Movie review: “Elysium” is implausible, because it’s based on a medical device manufacturer that does not employ any salespeople
Elysium has too many loud, noisy action scenes, and not enough calm, quiet, reflective scenes of thoughtful contemplation. It didn’t have any lines of dialogue that I can see myself wanting to quote in the future. None of the characters were particularly interesting. And if I was a child, I couldn’t see myself wanting to buy any of the action figures that might be based on this movie.
The machine that instantly cures cancer seems perfectly plausible. However, in the entire movie, we never find out the name of the corporation that manufactures this machine. And apparently, there is no team of trained salespeople traveling all over the world trying to sell this machine to hospitals in big cities. And that brings up the most unrealistic thing about this movie: Since when has there ever been a medical device manufacturer that did not employ any salespeople?
In this movie, there is no Bill Gates-type character who donates huge amounts of his own money to help the poor get medical care. In this movie, there are no rich people who massage their supersized egos by having entire hospital wings named in honor of their massive donations.
While it’s easy for me to imagine that a bunch of rich people would want to live in their own private space station, there’s no way that every rich person would want to live there – there would always be some holdouts who preferred to remain on earth. But in this movie, there are no holdouts.
If they wanted to make a point about poor people not being able to afford health care, the following would have been a lot more realistic: a poor person gets cancer. They go to the hospital, where one of these machines instantly cures their cancer. Then they get a ridiculously large bill that they could never possibly afford to pay. They lose their house. Their life savings is wiped out. They declare bankruptcy. That would be realistic.
But the idea that on the entire earth, there wouldn’t be even one hospital that had one of these machines, is completely ridiculous.