Elysium is a film that tries very hard to have ideas, and then runs away from the burden of exploring them at top speed. Despite a solid premise, large budget, and top tier talent, the execution is muddled, and the film is possibly yet another nail in the coffin for the future of big budget original science fiction films.

While not as bad as Prometheus, Elysium seems to have taken lessons in how to be bad from Prometheus…

The movie takes place is a dystopian future (circa 2154) where white flight has been taken to near intergalactic levels. Due to over population and dwindling natural resources, the upper one–percent have abandoned the planet to live in a space station slightly reminiscent of installation 04. For some unknown reason this installation seems to be in a geosynchronous orbit over Los Angeles. Continuing the Prometheus tradition of ambitious sci-fi movies attempting to be intellectual by stealing names from Greek mythology, the installation is called “Elysium” which means heaven, or something. ..I only Googled deep enough to be half sure I was making an accurate sarcastic joke.

On the planet below, in what looks like modern day Burbank hit with a sepia tone bomb, Matt Damon has reprised his role as Good Will Hunting, this time rebranded as Max Da Costa. Max Will Hunting, is a troubled orphan, in constant legal trouble, prone to disrespecting authority, and working a factory job, and…we must assume…really good at math.

Max Will Hunting is introduced to the audience as a child being raised on Desaturated Earth in an orphanage. His upbringing consists of being repeatedly told something along the lines of “hope is for suckers”  by his orphanage provided nun/caseworker. For some reason Max becomes a juvenile delinquent with a penchant for thievery and fist fights. He also promises some girl he will buy her a ticket to Halo when they grow up. Then there is a bit of a montage involving bloody noses and lectures on stealing, and “know your role, Max” and we flash forward to grown up Matt Damon, wondering to ourselves if young Good Will Hunting might be played by Damon’s kid. (He isn’t.)

After the initial exposition-gasim is out of the way the audience follows Max on a quick expose of his personal trainer tone physique, and his shitty apartment, on what would appear to be a normal day. Once his shirt is on Max Will Damon heads out the door through a few sidewalks of dystopia, casually scrolling down Character Establishment Lane displaying himself to be a lovable streetwise character just trying to get to work on time. Up until this point the narrative is tight, and direct. Things of course are moving very fast, as we are living in the wake of Star Trek 2009, but the pace doesn’t feel too rushed.

Character and society established, Max calmly waits for a dystopian bus to take him across dystopia-town to work for his dystopian overlords. At just about the point where you start to wonder if there’s every a story coming the movie proper starts.

In a sequence that decides about 3/4ths of the way through to not explore any ideas, Matt-Will-Max Damon-Da Costa-Hunting has a run in with the dystopia-robot-police, who despite being robots apparently come complete with 1991 LAPD Beat Down Programming.  Max, who is (oh so quickly) revealed by one of the robot-officers to be on parole for car theft, is subjected to a stop and frisk type procedure. Being an orphan with no respect for authority, (and quite possibly an undervalued string theory genius!) Max Will Hunting gets a little cheeky with the police, which despite them being robots, is apparently a really bad idea.

For some reason Bleach Bypass Burbank’s robotic police force comes equipped with artificial intelligences so advanced as to not only understand sarcasm, but to also be offended by it to the point of responding with rage. Angered by Mad-Max-Jason-Bourne-Hunting’s sarcastic remarks, the police respond with excessive force in what could be, but isn’t quite, a commentary on stop and frisk and/or police brutality. At any rate, the cops break his arm for no good reason, publically, and leave him in a heap. The robot LPAD displays no concern about public police brutality in a large crowd of onlookers being the catalyst for huge social change…which it isn’t. Nobody gives a shit or even appears to notice. It’s just like living in LA today if you’d found an emo kid do the color correction.

This is the point where the movie starts to get a little murky, where the audience should have some questions about what the future-dystopian-F just happened? It is where I started to scratch my head and wonder  if it is possible that CopBots can love? Sadly, and in keeping with the New Sci-Fi pacing (In the future all mankind will explain things while running down space-hallways!) there isn’t much time to Fridge Logic out as we are now going to meet the supporting cast and their ridiculous accents and their serve-no-purpose tendency to talk in foreign languages.

First we meet a bunch of poor people attempting to black market smuggle their way onto Halo-One-Percenter-Heaven, in a sequence that establishes that you can do that, then in the same breath establishes that really you can’t. In the course of the same sequence we establishes that Jodie Foster is an evil Space-Cunt in need of a better vocal coach, who employs Sharlto Copley’s character in what could be but isn’t a commentary paramilitary/government entanglement.

