Elysium

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (Scafaria US/Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia 2012), The World's End (Wright UK/US/Japan 2013) and This is the End (Rogen and Goldberg US 2013) all mark a recourse to the rhetoric of the apocalyptic aesthetic, though their presentation of a world half-empty...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science fiction film and television 2014-09, Vol.7 (3), p.433
Main Author: Holliday, Christopher
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Blomkamp, Neill (1979- )
Earth
Film studies
Friendship
Immigration policy
Racism
Rhetoric
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Summary:Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (Scafaria US/Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia 2012), The World's End (Wright UK/US/Japan 2013) and This is the End (Rogen and Goldberg US 2013) all mark a recourse to the rhetoric of the apocalyptic aesthetic, though their presentation of a world half-empty is mediated through the filmmakers' desire to find the comic in the catastrophic. The film follows the story of one such Earth dweller, Max Da Costa (Matt Damon), an ex-convict turned manual labourer at the oppressive Armadyne Corp who builds sophisticated weaponry and robots on behalf of Elysium's inhabitants. If Blomkamp's feature-length film debut District 9 (US/NZ/Canada/South Africa 2009) was an apartheid parable allegorising South African racial segregation through an extraterrestrial/human divide, the narrative of Elysium is evocative of class warfare as it condemns the economic disparities between the poor and the wealthy. An armoured exoskeleton is grafted onto Max's bones, alleviating the effects of the radiation, powering his limb movement and incorporating a neural implant that is used by Spider to download financial information and bribe the Armadyne Company.
ISSN:1754-3770
1754-3789
DOI:10.3828/sfftv.2014.25