Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: (from IMDB) Set in the year 2154, where the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth, a man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds.
About: This is Neill Blomkamp’s second feature film. Blomkamp came to prominence when Peter Jackson surprisingly picked him for the gigantic task of directing the Halo movie, at the time the biggest project in Hollywood. That film fell through, but not to worry. Blomkamp would go on to direct the sleeper hit, District 9. He’s since been courted by just about everyone, all of them wanting him to direct their films. But Blomkamp has said he’s only interested in making his own stuff, which is why he went off and made this movie. However, Blomkamp is definitely playing with more money here (and a bigger star) so the pressure is much bigger this time around. The film finished #1 at the box office this weekend with 30 million, which is good. But it is 8 million less than District 9 opened with three years ago. Whereas with D9, Blomkamp co-wrote the film with writer Terri Tatchell, he went it alone on Elysium. Blomkamp is already hard at work on his next project, Chappie, which is said to be a sci-fi comedy.
Writer: Neill Blomkamp
Details: 109 minutes (119 pages)
I love Neill Blomkamp. I want to swap cameras with him. I want to hang out all day on set with him and share a laugh when something goes wrong. I want him to say, “Hey Carson, where are you sitting,” when it’s lunchtime, then follow me to my table. He’ll then ask me, “What did you think about that shot, Carz?” “It was good, Neill,” I’d say, “But you probably could’ve gone a little lower with the angle.” “Jiminy Wax, Carz, that’s exactly what I was thinking. You should be directing these movies. Not me.” “Aww, stop it, Neill. You’re just saying that.” Yeah, I’m a little bit creepy when it comes to Neill Blomkamp, I admit it.
Which is why my Elysium experience was so confusing. It started out great. Matt Damon’s walking through a gritty, ugly futuristic Los Angeles. Robot police are roughing him up. Mood-stabilizing pills are spat out at you if you look even mildly depressed. It’s exactly what I see 2152 looking like. For a good 15 minutes, I was thinking: “This is it. This is his masterpiece. As of this moment, I’m marking this as genius.” There is nobody, right now, who creates a more honest and interesting futuristic world than Neill Blomkamp.
But then little choices here and there began to bother me. Before I get into those though, here’s a quick summary of the story: So there’s this guy, Max (played by Matt Damon) who lives in the slums of LA in the 22nd century. Everybody is poor here. Everyone is struggling. We’ve ripped our planet apart and turned it into one giant trash-bin (without the lavender-scented trash bags).
One of the only ways to make it in a world like this is crime. Which is exactly what Max did for awhile. But now he wants to leave that world. He wants to earn an honest living (likability alert – We like characters who are trying to turn their life around!). But one day at his factory job, a mishap leads to him getting severe radiation poisoning. Which means Max will be dead within five days.
There’s only one way to survive a disease of this magnitude. Get to Elysium. Elysium is a giant space station that houses only the rich people. Realizing the earth was fucked a long time ago, the richies built this utopia for themselves so they could play polo whenever they wanted and build castles for their pets. Oh, and because all these people are so damn rich and it’s the future, they have these MRI like machines that instantly cure them of any disease.
Unfortunately, getting to Elysium requires knowing a person or two, and to hitch a ride, Max will have to do one last job (a data heist). What he doesn’t know is that the heist gives him super sensitive information about an impending coup up on Elysium. Which means that just about everyone with a gun wants a piece of him. This leads to the inevitable question: Can Matt Damon save the world!?
Elysium was over-themed. The theme of this movie was brought up every two minutes, I swear. The poor are fucked. The rich are set. And it’s not fair. This is explored mainly through the fact that if poor people get sick, they die. If rich people get sick, they cure themselves.
Which is fine. It’s important to explore a theme in your script. But we’re just bombarded with this theme throughout the screenplay. A woman escapes onto Elysium, runs her daughter to a medic-machine. It cures her. Matt Damon gets sick. He’s told he’s dead in 5 days. We meet the romantic interest, a nurse, who has a daughter who’s dying of cancer. We have shots inside the hospital of hundreds of minorities dying. Then we have shots of the city, where everyone looks sick and diseased. (spoiler) Then we get the ending, with all the smiling, happy, running kids laughing as their feet splash through the water on their way to the newly distributed medical machines. It’s laid on REALLY thick.