Copley, who sounds throughout the film the way you’d envision Arnold Schwarzenegger would sound trying to pull off a New Zealand accent, is some sort of mercenary/psychopath. The character doesn’t really need to be a psychopath…but writing him as one means no one has to explain his motivation by delivering his back-story while running down a hallway, so he’s a psychopath. More specifically he’s a psychopath who hangs out by a weapons locker hidden inside a beat to shit ’86 Astro-van waiting for the Space-Cunt to call him and tell him to murder refugees in space by firing missiles at them from somewhere near Universal City. In his leisure time he enjoys outdoor cooking and gratuitous displays of his transparently gimmicky Katana Fetish.

Did I mention that Jody Foster’s character is a real asshole in this? A rich asshole specifically, which in this film is redundant. While we only meet three of the rich inhabitants of Halo Heaven, they are meant to represent the entire installations population, and they are all utterly un-redeemable, elitist assholes. Dicks to the core, living in their full color world with their gleaming white walls that don’t resemble flesh tones, judging us all from on high.

Foster’s character specifically is portrayed as the most vicious asshole imaginable, and no justification is given. She is an asshole of such magnitude that instead of having her homeland security robots (made by the Subtly In Social Commentary Company LTD.) simply capture and return to Earth the three space ships full of illegal aliens trying to land on her space station, she goes out of her way to break the law in front of onlookers and have them murdered by her Australian Minivan Mercenary.

The reason she breaks the law and has these people murdered is, according to her character, that she is scared a dirty Mexican might take a bath in her tub, and that would somehow ruin space heaven. That’s pretty thin. (Fucking anorexic.) What’s thinner is that she uses a psychotic mercenary to do it…by firing missiles from the surface of the planet at vehicles in space. The reason she does this is never explained, because Foster’s character can’t well tell the President of Space Heaven that her only motivation for taking that action was that one of the producers demanded a scene introducing Sharlto Copley’s mercenary character. It would take us completely out of the film hear her say so, more even than her offensive to the ear accent already does.

Arguably Copley’s character could have been employed to fire the murder missiles from Earth to plant the idea that the Earth’s (fucking ghetto) population was murdering its own people, but this idea is never explored. The world of Elysium seems to have neither media nor social movements, so this is thrown on the almost-explored idea pile, next to the stop and frisk thing.

Anyway, murdering refugees for no real reason is apparently not that big of a deal, but talking back to the Space President is. After delivering a confusing and xenophobic monolog to the Space Obama, played by Faran Tahir, Foster’s character is summarily fired from her post as Secretary of Defense by the President of Space. He then simply goes on about his day without a care in the world about what retribution might be taken by his irrational murderer connected former employee.

Oh, somewhere in all that mess a crippled Hispanic child is used to cram in that idea every house in Space Heaven has a magic bed that cures anything in seconds, and that the poor people on Earth can use them if they have a special tattoo, and can get to a space bed without being blown up or robot homeland security deported.

Back in Ghetto LA Damon’s character reconnects with his orphanage girlfriend, who fixes his broken arm and apparently only has a job because the rich people on the space station have mercifully decided against replacing the entire medical profession with magical robot beds which may or may not employ retribution in the face of sarcasm.

MattMax, apparently not at all upset at being a victim of robot police brutality, uses his hospital stay to score a coffee date with his ex-girlfriend. The movie manages to resist the urge to have Matt and his love interest run down a tilted hallway while informing us that his doctor-date has innocent daughter who’s dying of something that can’t be cured without a magic bed. Everyone kind of shrugs at that and Matt goes from dystopian LA hospital to dystopian LA police station. Here Matt chats with a condescending robot parole officer thing that looks to be built out of Century Bob Punching Bag, and who offers him pills in an interesting scene that was likely shot for a different much better movie, as it undermines the entire theme of this one by implying that free health care does exist on Earth.

After his parole hearing MattMax goes to work and we discover, while walking quite briskly down a hallway, that his boss is a dick subservient to a dystopian corporation. The next day Matt goes to work again at his non-union, no-weekly-safety-meeting -having job.

Matt’s boss insists that Matt perform an action that will absolutely result in Matt receiving a lethal dose of radiation. Since he knows that this will kill him, Matt puts up a little verbal resistance, then quickly caves in and walks into a room designed to kill him, which he switched over to kill mode moments earlier. Matt is then, shocker, given a lethal dose of radiation. Annoyed by this, Matt’s boss has him picked up by a robot and dragged away. After a bit of exposition informing us and Matt Damon that William Fichtner’s character is a rich asshole with no regard for Human life, Matt is given about  10 Tylenol PM Rapid Release capsules in a prescription bottle, told he has five days to live, fired and removed from the building.

