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Naw, the funniest are the complaints about "plot holes". LikeBMS posted:Concerning the plot, which is probably the biggest thing to discuss, there's plenty of holes to cover and quite a few things that feel like they should somehow relate to the story, but aren't tied in correctly, or fleshed out in anyway. Delacourt's death for instance. some leader getting offed like a bitch by their own soldiers is something that doesn't occur constantly through out history? Who knew treating people like disposable garbage would ever have consequences?? It's important to remember that the Golden Rule is not just an ideal for the good-hearted folks to aspire to. It also functions as the utter damnation of assholes - that which ye sow, so shall ye reap.
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May 11, 2014 22:21
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It almost feels like Foster was the original main antagonist, but they realized she wasn't going to work once he gets to the space station, so instead Kruger becomes the primary obstacle after some changes. Based on the marketing it seemed like Delacourt would play a bigger role, but that never materialized.
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May 11, 2014 22:28
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SALT CURES HAM posted:Eh. It really kind of comes with the territory, given that the movie is basically about a violent Marxist revolution portrayed sympathetically and was released primarily in a country that largely has no clue what Marxism even is other than "BAD THING." When you don't have the proper frame of reference to interpret a movie, you end up with some weird poo poo sometimes. The "cures" meme.
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May 11, 2014 22:28
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Black Bones posted:I love both, the only real difference is that one focuses on race and the other on class. Which of course are connected issues. I think the real error is looking at the "medpods as UHC" as the only analogy. The real theme is "control over a post-scarcity world". The original MacGuffin was actually supposed to be Star Trek-like matter replicators, but they dialed that back because it strained credibility further. I mean, why would the Elysians be concerned about money if they could build anything they want? But that's the whole point, they've become so entrenched in a two-century status quo that they can't envision anything except that. I think that even the whole bit about Max building the police robots that oppressed him instead of having them built through automated factories comes from that as well. They need to see people being employed, not just thematic irony or because it's some cheap-rear end "humanitarian" doublethink like what Patel employs, that's the way we've been doing despite that labor being largely superseded. I haven't seen this film since it was in theaters but I have to admit that it's the perfect thing. I think I've made some indirect reference to it in just because it feels that it's going to be a logical conclusion of our current politics. When I saw Delacourt talking to Patel about whether or not he had children, I pretty much saw Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann. I'm really wondering if Foster had performed Rhodes without a French accent and it was too spot on of a comparison.
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May 11, 2014 22:36
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I watched this last night for the first time. I straight-up loved District 9 and have probably watched it 15 times, so I was predisposed to like this movie. I love the look and feel of both movies, the "dirty, used, lived-in world" feel that really differentiates, say, Star Wars IV-VI from the sterility and lifelessness of I-III. I love how the technology in both movies seems totally plausible, not crazy black hole generating tesseract stuff. But man did this movie ever move way too fast and have way, way too little character development. I think another half hour or so fleshing out Kruger, Delacourt, Max, and Spider would have made it 100% better. It felt like watching the Cliff's Notes of a much better film. Even with such limited development, Kruger was loving awesome. He just seems so cheerful, at all times. "You almost had me. We die together, boyke." Didn't seem worried at all! Just happy as he can be, just a grinning, joyful, insanely ruthless and lethal bastard with no redeeming qualities at all. My favorite kind of psychopath. I'd probably sit down and burn two hours watching a "Previous Adventures of Kruger" movie with no complaints. Even with the flaws it was better than most things that hit the screen today. The ending was pretty weak, though. "Now all the problems are solved, here are hospital ships the rich on Elysium were withholding from Earth due to sheer spite, now everything is all better." So realistic and gritty up to that point, then handwaving away everything. Ah well. The opening image of Earth as almost entirely desert is a very powerful one, and gave me a chill every time it was shown. Let's hope we can get our act together and that isn't a preview of the real future. 
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May 11, 2014 22:37
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JonathonSpectre posted:I'd probably sit down and burn two hours watching a "Previous Adventures of Kruger" movie with no complaints. Eh, we can extrapolate from what we saw of him: a lot of blowing up poor people, abuse and rape of women, drinking with his bros, licking his wounds, etc. Pretty typical mercenary stuff, from any time period. He is an interesting villain, precisely because he was a Spider or Max who failed to make the moral choice at some point back along his hundred year career. He's of their class, but lacked the courage of solidarity. Delacourt's just a technocrat, trapped by her tools (Kruger, the computer systems) and that's why she doesn't need much screentime and dies bitter and confused.
