"Elysium": Matt Damon Shoots His Way to Universal Health Care

[Quixote1818]

Elysium
TriStar Pictures
109 minutes

"Elysium doesn't have a message," Neill Blomkamp, the film's writer/director, told Wired recently. The South African-Canadian filmmaker (famous for Academy Award Best Picture nominee District 9) also discussed how he wasn't a fan of people drawing parallels between the Occupy movement and his new movie.

"It's not just hypocritical to say this movie isn't political, it's hilarious," Dan Gainor of the conservative Media Research Center told Fox News in response. "This is just the latest of several Hollywood movies this year to try and co-opt Occupy Wall Street plotlines into their films." Other right-leaning observers have voiced similar sentiments. Big Hollywood, Breitbart.com's pop-culture wing, has been rooting for the film to fail. Newsmax has dubbed the film, "Matt Damon's Sci-Fi Socialism" and "heavy-handed political propaganda."

Some of the conservative hate directed at Elysium's political content, real and imagined, is (as you can guess) a bit much. However, it's odd that Blomkamp would claim his film does not have a "message." His sci-fi action flick is deeply explicitly and pervasively political. It gets its two cents in on global poverty, immigration, access to health care, and social mobility, all the while affording Matt Damon plenty of room to maim and explode bad guys.

More:

http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2013/08/elysium-matt-damon-neill-blomkamp-politics

[EOTE]

1. I look forward to seeing this, I LOVED "District 9".

But I do think Blomkamp is being disingenuous when he says the movie doesn't have a message. From what I've heard about the film, its message is a very important and timely one.

[SomethingFishy]

2. I would have liked to see his face and heard his tone

when he claimed that. I'm sure there was some sarcasm there... It's not like there was a way to miss the message in District 9. Perhaps he was playing with the interviewer...

[EOTE]

4. True, text can be a poor way to convey a message. nt

[Quixote1818]

5. If Blomkamp admits it has a political message he risks losing half the audience

He is playing it just right and hopefully it will have more impact by bringing in more people who really need to see the message.

I am really looking forward to it as well! Going in just a few hours.

[a kennedy]

7. I loved District 9 also, it's one of a few movies I've got on DVD and will watch a lot.....

[millennialmax]

3. Awww, they haven't been this upset since The Lorax.

[olddots]

6. Who knows what is behind all this

I'm gonna see this movie twice at full price for 2 reasons =1 it's probably excellent and number 2 fuck those right wing fascist turd maggot artless sub human .........(don't get me started )

[RedCappedBandit]

8. It was a good movie.

Maybe it doesn't have a 'message'.

Reality just has a liberal bias. There are clear similarities between the film's wealth inequality and that of our world.

[CJCRANE]

9. RWers always complain about a slanted message

without discussing the real merits of the message.

Like the book "Zealot" which talks about how Jesus was a fighter for the poor and dispossessed but Fox News complained because it was written by a muslim, they never addressed the actual message of the book, or the fact that it's pretty obvious that that was part of Jesus' mission.

[LWolf]

10. "health care movies with guns"

I wasn't planning to see it. While I like Damon's politics, I don't like violence, and I don't like graphic violence in movies. This makes me want to see it, just to add to the box office for Dan Gainor's benefit.

I'll have to set up the usual protocol: go with my son or grandson or both, and they'll tell me when it's safe to uncover my eyes, because I really can't watch graphic violence, even when I know it's not real.

"It's okay to look now, Mom."