Unsolicited Advice for Blomkamp from a Huge Fan

Rating: 6/10 (1 April 2019)

This as a brutal disappointment after the very high bar set by Neill Blomkamp's darn well near perfect District 9. By and large it, like most movies I guess, boils down to the weakness of the script. District 9 was ingenius when it came to its three dimensional characters and how it worked them, especially the film's main character, into a brilliantly structured narrative. All aspects of this narrative, including depth of character, in Elysium feels thoroughly limited to the first dimension. But it was not all bad. Acting, visual effects, production design: everything except for writing and directing were firing on all cylindars. Returning to Elysium six years later (wow, time flies when you're watching mediocre movies) as well as Chappie (a few less year than that), makes me think about what Blomkamp was been up to since. What's it called? Oats Studios I think? Dude, and this mean to be constructive, as I am a major fan of your genius first feature: your problemo is not building online fanbasses to rallying behind short films concepts. What you need to do is invest in writing very good full length screenplays. Get object feedback on your drafts. Hire the best writer(s) if you're not getting the results on yoru own. Everything else is just a massive waste of time and money.