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May 11, 2014 22:46
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Black Bones posted:some leader getting offed like a bitch by their own soldiers is something that doesn't occur constantly through out history? Who knew treating people like disposable garbage would ever have consequences?? Amazing. How you completely missed the point of what I was talking about. BMS posted:Another thing that I've questioned, is Delacourt's death. Kruger stabs her in the neck and tosses her in with Frey, who tries to help her, but Delacourt refuses stating something along the lines of "No, no more". This is a perfect example of how the lack of in film character development makes this scene confusing as hell, and with just a LITTLE bit of backstory, could have been fleshed out to be a defining moment for the character. Basically what I mean is, was her motivation for not wanting help because she was actually repentant of her actions? Or something as simple as "No, I'd rather die, instead of being helped by this person that is so far beneath me", or was she just afraid consequences she'd face if she lived? Things like that, that could have served either as a major redeeming point for the character, or just a final piece of info that cements the character as a "true, stuck in their ways, villain". Instead we have to infer all this, and it just feels incomplete. Not the fact that her lead henchman wiped her out, but her actual death, and the fact that she didn't want any help from Ms. Nurse. Why? Character development of some sort? Who knows, because it wasn't executed properly. I enjoy the film, had a fun time watching it...but to say that the plot, and the way the story is executed isn't full of holes would be, at least for me, being blind, deaf, and dumb.
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May 11, 2014 23:07
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BMS posted:Not the fact that her lead henchman wiped her out, but her actual death, and the fact that she didn't want any help from Ms. Nurse. Why? Character development of some sort? Who knows, because it wasn't executed properly. Everything a character does and represents is development. Including how they die. So some possible explanations: - she's a bigot, so like most elysiumites, doesn't understand that poors/browns are capable of help - she only trusts her machines, human touch freaks her out - maybe she wants to die, I imagine being a neoliberal bureaucrat is a fairly pathetic life of constant self-loathing edit: - a combo of them all! I only saw the movie once, but I think any of these could fit with what I remember of her character. edit2:  Soundtrack owns hard, kinda reminds me of Man of steel's.
Blood Boils fucked around with this message at 03:08 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 23:25
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James Hardon posted:The "cures" meme. A penis joke.
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May 12, 2014 03:08
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I want to know what was going through Blomkamp's head when he decided to have those voice-over monologues at the beginning and the end. Especially at the beginning. "People won't know this movie is about exploitation unless I spell that out in painfully simplistic detail." If they had cut out Max's childhood, the long lost love interest with a terminally ill kid, the coup on Elysium sub-plot, and the magical hospital ships saving Earth they would have had more than enough time to make a movie about a man fighting a corrupt system.
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May 12, 2014 03:47
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Rosscifer posted:If they had cut out Max's childhood, the long lost love interest with a terminally ill kid, the coup on Elysium sub-plot, and the magical hospital ships saving Earth they would have had more than enough time to make a movie about a man fighting a corrupt system. That would mean cutting out the protagonist's motivation, the reason he gets access to the computer over-rides, and the victory of the good characters over the bad guys.
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May 12, 2014 03:53
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Black Bones posted:Everything a character does and represents is development. Including how they die. We may not agree on the issue of whether or not some characters were underdeveloped, but we CAN agree that the soundtrack for this is pretty damned good. Seriously thought it was Hans Zimmer, (coincidentally the composer for the Man of Steel soundtrack), before finding out it was essentially a newbie to the scene, Ryan Amon. Rosscifer posted:I want to know what was going through Blomkamp's head when he decided to have those voice-over monologues at the beginning and the end. Especially at the beginning. "People won't know this movie is about exploitation unless I spell that out in painfully simplistic detail." I'd argue that all those were pretty relevant for the plot, but they were tossed into play so quick, that if they had been expanded on slightly it would have been quite a bit better. All except the ending. The "good guys" beating the "bad guys" wouldn't apply here, considering one of the first things to occur after the screen faded to black, would be that all the rival gangs would start fighting each other for control of the Elysian tech, keeping the average person in just as bad, if not worse shape than with the Elysians in charge.
