Reaching for Elysium: Why the movie could have been great but wasn’t

In the “Hero’s Journey” myth, Elysium (or the Elysium Fields in Greek mythology) is the paradise that true heroes go to when they die (think of Frodo in Lord of the Rings and the hero in The Gladiator). To the ancient Greeks, Elysium was a place at the ends of the earth where heroes, favored by the gods for their altruism, went. It is a state or place of perfect happiness; the equivalent of Heaven.

Elysium is also the name given to the Earth-orbiting space station of Neill Blomkamp’s (District 9) new science fiction political allegory of the same name. Elysium is where the privileged live in luxury and perfect health (thanks to health-pods) — after they abandoned Earth to the squalor they no doubt helped create. This is not made clear enough for me and is one of the film’s major weaknesses, in my opinion (more on that below).

Earth seen from Elysium

The year is 2154 in a Los Angeles that strangely resembles the slum shanties of Johannesburg, South Africa (where Blomkamp filmed District 9).  We soon learn that Earth struggles in the mire of humanity’s waste in a state of general social strife. Abandoned by the wealthy elite (who have moved to Elysium), the rest of an overpopulated humanity lives in the squalor of abject poverty without food, healthcare, or the motivation to live. I, for one, would have liked to know a little of how humanity devolved so dramatically on a planetary scale.

A Different Hero’s Journey

From the time he was a young orphan, Max Da Costa (Matt Damon; Maxwell Perry Cotton) dreamed of going to Elysium, its impressive phantom form visible in the daytime sky. He promised his childhood love Frey (sympathetically played by Alice Braga and Valentina Giros) that he would take her there, to paradise. His mentor, a kind mother-figure nun of the orphanage, gives him the hero’s talisman (a locket with a picture of Earth inside), and prophesizes, “Es su destino hacer algo maravilla cuando tu es hombre” ("It is your destiny to do something great when you are a man"). She reminds him that when he gets to Elysium, he will see the most beautiful thing: planet Earth. “You see how beautiful it is,” she says to him as he gazes out at the ghost of Elysium in the sky. Then, as she hands him the locket with Earth inside, she adds, “look how beautiful we are from there. Never forget where you come from.”  Seen from this perspective, the planet Earth is a beautiful thing to behold.

Max is a reformed criminal who, like Blomkamp’s “workaday” anti-hero in District 9 (Sharlto Copley),

is not very hero-like until the last five minutes of the film, when he has his personal epiphany and decides to act altruistically rather than self-servingly. This is a pattern that Blomkamp has used before; the reluctant-hero (Wikus Van De Merwe) of District 9 was an unimpressive man with many obvious blemishes. A rather unlikeable man until he makes his heroic decision in the end. This is where Blomkamp’s heroes differ from most action movie heroes, who generally start their journey from higher positions on the evolutionary scale. Blomkamp’s heroes must journey farther to gain their hero-status; they are perhaps more realistic portrayals of ordinary men who finally shine under extra-ordinary circumstances. Men who we start out disliking—hating, even—but find ourselves cheering for, perhaps even crying for. Max’s behavior defines that true hero: rising from his need to save himself to his quest to save humanity—at the cost of his own life. But, as with the ordinary man, it is only when he connects a personal quest to save the daughter of his first love to his global quest to save Earth that Max transforms into the altruistic mythic hero he is destined to become. Everything came together at the film’s end, in a montage of scenes that depict the locket of the planet Earth in his dying hand (Earth is Home; save the planet), the demise of a police state, the savior of his love’s daughter, and med-pods landing on Earth to dispense aid to the dying masses.

A Story About the Planet Earth

Ironically, it is to do with our beloved planet Earth that I felt in Elysium the most discord in plot/thematic story treatment and lack of resonance. Blomkamp begins with the planet and he ends his film with the planet. The symbolism is clear: in the stylish shots of Earth seen from Elysium (and vice versa); in the strategic scenes of Max and the image in his precious locket of not his childhood love Frey but of planet Earth; and his mentor’s advice to Max, delivered in one of the most powerful scenes of the movie. Yet, Blomkamp fails to follow through to give us that visceral connection. Why is the planet so important? How is Max connected to it or anyone else, for that matter. What is Spider’s story (Wagner Moura), a latter-day Che-Guevara, who fervently leads the proletarian rebellion of Earth? Who, why and how did the planet come to be so destroyed? There is not one ounce of suggestion, backstory or context. This is an important consideration; because without it, instead of feeling total resolution and redemption in the end, I felt a disconnect to those masses being helped and even some distrust in their fate and direction. Instead of feeling true victory, I felt ambivalence.  

