Let me just start off by syaing this is going to be a very short post and will mainly consist of Quint’s from Aint it Cool News, trailer breakdown for Neill Blomkamp’s, Elysium.
The reason for this is I wasn’t able to stay for the panel because I had to run to a Marvel event (Which was a disappointment) and then FearNets’ Con of the Dead party. But never fear, I was able to catch the first “rough” footage for the film and it looks like Blomkamp has another winner in the making. From what I have heard from others in attendance, they were just as blown away and ecstatic for the film.
While some of the scenes were still incomplete and only computer renderings with blocks, what footage was shown really blew me away. We were able to get a better understanding of what exactly “Elysium” is and how and why Matt Damon needs to go there.
I want to advise that what you read below might be lightly spoiler-ish but a recommended read to better understand the film.
Basically the footage sets up that Earth is a giant shithole (surprise surprise). Over-polluted, over-populated… you know, the dystopian ideal… Very dusty, very District 9 feeling (in a good way, not in a “I’ve already seen this” way).
Just outside of Earth’s orbit is a man-made sanctuary with all the best scientific and medical minds called Elysium that looks like Stanley Kubrick’s Halo. It’s a Ringworld that rotates under machine power, very much reminiscent of the 2001 ships and it’s gorgeous. I have to wonder how much, if any, of what Blomkamp intended to be in his Halo movie made its way here.
The footage began by showing us these two contrasts and then showed us that the promise of a better life for those on Earth is a mega lie. As with everything, the super rich get all the benefits and the poor that scrounge up enough to move on up get blown away by a missile system while they think they’re on their way to paradise.
Damon plays Max, a worker bee type. The first bit of footage we see of him is him sassing a security bot (think a mean combination of the good boxing robot in Real Steel) on his way into work and getting the shit kicked out of him. He’s works on a robotic assembly line and an accident on the job gets him locked into a room with a toxic amount of radiation.
When he wakes up, he finds out he has 5 days to live and knowing the only place that could possibly cure him is Elysium he sets out, determined to find a way up there.
He’s hired to steal a device from William Fichtner’s character and that will pay his way to Elysium… of course, Fichtner’s character is an Elysium big shot, so Damon can’t just go get him in his puny 100% organic form. No way, Jose! He has get his crazy exo-suit you see in the above picture, which was shown being installed in a surprisingly bloody and horrific operating scene. We’re talking skull pieces removed and computer parts jammed in kind of wrongness.
I thought the set up was showing a whole movie about Damon tracking down Fichtner, but that seems to happen pretty early on in the story, actually. They get to him, get his device and Jodie Foster, up on Elysium, doesn’t like that and calls for backup assistance.
That assistance comes in the form of what I can only describe as a homeless ninja assassin played by District 9’s Sharlto Copley. This dude wears a ragged robe with a hood, like a Hobo Jedi, and fights with a katana sword… Copley is kinda nuts here, full beard, crazy eyes and some unexpected technology (there’s a scene where Damon has him dead to rights, fires his big gun and Copley activates some kind of crazy force field). It’s pretty clear that Damon is outmatched by this guy.
In fact, he’s always way in over his head it seems. There were bits of Damon ripping off a guard robot’s head with his new powerful exo-suit, a passing ship firing little hockey pucks out that attach themselves to somebody firing on the ship, then explode into a bloody mess, a ninja star thrown into somebody’s chest (“it’s only a flesh wound!” then boom, more splatter, and a few scenes of Jodie Foster’s crazy accurate South American accent as she shouts orders from her little neat and tidy office up in paradise.
So as you can tell from his review of the footage what we saw was nothing short of spectacular. Hopefully Blomkamp will release a traierl for the public soon but there is still a lot of post production to be completed before then.
I also want to point out that while I was watching the trailer the guy in front of me was trying to record the footage and got busted quickly by the security guys walking around, shockingly to me they didn’t escort him out all they did was make him delete it. I was let down by this because I wanted some justice! Oh well, rant over.
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