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May 12, 2014 04:08
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Elysium is weird and cool because the protagonist is 'just' a meat-support for the robot exoskeleton, in much the same way Nick Cage is just a vessel for The Rider in Ghost Rider. Max is actually quite well-written, but 'deliberately' not a very interesting character, in the same sense as Bane in Dark Knight. No-one cares who Max is until he puts on the exoskeleton. He is just a decrepit human, but the skeleton makes him into something more. That's why the skeleton gets its own portrait, as a poster.  Delacroix is very misunderstood as a character as well. Foster's acting isn't 'bad'; she's just playing a weirdo - like Fichtner's character and his robotic mannerisms. Foster specifically pulls off the tricky feat of playing a bad actress. Delacroix is clearly speaking bullshit and, worse, trying to convince herself of its veracity. As a character, it's clear that she was written from the beginning as the counterpoint to Spider. Duality is all over the film - you do not fully understand Max until you take into account that Kruger is his evil twin/shadow/id/whatever. You see that dark side in fleeting glimpses, as when Max coldly targets his boss for the hit. That's why the film ends with those two battling each-other, Kruger literally attaching himself to Max. Kruger is, likewise, the truth behind Delscroix's bullshit - her logic of oppression taken to its logical conclusion/extreme. This is why it has to be Kruger that kills her and supplants her. In the reverse: that's why Max has to 'let Spider kill him'. A very significant chunk of the characterization is expressed through these relationships and interactions, instead of through exposition or whatever. It's nuanced, rather than complex. Strategic Tea posted:Elysium's message seems to be that utopia itself is easy to build, and all we need to to is remove bad people who stand in its way for no reason (not even selfish ones, really). And it's damaging; some people genuinely seem to think you can just apply revolution to problem and let that tedious 'governance' stuff sort itself out. Elysium's solution is a radical appropriation of the state apparatus. The basic idea that everyone becomes a citizen of Elysium means that we spend the entire film seeing 'how they govern': Elysium, on Earth. The same protections afforded the rich are applied to everyone. Of course, when you do that, the rich are rightly perceived as the criminals they are - because property is theft. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 05:00 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 04:53
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The ending is simple. It's the only time in the movie that someone makes an unselfish decision. Everyone's actions are motivated by gain. Whether its obvious material gain, or the life of your child (who is "all she has"), there's a direct benefit to everyone's decision. There's a strong element of reward, or replayment. Max triumphs at the end because he makes a decision that he will not benefit from. He will not live in the new utopia, but others will, and that's enough for him.
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May 12, 2014 04:58
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I liked the film enough but really he would have ended up as fleshy pulp limply hanging from a ghetto exoskeleton after the first robot throwdown. Gluing a watermelon to the front fender of a military vehicle does not result in a suddenly invunerable piece of fruit.
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May 12, 2014 12:55
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Neo Rasa posted:Is there any pre-release footage of Jodie Foster on the blu-ray or something? I found it a bit weird too, apparently her entire role was re-shot shortly before the film was released or something? It makes me wonder if they had this in mind or were even considering excising the character completely and focusing more on Kruger/Patel/etc. I don't think it was reshot. When it was filmed Foster's character was to have a French accent (said so in pre-release material), but at the preview screenings it just generated laughs because it was so bad/exaggerated. So during ADR they cut out her French accented dialogue and recorded new dialogue; problem was that her facial expressions were all for the French accent and wouldn't gel with a standard american accent/ect, so they had to make up that absurd robot-like final accent on the go to fit her facial movements. The French accent must have been truly awful for the final product to have been a step up. I enjoyed the movie, but it just disappointed me because it could have been so much better.
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May 12, 2014 13:37
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Elysium's solution is a radical appropriation of the state apparatus. That assumes that the state apparatus is capable of supporting worldwide healthcare. In Elysium it can, because it's practically a post-scarcity society and because the writers said so. A real revolution isn't going to have that benefit. The sci-fi 'what if' of the film changes the playing field so radically that it undermines the political message. Though I will admit that this way lies sperging about star destroyer reactor outputs and god knows what.
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May 12, 2014 15:49
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Strategic Tea posted:That assumes that the state apparatus is capable of supporting worldwide healthcare. In Elysium it can, because it's practically a post-scarcity society and because the writers said so. A real revolution isn't going to have that benefit. The sci-fi 'what if' of the film changes the playing field so radically that it undermines the political message. Though I will admit that this way lies sperging about star destroyer reactor outputs and god knows what. Right now, today, we have enough food to feed the entire planet. Hunger is pretty much entirely the result of bad economic practices that cause poverty. The imagery of people being cured is taken a bit too literally as just a 'universal healthcare' thing, when it can also applied to issues like hunger and whatnot. The space magic in the film is a way of making visual the otherwise abstract idea of universal democracy. Nonetheless, I believe we do have the resources to provide healthcare to the entire world - even if not through nanotech healing pods.
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May 12, 2014 16:49
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RandomCheese posted:I liked the film enough but really he would have ended up as fleshy pulp limply hanging from a ghetto exoskeleton after the first robot throwdown. Gluing a watermelon to the front fender of a military vehicle does not result in a suddenly invunerable piece of fruit. Same RandomCheese.