One of the most important things about writing is to be invisible. Whatever you’re pushing, whether it be a setup to a later payoff, a plot twist, a theme, an act break – The audience (or reader) must never know that that’s what you’re doing. They should never think of the writer writing his plot twist or his theme. All of that stuff must feel invisible. Therefore, if you’re sloppy with any of these things or push them too hard, it becomes obvious to the audience what you’re doing and they check out.
What complicates this is that each person is different. Person A might need you to mention your theme four times before they get it while Person B might only need you to mention it twice. It’s why you can’t please all the people all the time. No matter what you do, someone’s always going to say there was “not enough” while someone else will say there was “too much.” So figuring out that balance is always one of the hardest things about writing.
But I just felt Blomkamp got out of hand here. By the end, it was like, “We get it! This is like the Mexico border! Rich Americans have health care. Poor people don’t.” I wish he would’ve played around with the plot more and gone with something a little less on-the-nose.
In addition to this, the script gears had to work way too hard to keep the plot moving. There seemed to be four storylines. Max getting radiation poisoning. The Nurse and her dying daughter. Jodie Foster’s secret coup. And bad guy Agent Kruger. Getting to a point where Matt Damon ALONG with the bad guy would be going up to Elysium WITH this little girl so Max could save her felt like every plot gear on the planet was grinding to make it happen. I could see fingers typing: “Okay, we need to get Max to the nurse’s apartment so Kruger can track them there, take them, use them as bait to draw Max in, then also have Spider set up the reboot process on Elysium since the girl doesn’t have citizenship on Elysium and therefore won’t be accepted by the machines…”
It felt more like a writer trying to find his way to his destination than a smooth, natural story. That clunkiness is something you can only solve with tons of rewrites.
I also had a couple more issues. Agent Kruger, our villain, felt very… cliché. He was just this angry dude. There was no subtlety to him. There was no motivation behind his actions. He was just your garden-variety, crazy, loud, angry villain. Those kinds of characters are fun to play, I’m sure. But I couldn’t even begin to tell you why Kruger was the way he was. Why he had weird metal things in his skin. Why he randomly carried around a samurai sword in the year 2152. Why he gets mad when his face regeneration makes him more handsome. Villains need to be original and make sense. I didn’t get either of those from this character.
And finally, I was so confused by Max’s suit! I thought it was going to turn him into superman. That thing was splashed all over the posters and trailers and for good reason. It looked awesome! So imagine my disappointment when it only made him… a teensy-tiny bit stronger. In fact, there were times where I didn’t even know if it made him stronger. There was this whole unclear, complicated thing with his medication that made him weak. So he was weak from the radiation and medication. But the suit made him strong. So did those two things cancel each other out and just make him regular strength?? The rules of the universe weren’t clear. And that’s one of the first things you gotta get right in sci-fi. The rules of your universe MUST BE CLEAR (that’s one of the reasons Matrix was so good. They worked hard to make sure you understood the rules).
Now it may sound like I hated Elysium. But I didn’t! No amount of writing quibbles could undermine the awesomeness of this world Blomkamp created. It just looked so damn real. I mean, I see those fucking robots policing our streets someday for sure. I see future Los Angeles looking EXACTLY like that.
The story also had a really strong pull to it – Elysium itself! Despite the clunky plot elements, I WANTED them to get to Elysium badly. I wanted to see that awesome spinning wheel and the outrageous mansions and the outright beauty of this artificial world. Also, because the CHARACTERS wanted to get there so badly, I wanted to get there badly. I’m a sucker for a big goal with high stakes and Elysium’s got that (the main character’s dying and must get somewhere to save his life!). It kept us interested until the end. Still, this was a much better movie than script. Neill’s cinematic vision saved a screenplay that probably needed 4-5 more drafts.
Script rating:
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
Movie rating:
[ ] what the hell did I just see?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The early drafts are where you figure out the logistics of your plot. The rewrites are where you smooth those logistics out. If you stop 4-5 rewrites short, your plot’s going to feel that way. It’s going to feel mechanical and “written.” Keep rewriting until your entire story feels effortless.
