut off! Stupid. I wanted to see more of Elysium. Isn't that why you go to the movies? To escape and be wowed and be privy to a fantasy world?? There was NONE of that. You literally see as much of Elysium as is shown in the trailer. About three quick scenes. No characters are developed on Elysium. There could have been so much fun to show life and technology and decadence, but the characters don't even do their fight scenes in the fancy houses, they fight in a factory setting! Guess it saved a lot of money on sets! The jittery hand-held camera work was bad. No need to edit the scenes since they are blurry and choppy and you can't see what is going on anyway. Matt Damon, a kick ass actor who was given nothing. I could care less if he ends up with his leading woman. No real moments, just clichés and they had absolutely NO chemistry. She lives in a dump with her daughter and no husband, and when hunky Matt Damon asks her out she says NO?? WTF? It sucked and then she tells him her daughter is dying and he walks out the door. (Except for a cheesy scene which was like a Hallmark moment.) BTW all the cute little girls on Earth were dying of a disease that could only be cured on Elysium. The kids were too cutesy and did not have real personalities. Another complaint is that I truly did NOT want the people of earth to get to Elysium. They were unlikeable. Why is it that they were portrayed as filthy and greasy?? I know plenty of people without money who are nice and clean and neat as a pin. They were criminals and just plain gross. They cannot brush their hair? Matt Damon is the only one who works in his neighborhood? It was like the filmmakers were bigots toward impoverished people to portray them that way. Oh yeah, and Matt is exposed to a full dose of radiation at the start of the film, and THEN he saves the world? I'm sorry, make him have liver failure or cancer or an infection. DO NOT give him acute radiation poisoning and expect us to believe he can carry on, have major surgery, recover and save the world. Duh. And BTW, why would all these criminals let him even come near them when he is contaminated? I also think they should have made the earthlings surgery much cleaner. It was stupid to believe Matt could recover from surgery in that filthy chop shop. His apparatus bolted into his body was ridiculous. It was like two tire pumps screwed into him. The chop shop was another reason to dislike the earthlings. Organization does not cost anything. They could be organized and have lights in their surgery. They have a huge war room with technology so why no lights? They had water, and I'm sorry, if you are sitting around all day with no day job, you can learn how to make your own soap! Jodie Foster did what she could. I wanted to see more of her party, her house, her life. Would have been so cool to have Matt Damon sneak up there and have an affair with her or something. Now that would have been a good story. Jodie looks absolutely beautiful. Villain was super annoying. He was like spitting out one-liners constantly and I hated him because he was annoying, not scary. Another thing they did was make all the houses the criminals (earthlings) broke into empty. No one was ever in the Elysium houses. Why? Because you did not want to write dialog? Maybe there would be a nice family who would help. It would have been so much more satisfying. It was just so lacking in any personality, I feel bad because I think they must have had a limited budget or something, so no time spent on the story or scenes of Elysium. It could have been great, so it was a lost opportunity.