Elysium (2013)

When I first saw the coming attractions for Elysium, I liked the idea.  There was someone who had to go to an orbiting space station because they had what he needed.  I was wondering how it was handled.  When I was finally able to rent the movie, I liked it, but I was a little disappointed.

Matt Damon plays Max. Max is a factory worker in Los Angeles.  One day, he’s exposed to a lethal dose of radiation and basically written off.  He’s given medication to deal with the side effects, but he has just days to live.  This sucks, mostly because the technology to cure him does exist.  There’s just one problem:  It’s all on an orbiting space station called Elysium.

Elysium is where the upper class lives.  They get all the good stuff while everyone else gets to live in slums.  If someone from Earth tries to go to the station, their ship is destroyed.  It’s basically the ultimate gated community.  Max has basically zero hope of making it there to get the help he needs, but he has to try anyway.  He has help, but it’s still no cakewalk.

I can understand the movie not being perfect.  This is Neill Blomkamp’s second movie.  His first was District 9, though.  The problem with coming off such a good movie is that people will have much higher expectations.  The message of District 9 was a little more subtle.  Here, it’s more like, “We get it already.”  The movie makes too much of a point of showcasing the immigration and healthcare issues that Earth and, by extension, Elysium have.  Elysium has all the good stuff and the people of Earth need it pretty badly.

It was a good idea that wasn’t executed as well as it could have been.  I have to wonder why there were no medical machines on Earth.  You’d think someone would at least make a bootleg version.  People try to sell panaceas all the time.  In this future, it’s not hard to imagine that someone would have a fake or sub-par med bay.  It would have made for an interesting side story, at least.

I know most people will freak out if I talk about the ending, even if I don’t give away specifics.  However, that was really the only bad part for me.  I felt like it wasn’t as strong as the rest of the movie.  At least the bulk was relatable.  Max is in need of attention and he’s willing to go to great lengths to get it.  The ending almost didn’t seem to fit the rest of the story.  This is one of those movies that I may have to watch again to pick up on things.  I’ll probably wait to watch it with someone else.

IMDb page

District 9 (2009)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

I saw District 9 in the theaters.  I had been hearing a lot about how new and different this movie was.  I’ve found that rarely do movies live up to such a claim.  However, I love a good science-fiction movie, so I decided that this would be one of those movies I shell out $10 for.  I’m not saying that it was the wrong choice, but I’m not saying that you missed anything if you waited, either.

The movie opens with footage of an alien spaceship hovering over Johannesburg, South Africa.  At first, humans didn’t know what to make of it.  The ship was just hovering in place.  There was no communication or attempts by the aliens to leave the ship.  So, humans break in to the ship to find a bunch of aliens.  (No surprise there.)  The actual name of the alien race is never used, as their language is as different as their appearance.  (They look and talk like giant insects.)  Humans use the derogatory term Prawn.

The Prawn just want to go home.  For unknown reasons, their ship can’t take them back.  This doesn’t mean that humans aren’t interested in the ship or its technology.  A company called MNU wants to use said technology, but can’t; it’s been engineered only to work with Prawn DNA.

Humans don’t want anything to do with the actual Prawn, so the Prawn are condemned to live in a series of ghettos called districts.  This is where Wikus van de Merwe comes in.  He’s your everyday cubicle dweller that’s just been promoted.

He’s been put in charge of telling the prawn that they’ve been evicted and are being relocated to District 10.  Wikus has absolutely no empathy for the Prawn.  He has no problem going in and destroying the eggs of unborn Prawn only because their parents didn’t get the appropriate permit to have children.  He’s also searching the living quarters for any contraband.  In so doing, Wikus accidentally sprays himself with some sort of alien chemical, changing things for everyone.

In case you haven’t seen the movie yet, I won’t ruin the rest of it for you.  There’s no point in doing that.  I will say that the movie did seem to have elements in common with other movies.  True, aliens are nothing new.  Even the idea of aliens stranded on Earth is nothing new.  We have Alien Nation for that.  Maybe I’m just trying to detract from the movie, but while watching it, I kept thinking of other movies that used a lot of minor details.  As a whole, the movie is new, or at least a new combination of said details.

The movie is, ultimately, about how we treat those less fortunate.  Wikus represents the attitude of not caring, even when looking right at the Prawn and seeing what we make them go through.  That doesn’t change until he becomes an object of attention, and even then, he’s still looking out for his own interests.

This is where it’s hard to condemn the movie.  It does have a great script and is a story worth watching.  I don’t know that I would have seen it in the theaters again, but I definitely think it was worth watching.  Yes, there is a possibility of a sequel, but I don’t know if that was the intent.  I really don’t know how a sequel would work, but I’d definitely be interested in seeing it. 

Official Site (Sony)

IMDb page

All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there. (Europa Report movie review)

I think that interplanetary travel is necessary for the survival of our species.  Even if it’s within our own system, our future lies somewhere other than Earth.  This past thanksgiving, my cousin and I were discussing what that might look like if it’s to be privately funded.  (The tourism possibilities are endless.)  Well, in Europa Report, a ship is sent, using private funds, to Jupiter’s moon Europa.  Instead of setting up a hotel, three theme parks and hundreds of Starbucks, they’re looking into some strange thermal readings; the mission is strictly scientific.

The movie starts with footage transmitted back to mission control.  It’s presented out of order, so we get the impression that something bad happened, but we don’t know what.  We get the explanation of what the mission is and why a manned mission is being sent up, rather than just some probe.  Jupiter is pretty far out, which makes impatience seem somewhat rational.  (It takes almost two years for the crew to get out there, to say nothing of the trip back.)

The mission starts with six crew members.  If you’ve seen similar movies, like Apollo 18 and The Blair Witch Project, you know that things will tend to go from bad to worse.  This is where I didn’t like the out-of-sequence nature of the footage.  One crew member is dealing with survivor’s guilt after a spacewalk.  We know something bad is going to happen to one of the crew members, but we don’t know what.

The other five do make it, but even then, there’s an element of danger.  There’s radiation.  They have to worry about landing on and taking off from ice.  There’s also the unknown.  There could be all sorts of untold dangers.  And one of them wants to go out to get samples after the probe is lost.

The movie is definitely better than Apollo 18.  Very little of the movie takes place on Europa; most of it is spent in transit.  You’d think it would be all cheesy, but it’s done well.  The crew members interact and manage to not get on each other’s nerves.  You see them sending messages home or explaining the artificial gravity.  Most of the buildup is in hoping that they’ll find something.  They expect single-celled organisms, if anything.  Would the mission be a bust if they find nothing?  Not really.  Finding nothing would be a discovery in its own right.

The big problem with going out that far is that you’re on your own.  This is used to nice effect at several points in the movie.  If something breaks, it’s not like you can call for roadside assistance.  You have to fix it yourself.  If someone gets sick, you have to hope you have what it takes to heal them.

The CGI was well done, all things considered.  Seeing Jupiter in the sky was pretty nice.  My only complaint was that Europa is about the size of our moon.  Shouldn’t there be considerably less gravity than Earth?  I’m not sure how close Europa is to Jupiter, but the planet is pretty big.  (It is called a gas giant, after all.)  I’d think that tidal forces would have been more noticeable.  I was also surprised that they didn’t bring more experiments.  You’d think they’d have brought some algae or be doing experiments on frog reproduction or something.

I found this through Netflix streaming.  Since the movie probably has little replay value, I’d say that renting or streaming is the way to go.  It’s not a bad movie.  It definitely tends more towards 2001 and 2010 than Apollo 18 and Blair Witch.  It’s just that I don’t think I’d sit through it a second time.

IMDb page