Elysium

Apartheid with giant cockroaches. That was basically the idea behind Neil Blomkamp’s 2009 debut District 9. Like most thoughtful science fiction, it was clearly tackling a real world issue, but kept it at arm’s length by shrouding it in allegory. Making the persecuted minority extraterrestrials—and pretty disgusting ones at that—allowed for the sci-fi action (as well as some cleverly macabre creature effects) that the bulk of audiences pay to see, while the political commentary was there under the surface if you wanted to engage it.

Elysium is more direct about it. The onscreen text places the action in the year 2154, but the film is clearly about the here and now, and not just in the issues it raises. There are futuristic aesthetics like robots, spaceships, and high-tech weaponry that’d fit right in any number of futuristic shooter games. But much of the locations seen onscreen look like a pretty plausible future, and frighteningly, one that could be closer than the movie places it.

In this fictional future, Earth has become one giant overpopulated slum. The wealthy elite of the human race has just left the planet altogether to reside on the massive space station Elysium, where they live an upper class lifestyle free of disease thanks to machines that cure any ailment. And they’re not willing to share their utopia, shooting down ships full of poor Earthlings from below that attempt to board the station, and deporting the people who do make it.

In the slum of Los Angeles, ex-con factory worker Max (Matt Damon) gets exposed to radiation on the job, and is only given days to live. Determined to survive, he attempts to make the trip up to Elysium and heal himself. In the process, he unknowingly becomes a messiah who could alter the social structure of the human race.

Clearly, one issue being explored is income inequality, something that has come to the forefront of world affairs in recent years. That’s obvious just from the trailers. Another issue that becomes apparent is healthcare, which is reserved for the privileged on Elysium and denied to the poor on Earth (sound familiar, America?). But there’s even more than that on a subtler level that could be taken as commentary. Like the way poor who make it to Elysium are heartlessly deported, a blow directed at anti-immigrant policies (backing this up is the fact that many of the Earth dwellers are Spanish-speaking). And the way the Elysium government employs sleeper agents like the insane Kruger (District 9’s Sharlto Copley) could be an oblique criticism of the way world powers protect their interests in other countries to the detriment of those who live there.

As Elysium’s villainous secretary of defense, Jodie Foster espouses a few lines about “liberty” and “homeland security,” but does so with all but an eye roll. Clearly, these words are meaningless, just excuses to keep what the denizens of Elysium have away from the have-nots. Foster’s accent spills all over the globe (nearly every single word has a different regional dialect), but she embodies the shameful selfish, greedy attitude that’s all too real in America. The rest of Elysium’s leaders disapprove of her extreme methods, but this is hinted to just be about public perception rather than a real sense of altruism. In the climactic battle later in the film, they’re right there fighting against the Earth dwellers. But the finger isn’t just pointed at the American elite (“the 1%,” if you will). The L.A. slums on film look like those in the real Third World today. You know, the countries exploited by the superpowers (the U.S. included) for cheap labor or resources, both which even the poorest American takes advantage of. From this angle, this is no future tale; it’s a present one, and Elysium is us.

The film doesn’t try to hide any of this in the background; rather, it wears its stance proudly throughout. But it never becomes preachy or slow because it’s also a great action film. The fights between robots and humans wearing powerful exoskeletons are actually really good, utilizing almost Matrix-style slow motion (a technique I thought had run its course a long time ago) to great effect. And the special effects actually look cool, not just standard and dull. The scenes on Earth might be dirty and bleak, but the different views we get of the eponymous space station are beautiful and imaginative.

The movie is not without problems. Some of the characters are quite flat, and the second half moves along so fast that it’s a little hard to grasp everything that’s happening. And the ending gives the real, serious, difficult questions the film raises a simple, happy answer that seems out of place for such a socially aware piece of work. But even including these ideas—hell, presenting an idea, any idea, for us to think about—puts Elysium above the average blockbuster. This is not merely disposable summer entertainment, but an angry cry on behalf of the exploited masses the world over. With plenty of gunfights and explosions to keep you entertained, of course.