3. The Amazing Face-Rebuilding Machine In Elysium
Unlike most of the films this summer, Neill Blomkamp's Elysium was meant to be a serious science fiction morality tale about the disparity between the rich and poor in a decimated future Earth. Blomkamp had Big Ideas wrapped in a slick, tough-minded sci-fi skin. It's the same formula that worked so well for him in his debut, the astonishing District 9. For most of the film Blomkamp manages to keep the film afloat despite Jodie Foster's career-worst performance (nice accents, Jodie!) as Elysium's steely Secretary of Defense Jessica Delacourt. Matt Damon's charisma and natural humor as hero Max Da Costa help lighten the serious tone a bit, and Sharlto Copley is convincingly ruthless as Delacourt's rat-like enforcer Kruger. The first half of the film is nearly pitch-perfect. Then Damon's Max is irradiated to the point of nearly dying, and his only hope is to leave the Earth and reach the orbiting space station Elysium where magical medical pods can cure him. To do this, he is ludicrously fitted with a mechanical exoskeleton (a severe operation that apparently only requires hours of recovery) and sent to the station with Copley's nasty sniper in pursuit. During the third-act battle between Max, Kruger's face is blown off by an exploding grenade. We see it in full detail -- nothing left except a skull and the brain inside. So Kruger's henchmen put him into one of Elysium's magical medical pods, which then proceeds to MAGICALLY REFORM KRUGER'S FACE. The special effects involved to visualize this are as bad as the concept itself. Within moments, Kruger's entire face is reconstructed and he's ready for action. Given that the film is supposed to feature HUMAN BEINGS in a not-too-distant future, it's hard to accept the idea that (a) such a machine could EVER be invented, (b) that it could EVER accurately reproduce someone's entire face, and (c) that anyone could recover from such a procedure after sustaining major trauma in such an effortless way. The moment completely destroys the careful tone Blomkamp spent the previous hour building, and ruins the overblown conclusion. What a disappointing moment from a film that should've been better than that.