Sony Pictures brought three sci-fi movies into this year’s Comic Con panel – Rian Johnson’s Looper, Lens Wiseman’s Total Recall and Neill Blmokamp’s Elysium. It became obvious that almost everyone inside the Hall H was excited about Elysium; the sophomore effort from District 9’s director, Neill Blomkamp. Of course, District 9 was one of the top movies and Green Tea Movie gave it an almost perfect score back in the summer of 2009. From what we have heard so far, everyone loves the seven minute footage that was shown to them – up to the point of full appraisal been given in the aftermath. Besides couple of on-set stills and one that Green Tea Movie previewed last week, Elysium has been wrapped well by Blomkamp. Nevertheless, the director introduced the reel, cautioning it was “incredibly rough”. Credits to Anne Thompson for the following videos we have embedded.
Here’s a bit of a spoiler in regards to the plot in Elysium:
Things happen in the year 2159. Elysium is a space station where only the rich can afford to live happily; built by the wealthy ‘Coordinators’ in Armadyne Corporation. The technology is so advanced that allows them to live longer and at the same time keeping them away from health problems through bio-genetical engineering. With the existence of Elysium, it divided the human into two social classes – those in the Elysium and the rest of the human, lives in poverty in the overpopulated ruined earth.
Matt Damon’s character – Max is an ex-con, factory worker down on earth. One day he gets irradiated on job and is told that he only have five days to live. He is also told that he may get cured if he is able to go to Elysium. In order to get to Elysium, he meets up with a friend Spider who convinces him to get an implant in his head and an exo-skeleton as a pass to Elysium. However, as a trade, he is forced to accept a coveted mission to kidnap an Elysium citizen (played by Bill Fichtner) to retrieve a classified and sensitive information.
In the mean time, Secretary Rhodes (Jodie Foster) is a hard core government official who will stop at nothing to enforce the anti-immigration laws and to preserve the luxurious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium. Rhodes discovers Max’s attempted kidnapping and sends a bounty hunter (played by Sharlto Copley) to stop him.
The seven-minute footage previewed Elysium as a movie that is reminiscent to the similar dystopian world we have seen in District 9 but in a larger prespective. With so much been talked about Elysium, I hope you get very excited about Elysium too.
The film stars Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Wagner Moura, Alice Braga and Talisa Soto. It is scheduled to be released on March 1, 2013.It is written and directed by Neill Blomkamp.