Today a new clip from Neil Blomkamp’s new sci-fi epic Elysium was released featuring Matt Damon’s chaacter Max De Costa interacting with a robot that couldn’t be any less interested. After watching, we couldn’t help but feel Max’s frustrations as the scene mirrors the annoyances felt by people in their everyday lives attempting to use convoluted and inconvenient automated phone services. This mini allegory isn’t the only parallel Elysium’s future draws with the contemporary world though.
The movie is set in 2154 and seeks to highlight a stark class divide with the rich residing on Elysium, a Stanford torus high tech utopian space station free from crime, war, poverty and disease, while the lower class struggles to survive on the overpopulated ruins of Earth below. Elysium’s populace lives a lavish life of luxury with medical machines that can cure any ailment while the citizens of Earth desperately attempt to escape their nightmarish existence. Anti-immigration laws are firmly enforced by Elysium’s powers that be and unauthorised ships that try to dock on the station are destroyed.
Matt Damon’s character Max is an Earth citizen suffering from cancer and has only five days to make it to Elysium to find a cure. He equips himself with a powerful exoskeleton and formulates a plan to steal the identity of a rich businessman. In order to infiltrate the space station, Max must first defeat the Elysium security force led by the Secretary Delacourt played by Jodie Foster and her head of the secret police played by Sharlto Copley (of District 9 fame).
Directed by Neill Blomkamp and starring Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley and Alice Braga, Elysium will see a US release on August 9th 2013 and a UK release on August 23rd 2013.
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