philosoraptor42

I've got a whole bunch of reviews I need to add to my blog and quite a few of them are sci-fi flicks. Here's the first of the bunch.

Elysium (2013)

Well frankly anyone criticising this film for its left wing themes can just stop blooming whining. This is your basic Orwellian dystopian future story where the proletariat are exploited and the privileged few hold all the power. By the standards of the genre, this is probably more realistic than most. The authorities within Elysium want to keep all their invasive and oppressive technology which allows them to live in far greater luxury than those still on Earth. Yet even while the technology they value so highly is deliberately set to lessen the prospects of those on Earth, the people on Elysium are still horrified when they see that those people attempting to fly to Elysium to take advantage of the advanced medical technology are being shot down without mercy.

It was amusing to see one commenter on the IMDB forums using Ayn Randian rhetoric to criticise this movie. "Ah look," they insist, "the creative types have not demanded anything of the masses. They have made a new home for themselves away from the rest of the Earth and yet the masses still will not leave them in peace!"

This is amusing because, even if we presume that the privileged group on Elysium didn't make use of many more labourers than actually ended up living on Elysium to complete this gigantic project, there are also clear signs that the populace on Elysium rely on exploitative labour on Earth for much of their luxuries. And that is where Matt Damon's protagonist comes into this.