Grade: C-
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a huge scifi fan. Unfortunately that means I’m really hard on scifi movies. They have to be outstanding for me to give them a good rating. Unfortunately Elysium orbits a long, LONG, way from outstanding. If you’re not a particularly big scifi fan anyway then you may not notice the plot conveniences that make this story possible.
Aside from a lackluster story the movie is pretty good. It’s visually impressive, from the unending slums of Los Angeles to the paradise of Elysium. The fight scenes were better than average. Although the style of the fight scenes is mostly just brutal punching and kicking. There’s nothing elegant about the style of the fighting.
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Overall the acting is quite good and Matt Damon is, rather predictably, top notch.
The directing and editing of the movie is good. I never thought the story was dragging on too long. Most importantly the story is easy to follow. When some important information about how things work is delivered it’s done very obviously.
[ spoilers below ]As I mentioned, my grip about the movie is all of the conveniences that make the story possible. Such as, they have been plotting to brain-jack someone from Elysium for a long time and the first time they do it they end up with someone with absolutely unique information that could alter everything about how Elysium works?
And I didn’t understand how the the businessman wrote some computer code but it was only in his head? We saw it on the monitor. He couldn’t just email it to Elysium? 🙂
And they downloaded the information from the businessman’s head, which didn’t kill him – well, the guy died but not because of that. But later when they have to download it from Max it’s going to kill him. What? How’s that work? It isn’t like they have to remove something from Max. They’re just reading something in his brain.
What people are saying about the RunPee app.
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I’ve been using RunPee for a few years now and it’s basically a requirement of going to the movies for me. The best part of course are the “pee times” that give you cues, synopses and times for when you can pee without missing the most important parts of the movie. There is also information about the credits- length, extras and if there are any extra scenes at the wayyy end. Super helpful to just know that it is or isn’t worth staying. There is a timer function that will buzz your phone when it’s a good time to pee. I also appreciate that the app is very conscientious about it being an app you use in a theater- dark background, all silent alarms etc. I will always enjoy the experience of the theater even if I could watch things at home- but I’ve even used it at home to check for things like after credit scenes or other information too.
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And the medical regeneration pod-thingys were ridiculous. They did a decent job of realism on most everything else, but those medical pods worked way too fast and it was more like magic than technology. They should have come up with a more believable medical pod.
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Aspiring author. Would like to finish his “Zombie Revelations” trilogy if he could break away for working on RunPee and the cottage he’s building for RunPee Mom.
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