Called a “sci-fi socialist film” by P.J. Gladnick of Newsbusters.org, Elysium is clearly an attempt at

examining and dramatizing the social segregation of humanity and economic fascism: a dystopia that promises commentary on social and economic issues in society today. However, I felt that its delivery was compromised by Blomkamp’s choice to focus more on action tech at the expense of good backstory, context and empathic character development. I’m not saying that it’s a bad story. It is a very good story; it’s just that it could have been a great story. The heart of the story—delivered through the main protagonist—lacks the global connection it could have had. This is not, as some reviewers suggest, due to any infirmity of the hero, his antagonists, or lack of symbolism (of which there is much), but the lack of context, backstory and richness of setting (I’m not talking about the visible setting, which was spectacular, elegant and stylish). It comes back to how each character relates to “home”, the planet, and to each other.

Matt Goldberg of Collider.com says that, “Elysium‘s message about economic inequality is couched in a finely-drawn sci-fi world, but the power of that message becomes diminished when we cease to care about the messenger.” Detroit News Tom Long added that, “Elysium is the sort of big, noisy sci-fi film that seems to want to say something but opts instead to concentrate on fight scenes involving gimmickry.” While I appreciated the depth and breadth of Blomkamp’s references to pop culture from an Armani-clad female Darth Vader to the Judeo-Christian references and symbolism, it just didn’t hold its promise.

What began as a promising exploration about an important social issue, devolved into a sequence of ever-escalating gratuitous gore and violence—clearly aimed for a different audience. 

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit www.ninamunteanu.me. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for more about her writing.

How to Design a Lunar Exploration Station Without a PhD

Speaking of interviews (in my last post), here's one I did a while ago with two young students with great promise for our space program (this interview first appeared in Beyond Centauri):

You don’t need to be an adult to assemble and run a lunar exploration station (LES) says Michael Arbeider, age 12. All you need is lots of imagination, a loyal and capable imaginary crew and good tools like a helpful teacher and Google, of course.

When I discovered that Michael Arbeider and his school buddy, Steve Da Costa, designed a Lunar Exploration Station, I interviewed them and here’s what they had to say:

NM: So, what prompted you boys to embark on this fascinating venture?

Both: Our teacher!

MA: Our Grade six teacher, Mrs. Cawker.

SDC: Yeah, she did it as part of the curriculum requirement on space and technology.

NM: So, tell me a little about this station. What were your criteria?

MA: Well, we had to come up with a design for the station and to run it for one month with a small team of specialists.

SDC: We had to draw up a team of ten specialists to pilot the spacecraft to the moon and run the lunar station. They had to run experiments and carry out the mission.

NM: Which was?

MA: To find fuel. And to figure out if it was efficient to run a full mining operation there.

NM: And did the criteria include limitations? Like space or time or money?

SDC: We had to transport everything the crew would need to live there for a month. We had to come up with what supplies and technology we would need to bring with us. It had to be existing technology that we already have and use in closed environments like spacecraft and submarines.

MA: We were given 15 squares to represent the cargo hold of our spaceship. The teacher gave us the values that things like people, air, water, technology, outdoor survival and moon transportation would take up and we had to decide how much of everything to take.

NM: How did you do your research for all this?

MA: We used Google mostly, because the internet has the most current information on available technologies. We also used Encarta.

NM: Tell me a little about your station. How will you get your food? Do you bring it all with you?

SDC: Only a week’s worth. The rest of the time we’ll get our food through the hydroponics greenhouse. It will be better than a regular greenhouse because it uses water, which is lighter and will be easier to transport. The water is also filled with nutrients, which will make the plants grow much faster. We’ll grow protein-rich soy bean, cabbage, lettuce, carrots, spinach, tomatoes and beans. The greenhouse is filled with super clean water and we’ll use it for our drinking water.