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May 12, 2014 17:12
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Are we using spoiler tags? My beef with the film's ending is that Earth has been transformed from an overpopulated place with poor, uneducated, angry workers to an overpopulated place with poor, uneducated, angry, practically-immortal workers. Nothing has been resolved, you've just made things worse than it was before.
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May 12, 2014 19:40
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Right now, today, we have enough food to feed the entire planet. Hunger is pretty much entirely the result of bad economic practices that cause poverty. To put some hard numbers behind this, Zak Cope's Divided World Divided Class pegs it (in 2009) at roughly 2,720 kcal per person per day, assuming totally equitable distribution. Even the total global grain yields by themselves are enough to provide an adequate caloric intake to every person on the Earth. For purposes of comparison, roughly 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes a day, and 1.02 billion people are undernourished.
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May 12, 2014 19:48
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MisterBibs posted:Are we using spoiler tags? Again, this focuses on the space-magic technology and misses how the entire Earth is reorganized around defending the poorest as if it were Bill Gates himself who were in distress. The people are in power, and you must trust in the people.
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May 12, 2014 19:51
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Strategic Tea posted:That assumes that the state apparatus is capable of supporting worldwide healthcare. In Elysium it can, because it's practically a post-scarcity society and because the writers said so. A real revolution isn't going to have that benefit. The sci-fi 'what if' of the film changes the playing field so radically that it undermines the political message. Though I will admit that this way lies sperging about star destroyer reactor outputs and god knows what. Universal healthcare is easily achievable through taxation. In Canada, it was a provincial government who implemented it, even when the federal government and major businesses and doctor associations tried to bankrupt Saskatchewan to prevent it from happening. But the CCF stuck to their guns, and once voters saw their grandmas receiving the comfort and dignity owed any human being, well, every other political party was forced to adopt the policy if they ever wanted to win another election. Now certainly the rich have chipped away and weakened our medical system since then, but if the people continue to elect politicians who are essentially the PR of monied interests (who use their wealth to argue against having to pay taxes) then we have only ourselves to blame. And as other posters have pointed out, the medpods don't solely represent healthcare, although that is the most obvious symbol, but general human rights like food and sovereignty. They are all aspects of the concept of equality.
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May 12, 2014 21:41
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Vermain posted:To put some hard numbers behind this, Zak Cope's Divided World Divided Class pegs it (in 2009) at roughly 2,720 kcal per person per day, assuming totally equitable distribution. Even the total global grain yields by themselves are enough to provide an adequate caloric intake to every person on the Earth. For purposes of comparison, roughly 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes a day, and 1.02 billion people are undernourished. Just because I analyze data like this for my job a lot and I literally had a spreadsheet open making some charts about fat and protein supply in kcals/capita (I do some contracting work for evil empires like Monsanto) here's the data that comes from if anyone's curious: http://faostat3.fao.org/faostat-gateway/go/to/download/C/CC/E Currently the global average is 2,831 kcal/capita/day, but Low Income Food Deficit Countries are around 2,414. That's produced supply, though. Too much gets thrown away or otherwise lost before actual consumption.
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May 12, 2014 22:05
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Again, this focuses on the space-magic technology and misses how the entire Earth is reorganized around defending the poorest as if it were Bill Gates himself who were in distress. I'm not missing anything. The planet starts off in a lovely state whose shittiness isn't enough to stop humanity from overpopulating it all to hell. Now you've suddenly removed even that from the equation, with immortality? Are all those practically-immortal folks on the surface going to understand and accept that they all can't live on the Space Station? The ending to the movie reminded me a lot of The Secret.
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May 12, 2014 22:40
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MisterBibs posted:I'm not missing anything. The planet starts off in a lovely state whose shittiness isn't enough to stop humanity from overpopulating it all to hell. Now you've suddenly removed even that from the equation, with immortality? Are all those practically-immortal folks on the surface going to understand and accept that they all can't live on the Space Station? In what scene did they lose the technology to build more space stations? Travel further into the stars?
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May 12, 2014 22:51
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I wish we could have had Jodie Foster in power-armor.
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May 12, 2014 23:26
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You are all incredibly retarded.
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May 12, 2014 23:34
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Black Bones posted:In what scene did they lose the technology to build more space stations? Travel further into the stars? Hell, in what scene was it established that overpopulation, in specific, was a problem?
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May 12, 2014 23:42
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The shittyness of the planet is a direct result of a corrupt social order. By upending the social order Matt Damon destroys the underlying causes of the problems on earth.
