Re: Elysium Reviews
Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2013 8:04 pm
I thought this was a godawful movie. Yes, its politics were "good" in the sense that it oriented dramatic identification with a dirty, mostly nonwhite (though Matt Damon...) underclass in favor of healthcare, amnesty, etc. But the evolving generic playfulness, the humor, the flexible ways that the allegory & metaphor could be interpreted, and the weirdness that made District 9 a really fascinating film (IMO) are wholly absent here. Instead we get the most barebones and hackneyed sketches of "backstory" and "worldbuilding" that ultimately just serve a very, very conventional summer action/SF blockbuster.
This strikes me as a film with a mildly intriguing premise that nothing else at all lives up to. I'm open to great commercial genre films but this simply isn't one. (And most blockbusters these days aren't.) As with Pacific Rim I have no idea why some critics seem to think there's anything worthwhile in Elysium.
This strikes me as a film with a mildly intriguing premise that nothing else at all lives up to. I'm open to great commercial genre films but this simply isn't one. (And most blockbusters these days aren't.) As with Pacific Rim I have no idea why some critics seem to think there's anything worthwhile in Elysium.