[Zhang Fei]

Elysium is apparently a parable about how the open borders morons who think they can hide behind high walls and private security will eventually be buried by the coming deluge. But the critics are treating it as a live action version of Occupy Wall Street's neo-Bolshevik fantasies.

[Rummyfan]

...Blomkamp, whose mother dragged the family off from Johannesburg to Vancouver after a 17-year-old friend was shot dead by black carjackers...

At least his mother had the good sense to get her family out of South Africa.

[Mercat]

18 years ago we took our three kids to San Diego. They were all teenagers at the time. We rented an RV and parked in a resort close to Mission Bay. The reason for the trip was our nephew’s wedding. It was in Encinitas, Mexico, a few hours drive south at a fancy resort. So our kids got to see the stark difference between Mexico and San Diego. I’ve been back to San Diego since a few times and it’s gone down hill a bit but back in the 90s it was pristine. Being young, they were liberals and worried about the closed border. I simply said that fine, we can open the border but that it would probably make San Diego more like Mexico than the other way around. I think they got the message.

[BO Stinkss]

Matt Damon will not get $1 from me.

[Resolute Conservative]

I love the irony that the libs that vote for this stuff (or tacitly let it happen) think that once a fundamental change occurs in our culture (like Mexican taking over) that they will be accepted and loved for making the change. On the contrary they will be lined up with the rest of us for relocation and reeducation.

[newheart]

I don’t know which movie the reviewer saw, but it wasn’t the one my son and I sat through last Sunday afternoon.

Damon, who despite his political lunacy, can be a decent actor when cast appropriately, seemed to be sleepwalking. Jodie Foster, who can also be a terrific actor, tried to do some kind of accent (sounded like some cross between French and Afrikaans). Her focus on the accent ruined her timing and she completely stumbles through the film.

Maybe there was some anti-open borders message, but from what I saw, there was only one message that came through in the film: Rich people bad; poor people good.

And for the record, they pretty much ignored the laws of physics.

I went with my other son to see Percy Jackson last night, and despite it being a cheesy kids movie, for my money it was much better than Elysium.

[Proud_texan]

I dunno, I haven’t seen it, might catch it on DVD from Netflix but that’s a hike away but ya know, I can’t help but think that while there are obvious differences in the story line is there really all that much difference in how things were in Soylent Green.

[grania]

my head is spinning....from the reviews. This movie starts with the premise of a future world in which 1% of the population has acquired all of the wealth and power and has isolated itself from the overpopulated and destroyed world. Since they have no use for the unsustainable population, they hold their survival and well being in low regard.

HG Wells TIME MACHINE and many other movies did it better, in that they follow through on the premise with a vision of where it leads. Instead this movie becomes a Hollyweird shoot-'em-up. It never does resolve the issue of what's going to happen to the other 99% when the elite are blown up.

Better choices...WE'RE THE MILLERS is totally not about politics or visions of the future. It's raunchy, crude, hilarious, and its plot is actually rational compared to ELYSIUM. Rent TIME MACHINE for a better vision of where the future is going. Or rent IDIOCRACY, a very funny sci-fi (documentary?) about a nation that's deteriorated so badly that someone such as Obama could become President (and it was filmed before Obama's time)

JMHO

[Cincinatus]

Interesting take, but I still won’t patronize it. I’ll see it when it eventually comes to cable.

[rusty schucklefurd]

I’m not equating Blomkamp with the morality of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, but the hypocracy of the left-wing media is the same.

Sanger was an avid proponent of social Darwinism and eugenics. One of the reasons she so strongly promoted birth control, especially among minorities, was because she believed that minorities were “inferior races”, and that their birthrates needed to be curbed for the good of society.

Somehow, that aspect of Sanger’s beliefs are never reported on by the media.

[IMR 4350]

Just this last week the Obama adm announced it’s attempt to create “Elysium” by having HUD start moving the inner city trash out to the suburbs which would allow left wing elitist to move into the inner cities.

[grundle]

Gangsters recruit Max as the only man competent and motivated enough to infiltrate Elysium (which looks oddly like Damon’s mansions in Miami and Pacific Palisades) and take down its power structure.

Yep. I saw the movie, and the rich people's houses on the space station do indeed look a lot like Matt Damon's homes which are linked to in the article. I tried to post pictures of both of his homes, but only one showed up in the preview. I'm guessing that Damon keeps his doors locked, and does not want the open borders that he advocates in the movie. Of course he also speaks out in favor of the public schools while sending his own children to private school.

[x]

Blomkamp isn't a rightist any more than he's a leftist. I think he doesn't want to be pigeonholed politically, and his pictures don't reduce to a one-sided political point.

If that's right, and we don't have that much to go on so far, then he's like Ridley Scott. Bladerunner didn't have a single "message" or either, but had different "messages" that different people would pick up on in different ways.