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May 12, 2014 23:42
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Black Bones posted:In what scene did they lose the technology to build more space stations? Travel further into the stars? This was a point made in the thread when it was theatrically-released. The Elysians have space vehicles that contain a tremendous amount of delta-V inside a compact package, but they purposely remain within Earth's orbit on a single space station. The same amount of acceleration needed to leave Earth's surface is roughly the same to travel and land on Mars. And the Elysians not only have routine sorties that dump captured immigrants back on Earth and return to the habitat, but have personal space shuttles that can travel at a moment's notice. It's that the Elysians choose to stay and throw afternoon tea-parties and perpetually sunbathe in low Earth orbit instead of build new habitats or colonize and exploit the resources of the solar system. The Elysians have become idle and apathetic and a space exploration/exploitation would upset their carefully-maintained balance. They're just a stone's throw away from becoming the denizens of the Vortex from Zardoz.
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May 12, 2014 23:43
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Black Bones posted:In what scene did they lose the technology to build more space stations? Travel further into the stars? After all the now-immortal folks get their (symbolic, perhaps literal) pound of flesh from the folks who previously owned the places to buld more space stations and travel further? Lost forever, or set back significantly. I mean, the first station survived because the rich folks paid money into it.
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May 13, 2014 03:31
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James Hardon posted:Same RandomCheese.
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May 13, 2014 07:58
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MisterBibs posted:After all the now-immortal folks get their (symbolic, perhaps literal) pound of flesh from the folks who previously owned the places to buld more space stations and travel further? Lost forever, or set back significantly. Why? How do you know they won't follow the example of the Divine Max-Machina and forgive them, while simultaneously ignoring their protests against sharing. After all, they are citizens now, with as much say into what the technology is used for as the formerly rich. quote:I mean, the first station survived because the rich folks paid money into it. Elysium was built and maintained by exploiting the labour and resources of Earth. Now that it no longer possible - all labour and resources can only be used to further the common good of all. So if overpopulation is a problem, then the development of further habitation would be the goal, either in the heavens or on earth.
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May 13, 2014 21:29
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I thought it was an okay movie, not fantastic but a fun action-y flick. I hated the hacker/freedom fighter boss character though.
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May 13, 2014 21:58
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I love the hell out of this movie, but I'm pretty sure that like 98% of my love is based on how awesome Sharlto Copley is as the hobo-ninja-Jesus-mercenary villain. He just seems like he's having an absolute blast with the role. He elevated the entire film from being just "enjoyable action film with a heavy-handed message" to "really loving memorable action film with a heavy-handed message."
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May 13, 2014 22:45
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MisterBibs posted:After all the now-immortal folks get their (symbolic, perhaps literal) pound of flesh from the folks who previously owned the places to buld more space stations and travel further? Lost forever, or set back significantly. Those places don't suddenly vanish into thin air, and a lot of the new citizens are the people who were building the space station parts (and drone parts and etc) in the first place. Really, you could come up with a decent argument for either side, the film doesn't give us enough info for a conclusive answer; we're never shown how Elysium was built or what kind of tech it uses, we just get dropped in x years later.
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May 13, 2014 23:37
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SALT CURES HAM posted:Those places don't suddenly vanish into thin air, and a lot of the new citizens are the people who were building the space station parts (and drone parts and etc) in the first place. The "cures" meme.
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May 13, 2014 23:42
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James Hardon posted:The "cures" meme. white noise
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May 14, 2014 02:33
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Blomkamp knows how to film a spaceship crash better than anyone I know, but the real reason I love the film is it's I-don't-give-a-gently caress attitude to its message. Like most Dystopian Fiction our hero is fighting the system - technology (or bureaucracy) has advanced to the point where it's now running human affairs. But it's primarily an action film, so instead of any politics or philosophising we get 90 minutes of him literally shooting "the system" in the face with space-guns. The film starts with Max arguing with a robotic parole officer. Right from the start we see how things are going to work - the film is not going to discuss institutional inertia, there's no analysis of technological determinism. Instead, Max is trapped by technology because goddammit technology stop interrupting me and let me speak. He can't swear at it, he can't have the satisfaction of punching his monitor, because the computer doesn't like it when you're rude to the computer. Afterwards, we see him being hassled and assaulted by robot-cops, in a wonderfully literal display of oppression. The rich have all the advantages in life because they can afford the shiny new toys that do everything for them, like beating up poor people. The next scene is pure slapstick. Max finally gets to his factory and big surprise, he's building robot-cops. His own labour is being used to produce everything that oppresses him. This is Marxist as all hell, Groucho Marxist. And then Blomkamp and Damon turn around and say "it isn't a political movie"
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May 14, 2014 16:42
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