{"id":4077,"date":"2013-08-12T19:12:24","date_gmt":"2013-08-13T00:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4077"},"modified":"2013-08-12T19:12:24","modified_gmt":"2013-08-13T00:12:24","slug":"critic-at-large-elysium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4077","title":{"rendered":"Critic At Large: Elysium"},"content":{"rendered":"

Director Neil Blomkamp gives us another politically-minded science fiction romp with Elysium<\/em><\/a>. We meet Max, an ex-con living in the blighted Los Angeles of 2154. The Earth is an environmental and economic wreck, the super-wealthy departed long ago to live on Elysium, an orbital habitat where everything is sunshine and dinner parties. Max gets a lethal dose of radiation at the factory where he works and his only hope of survival is to somehow get to Elysium and use one of the magical med-pods that furnish every rich person’s living room. And so Max decides to take that One Last Job that might earn him a ticket to space.<\/p>\n

Blomkamp also directed District 9<\/em><\/a>, another science fiction film that had a political subtext. District 9<\/em> managed to convey its message with a light touch and even some humor, but Elysium is a bit more heavy-handed. It still works quite well as an action movie, particularly in the first two-thirds. It’s when Blomkamp tries to drive home his message about how everyone deserves to be treated decently by society that the eye-rolling begins. Still, Matt Damon delivers a compelling performance and it’s fun to watch Sharlto Copley, who played a nebbish bureaucrat in District 9<\/em>, swagger across the screen here as a psychopathic mercenary.<\/p>\n

Somebody also needs to explain to me how a space station can maintain an atmosphere without any visible enclosure. Because that really bugged me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Director Neil Blomkamp gives us another politically-minded science fiction romp with Elysium. We meet Max, an ex-con living in the blighted Los Angeles of 2154. The Earth is an environmental and economic wreck, the super-wealthy departed long ago to live on Elysium, an orbital habitat where everything is sunshine and dinner parties. Max gets a […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-23-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-13L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4078,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077\/revisions\/4078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}