1. Elysium
Another amazing Neil Blomkamp film, in a similar vein to District 9, without the reorganized digital Halo biology. This film focuses on a basic concept in humanity. The ability to give and help your fellow man, but disregard anothers needs for personal gain, profit, or simply because you don't give a shit. Because certain types of people are beneath you. Quite fascinatingly some of the dialogue in the film is based on completely aggressive stances toward people as completely expendable, and only useful for whatever general labor they have in their lives. Mostly to benefit those in power. Point in fact, one great scene has a robot explain to Matt Damons character that "...In 5 days time, you will die." then hands him a form to sign to issue him some pills, and instructs him that the pills are extremely potent "...will allow you to function normally, until death, please take one with each meal". Pretty straight forward, we need you to work until you die. The separation of those in power from the rest of humanity is done via a massive ring space station, oddly enough, if you disregard the star configuration across it's center, the concept and configuration of this station is pretty much inspired by the Halo Ring...as you read earlier, Mr. Blomkamp did recycle Halo production materials for District 9. It wouldn't surprise me if a larger portion of the film has more of Halo's DNA embedded within. This film does touch upon a level of greed, disdain, prejudice, and class system. Specifically one that shows extreme avarice toward their fellow man from those that live in opulence on the station. While the bulk of the film we are looking at a wasteland, the station visible above has technology that can heal the sick, with a simple pass of its light. Not unlike a flatbed scanner...get in, lay down, and let the machine heal you. We saw it accomplish the removal of cancers in the film in seconds. Obviously this plot in the story is supposed to make us angry, why else would such a simple process be denied to anyone on the earth? On one level its somewhere ridiculous to pressume such simple, cheap and seemingly free tech would be kept from the world at large. But there is a lot of contextual information that leads you to believe there are deeper questions to ask. You'll have to watch the film and learn that for yourself.
E.F. Camacho
Contributor
I'm a writer, a published author, and editor for a small independent publishing house. I'm an award winning producer of independent media, and I get to edit books, screenplays, and comics in my day to day. I love working on independent film & games, during my down time, as well as reviewing films while gobbling down milk duds (it's an addiction, I know). I've been called "Geek-Prime" among my peers for all the fandoms I work in, and I wear that title proudly. It's a passion, and an exercise in my growing profession, to get to write about what I love. Which happens to be a little of everything. But mostly film, comics, horror, games, anime, literature, and life. I do write about academic material, like politics, medicine, physics, and mathematics too. But for the most part, I like to keep things down to earth and simple. Follow me on Twitter & Facebook
See more from
E.F.