Ely­si­um

Feed­back loops from Dis­trict 9 are every­where in Ely­si­um. And that, for the most part, is a good thing. Arriv­ing in the same year as Avatar’s big-tech 3D saga and made for rough­ly James Cameron’s lunch bud­get, first-time South African direc­tor Neill Blomkamp’s Molo­tov prawn cock­tail made one hell of a bang: an inven­tive sci-fi thriller that seam­less­ly fused alien alle­go­ry, poignant human tragedy and spec­tac­u­lar­ly con­vinc­ing visual-effects.

Brains, heart and badass tech­nol­o­gy are all oper­a­tional in Ely­si­um, with Blomkamp upgrad­ing Johan­nes­burg 2010 to Los Ange­les 2154. D9’s slum-dog urban waste­land has spread like a virus: dis­ease, famine and over­pop­u­la­tion have trans­formed our plan­et into a glob­al ghetto.

Blomkamp’s sec­ond film is anoth­er invert­ed inva­sion sto­ry, but this time it’s the humans who want to escape from Earth. Gleam­ing in orbit like a beau­ti­ful mar­ble, a pris­tine Stan­ford Torus space sta­tion called Ely­si­um is now a sanc­tu­ary for the rich and a dis­tant dream for the poor.

In their lush cir­cu­lar world of swim­ming pools and man­sions, cit­i­zens of Ely­si­um nev­er get sick and nev­er age, while the amoral Sec­re­tary Dela­court (Jodie Fos­ter) pro­tects this per­fect king­dom from Earth’s great unwashed.

Riff­ing off an upstairs-down­stairs metaphor that’s old­er than the genre itself, Ely­si­um reveals Blomkamp’s com­mit­ment to themes he tin­kered with in Dis­trict 9. Emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly, though, this is a far more straight-for­ward sci-fi thriller than his debut — large­ly because our hero’s self­ish-to-sav­iour arc isn’t half as wrench­ing as that of D9’s unfor­get­table man-prawn hybrid, Wikus.

Tough and tat­tooed, Max De Cos­ta (Matt Damon) fol­lows a soft retrace of Wikus’ jour­ney: by the time we meet him, his life as a leg­endary street crim­i­nal is behind him and he’s now just a down­trod­den hon­est joe, work­ing in a fac­to­ry to help build the robots that soci­ety uses to sub­ju­gate its people.

But when an acci­dent sets his body into ter­mi­nal shut­down, the despair­ing De Cos­ta is forced to drill on a mil­i­tary-grade exoskele­ton (“When we’re done, you’re gonna be a favela nin­ja”) and pull One Last Job to buy him­self a shut­tle ride to Ely­si­um, where mag­i­cal med-beds can cure any illness.

Drag­ging us with him into a moral maze that shift­ed and mutat­ed as com­pul­sive­ly as his body, Dis­trict 9’s Wikus zig-zagged in our sym­pa­thies — win­ning them, toss­ing them away and then win­ning them back — to evolve from a big­ot­ed clown into a trag­ic hero. And just as Wikus’ bat­tle for per­son­al sur­vival trans­formed into some­thing big­ger than him­self, Damon goes to Ely­si­um not for humanity’s sake but for his own. But De Cos­ta is a much straighter hero: aggres­sive and des­per­ate but nev­er cow­ard­ly or tru­ly conflicted.

Inter­est­ing­ly, Blomkamp’s ini­tial script treat­ment had De Cos­ta com­mit a Wikus-like act that would have changed things spec­tac­u­lar­ly. But it jarred so bad­ly that he cut it. Per­haps because of Damon’s good-guy per­sona? Per­haps because De Cos­ta isn’t quite wired with enough com­plex human cir­cuit­ry? Who knows?

Like­wise, Jodie Foster’s shiny grey suit and neat blonde bob sym­bol­ise the same robot­ic char­ac­ter as Char­l­ize Theron’s cor­po­rate ice-queen in Prometheus, but she gives a pecu­liar­ly bad per­for­mance here, huff­ing awk­ward­ly and nev­er find­ing her groove.

Noth­ing, though, is lack­ing from Sharl­to Copley’s Kruger, a sadis­tic ex-Spe­cial Forces mer­ce­nary dis­patched by Fos­ter to shut­down De Cos­ta. If he’s ini­tial­ly unrecog­nis­able behind a hobo beard and a filthy cloak, Copley’s Afrikaans accent and instant charis­ma quick­ly mark him as Elysium’s ace card.

“Ah all-wez want­ed a waaaf,” snarls Cop­ley, leer­ing over Damon’s child­hood sweet­heart Alice Bra­ga and her daugh­ter, Elysium’s prox­ies for D9’s ET father-son set – up. The South African actor’s wicked­ly malev­o­lent per­for­mance gives the film a vital shot of black humour and believ­able danger.

Still, you can’t help­ing won­der­ing what effect it had replac­ing Peter Jack­son with Simon Kin­berg, pro­duc­er of dumb-fun action­ers like Jumper, This Means War and Abra­ham Lin­coln: Vam­pire Hunter. Too often, Elysium’s social satire and emo­tion seems more bolt­ed on than organ­i­cal­ly implanted.

Start­ing with the obvi­ous metaphor of Damon’s painful cor­po­re­al chas­sis, the con­flict between man and machine is what shiv­ers most strong­ly through Blomkamp’s film. De Cos­ta cracks a joke, a robot sen­tinel cracks his arm. Sim­i­lar humour mal­func­tions occur with his droid parole offi­cer, seem­ing­ly bor­rowed from Total Recall’s John­ny­Cab: ​“Would you like to talk to a human?”

Indeed. As real-world sci­ence creeps clos­er and clos­er to the fic­tion imag­ined by futur­ists, Blomkamp’s vision of 150 years from now is also fas­ci­nat­ing­ly plau­si­ble and superbly realised. Data heists take place with brain – sync­ing via grub­by USB cables. Elysium’s robots are built for pure real­ism, every bit as con­vinc­ing as D9’s extrater­res­tri­als. And that space sta­tion itself is both a shim­mer­ing tech­ni­cal mar­vel from a dis­tance and a tac­tile tri­umph up close.

Leav­ing no doubt that there’s a human behind the lens, Blomkamp’s famil­iar faux – vérité style has a dirty/​beautiful sen­so­ry kick to it — whether it’s De Cos­ta puk­ing in a dirty shack or falling cher­ry blos­soms stick­ing to com­bat­ants’ wet skin dur­ing their bru­tal final fight. It’s in keep­ing with Blomkamp’s com­mit­ment to phys­i­cal real­ism that 22^nd – cen­tu­ry merc Kruger’s favourite arma­ments are a (Samu­rai) sword and (ener­gy) shield.

Ely­si­um process­es action way more smooth­ly than alle­go­ry, hit­ting its most thrilling stretch­es when the writer/​director unleash­es an inven­tive array of bat­tle– tech, expert­ly orches­trat­ing some crash­ing, smash­ing close – quar­ter com­bat that sees exo – suit­ed Damon thrust into hand – to – hand com­bat with agile droids before tak­ing on Copley’s kill squad.

Hav­ing been sen­tenced to death by a machine, Damon must become a machine in order to reach anoth­er machine that will save his life. In Blomkamp’s epic sci – fi vision, it’s about how much you’re pre­pared to lose in order to win.