Matt stumbles across town to hook up with a criminal type friend from the bad old days, who the movie doesn’t really need. Once in contact Matt’s character exposits a wish to go to space heaven and sit in a magic bed so that he doesn’t die from being an idiot who walked into a radiation chamber and turned it on.  Matt’s pony tail having buddy puts up about the same amount of resistance that Matt did, then agrees to take him to see some guy named Spider, who so far in the film has managed to have 2/3rds of the people he shipped to Elysium exploded by an Australian, and the other third arrested and deported.

Once at Spider’s Matt’s character ditches the Will Hunting persona and becomes Jason Bourne just long enough to get spider to agree to send his character to Space Heaven if he will first do one of those highly convenient, highly dangerous, Hail Mary crime jobs that only exist in movies. The job in question is to turn the movie, briefly, into Johnny Mnemonic meets Mad Max. Matt Damon Good Will Hunting Jason Bourne Crocodile Hunter agrees to Spiders terms, on the condition that he can become RoboCop.  Spider agrees, and there is a horrific and well put together surgery scene where the hydraulics from the back hatch of a 98 Jeep Grand Cherokee are surgically grafted to Matt Damon by scary looking black guys in fucking incredible shape for back alley black market doctors.

The mission Spider has is that Matt RoboCop Good Will Hunting Tupac Shakur Damon must capture William Fichtner’s character and download shit from his brain, which is not only something you can apparently do in this world, but also something that will make Spider very rich and or powerful somehow. So, Matt RoboCop Biggie Smalls Damon, his best friend, and a couple of Red Shirts, jump into Mad Max cars and drive over to the Johnny Mnemonic set to go thought snatching.

What RoboCop Damon and Spider don’t know is that Fichtner’s character has uploaded a program into his brain that will make that bitch with the horrific accent Jodie Foster into Space Hillary Clinton. You see, she has ordered Fichtner to write a computer program that will make her fired ass (who is still, despite being fired, functioning as the secretary of defense) the president of space heaven. If this seems a bit confusing, that’s because it doesn’t make any fucking sense…

This won’t really help, but…

Earlier in the film Foster had taken Fichtner into a hallway and turned the lights off to tell him a secret! The secret was that she wanted him to make her be president by writing a computer program…that turns off all the lights in Space Heaven for a minute, and makes her be the President. Instead of stopping her and saying “That’s impossible!” or having some back and forth explaining why such a ludicrous thing is possible, he was all like “Ok, if you keep buying my sarcasm understanding police brutality robots for 200 years, I will make you president by writing lots of Unix command code things on a badass transparent screen!” Foster agrees and Fichtner writes the program, and then casually puts it into his brain for safe keeping, before traveling to the surface of the Earth where everyone hates him because he’s an evil elitist prick who doesn’t cure little girls of leukemia.

Anyway, Universal Solider Matt Damon manages to get his best friend and everybody killed to shit by the mercenary guy and his Katana gimmick, but MadMaxMatt gets away with the brain stuff from Fichtner, then he runs from a lot of shit and gets a Band-Aid from his girlfriend. Then the mercenary guy strongly considers raping Matt Damon’s girlfriend, but that doesn’t happen because Matt is a selfish dick who wants to lay in a magic bed and doesn’t care about anybody. So they all go into space and land on the rich people’s Halo Frisbee thing. Then there’s a lot of fighting in which the Katana plays heavily, and the guy with the bad Australian accent turns himself into Robocop too…Matt and him punch each other for a while, and then Matt kills him.

Matt grows as a character for just a minute then he dies in a cheap Christ allegory, because we have to have that in every god damned movie now. The little girl with movie leukemia that will kill her in ten minutes gets healed with like three seconds left. Spider uses the computer program he took from Ben Affleck’s brain to make himself the king of space heaven…I think? I think that’s what happened. 

Anyway, after a brief power outage it works, and he says “*.* can go to space heaven” and luckily the space heaven computer doesn’t think that is sarcasm, so it works! So now everybody can go to space heaven, even if they are a total piece of shit rapist/murder I guess. But nobody goes to space heaven because Space Heaven sends robots down to earth to fix everyone of everything with the magic beds, which is going to fuck everything up because in the title sequence overpopulation was noted as a huge problem, and also now all the fucking doctors and nurses are on unemployment.

The End. Good try at a movie…but it’s a sprawling mess.