NM: How will you run your station? How will you generate power?

MA: We’ll use solar panels, which will work well on the moon because there’s no atmosphere or clouds to block out the sun’s rays. Our panels will be positioned in a broad area to catch more of the sun’s rays as it rises and sets on the moon. Our panels have special light sensors on them so they’ll activate only when the sun reaches them. The electical battery attaches to the solar panels to store power to provide a constant source of electricity even when the panels are in the dark.

SDC: We’ll also use hydrogen power cells.

NM: As in hydrogen fuel cells?

SDC: Eh, yeah. For power and to create super clean water for drinking. The hydrogen cells work like a battery. They do this by merging hydrogen and oxygen in a container with a conductor in the center. When hydrogen and oxygen merge, they create a small electric charge that can be collected by the conductor and sent to our battery. The benefit to hydrogen power is that it merges the hydrogen and oxygen separated from our dirty water by algae, to create water, so it’s two things in one: a water cleanser and a source of power for our station.

NM: So the algae split the water using sunlight?

SDC: Yeah. Hydrogen is then collected and transported as a compressed gas to the fuel cells. The hydrogen cells also provide us with the hydrogen for the explosives we need to do the mining.

MA: The station will use two kinds of power, hydraulic and electrical. The hydraulic power rams operate mechanical things like doors and hatches and the electrical power will handle all the other stuff like the lights, heat, air purification and the rover.

NM: What about the air? How will you get it and how will you keep it usable?

MA: We’ll bring the air with us. It’s part of our original payload, like the hydroponic unit and the technology. The air will be cleaned through a filter that removes the dirt particles and carbon dioxide. Our air cleaner does this by retrieving the dirty air from our station sent in through vents and air ducts. When the air passes through the filter, it gets cleaned and sent back into our station so it can be used again. Our air cleaner lets us use the same air over and over again. Just like spaceships that go to the moon do right now.

NM: What about your mission, to find fuel sources to mine and refine and research the feasibility of this venture?

MA: That’s a good question. You first, Steve.

SDC: No, you first. I insist.

NM: Well, what’s this “Labydo Do it Fast” I see marked on your schematic?

MA: It’s a rock/fuel research and excavation station. The Labydo has a fuel tester that figures out the kind and quality of the fossil fuel that we find, a rock research unit to see where we should plant the explosives and a pilot refinery to see if the rocks are refinable.

SDC: We’ll also use a rover to get to our excavation sites in the mining tunnels that we make. A battery operates the rover because gasoline won’t work in almost zero gravity. The rover, which weighs 465 pounds on Earth, would only weigh 72 lb on the moon.

MA: The miners will use space suits in the underground tunnels. They’ll be stored with the rover and airlocked. Besides air, the space suits will also provide heat and cooling in the fingertips.

NM: When you’re not working, how will you amuse yourselves?

MA: We’ll have work-out stations to stay in shape because of the low gravity. And see these? (He points to the schematic). They’re bean bag chairs: they serve two purposes, to sit on and in bean bag wars.

NM: Eh, sounds like fun. And therapeutic. What about your crew? Who will they be?

MA: Well, there’s Steve and I, of course. I’ll be captain of the craft, mission specialist and social coordinator. Steve, who’ll be second in command, will serve as chief mechanical and robotics engineer and games specialist.

NM: Ah, like bingo?…

Both: Huh?

SDC: And then there’s Marie Langlios, the botanist and doctor; Hank Simpson, the navigator and geologist; Kenney Cartmen, the explosive devices expert; Nefertiti Tut, the payload specialist, assistant miner and a fossil fuel refiner; Homer Hill, our electronic systems specialist; Andrea Griffin, our rover technologist; and Franko Antenelli, our communications specialist …

MA: Yeah, and don’t forget Jack Affro, the jack-of-all trades.

MN: As in your janitor and maybe the most important person on your mission?

Both: Gee, we never thought of that . . .

Which is why I’m doing the interviewing…

You can find the original url for the images at the following sources in order of image appearance: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit www.ninamunteanu.me. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for more about her writing.