Review of Elysium (2013)
Seen in 2021.
A poor ex-convict needs to get from Earth to a space station for the immortal rich.
Matt Damon’s competence as an actor emphasizes Blomkamp’s apparent disinterest in that craft. The rest of the cast flounders in the underdeveloped setting and story. Compare the wealth of detail and nuance in Neuromancer (1984), which has similar basic premises, including orbital habitats for the rich; it does not have the crude conceit of free, easy and flawless rejuvenation for the rich alone.
One plot thread in Elysium is lifted from the 1981 short story that led to Neuromancer, or rather the filming of that story as Johnny Mnemonic (1995). Instead of the earlier film’s 80 gigabytes, Matt Damon’s character carries 50 exabytes in his head: almost a billion times more data because Blomkamp wanted his script to sound recent. That data is software for the space station, which is later altered to include all people as citizens. This last underdeveloped idea may have been taken from the expansion of citizenship in the late Roman empire, which may in turn connect to the Jesus dimension of Damon’s character, who was perhaps raised by nuns.
References here: The Creator (2023).