Why Elysium is my favourite film of 2013 yet

I’ll be honest – there haven’t been many films in the past few months which I’ve loved. The World’s End and Alpha Papa are up there, but this summer’s blockbusters have, on the whole, been disappointing – Man of Steel lost its way, Kick-Ass 2 was a disappointment, and Star Trek Into Darkness made the grave mistake of having some scenes without Benedict Cumberbatch in. I was, however, looking forward to Elysium, the latest from South African director Neill Blomkamp. His previous feature, District 9, was a great example of relatively low-budget science fiction with a real intelligence to it. After that success, Blomkamp had more money to play with this time. And he didn’t disappoint.

The year is 2154. The Earth has been devastated by over-population, global warming, disease, and all those other bad things that’ll happen in the future. The rich have buggered off to Elysium, a paradise in space where everyone has a sharp suit, a pretty mansion, and a machine that can cure any illness. Max De Costa (Matt Damon), meanwhile, is stuck working in a grimy factory in dangerously downtrodden Los Angeles. When he’s irradiated in an industrial accident and given five days to live, Max decides it’s now or never – he’s going to Elysium, and no-one’s stopping him.

It’s a story revolving around a very strong core concept, which, despite the futuristic setting, is very much rooted in the here and now. It’s about class divide, the one percent, the importance of giving aid to poorer societies, and immigration – all very real, very contemporary issues. The exaggerated divide between Elysium and future-Earth bolsters this point and gives the film a strong political bite. This political side is prevalent throughout, but, importantly, doesn’t get in the way of the fighting and explosions and fun. It’s an adventurous thrill ride that rattles along at a good pace and strikes the balance between action and allegory very well.

Leading us through all this is Max, who, as a former car thief, is not the most cut-and-dry of heroes. Indeed, his main objective for much of the film is simply to stop himself from dying – he just happens to get caught up in the resistance movement and becomes much more of a hero. Damon’s a great choice of lead, bringing his Bourne action credentials to the fore and effectively bringing out the darker complexities of this character.

On the other side of the conflict are Jodie Foster’s power hungry Defense Secretary and Sharlto Copley’s greasily rough, heavily accented field agent, both enjoyably horrible and well-cast. I do think that the inhabitants of Elysium are perhaps one-sided – we never really get to know whether there’s anyone up there who has the slightest bit of sympathy for those down on Earth, and it would be nice to know a little bit more about Secretary Delacourt’s motivations. Nevertheless, the core story is strong enough to withstand this – I was swept away in Max’s quest, and the story retains a powerful feel of political parable.

What also helps paper over these cracks is the magnificent visual panache with which Blomkamp brings this story to the screen. Both the slums of Earth and the fields of Elysium look stunning, and the director’s talent is really brought out when we delve deeper into these vistas. From the chunky robot soldiers that police LA to the homemade weapons used by the resistance, all the technology, costumes, and assorted details of Elysium’s world really enhance the story; it’s an imaginative and impressive piece of world-building. Blomkamp shoots this kinetically and excitingly – though I do think his use of shaky-cam does get excessive, particularly in some of the later action scenes, rendering them difficult to watch.

It’s not perfect, and I do understand people who don’t agree with me, but for me, Elysium is sci-fi at its best – clever, politically charged, beautiful, and thrilling. Neill Blomkamp is a very talented director and has handled the step-up in budget from District 9 well, creating a great blockbuster without losing his edge – his films are big and fun, but ultimately about something relevant, and it excites me that these films are being made. I’ll be looking forward to what he does next. Elysium is exactly what this summer had been missing and my favourite film of the year so far.

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Book Review: Star Wars - The Blueprints

Look! I've reviewed a big, pretty book for Starburst.

Actually, I did this a few weeks ago and forgot to promote it. I've been having a characteristically busy summer and definitely haven't been spending all my evenings in either the cinema or the pub.

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Walking With The Dead

We’re over-ridden with zombies. Nazi zombies, super-speedy zombies, stripper zombies. There’s been a massive outbreak of the undead fellas in recent media, but one franchise that has stood out above the rest is The Walking Dead. Not content with being an acclaimed comic book series and an acclaimed TV adaptation with David Morrissey in, the series has recently branched into the world of episodic gaming. I recently snapped up the first season of the game when I found it heavily discounted on the PSN.

As convict-turned-zombie-slayer Lee Everett, The Walking Dead places the player in an original story set in post-zombocalyptic Georgia (if that isn’t a word, it is now). There’s a good variety to the gameplay; the player must investigate situations and solve puzzles – how to distract a street full of zombies so as to get to the key across the road, for example. As you’d expect from such a dangerous world, there’s also a fair amount of action sequences. The gameplay in the fight scenes is far from the best shooting in gaming. In fact, in the first few chapters, when it does show up, the controls needed are unnatural and awkward. The developers evidently listened to criticisms and fixed the trigger button for chapter 4 onwards (and had a shooting section right at the start to prove this). Nevertheless, this is not a shooting game, it’s a puzzle game, and the biggest puzzle of all is that of building your character’s relationships.

Yes, what I like about this series is that, like the TV series, the games focus on character, building up characters and relationships that I really care about. Sure, in the first episode, I (and about 90% of players) chose to save Carley over Doug because she’s the hot one, but after another episode, it was becoming so much more complex than that. I was really starting to form complex opinions of all the characters – including to what extent I could trust them – that informed my decisions.

And the decisions the player makes actually do seem to change the story. That’s often a problem in games – the game tells the player that their decisions are important, but it’s clear that any changes made are superficial, or alter nothing more than which of two final cut-scenes the player sees. A related problem is that games often give the player a 'right' or 'wrong' choice, with no grey areas, rendering the whole system rather bland and unengaging. I re-played BioShock recently and, as masterfully plotted as it is, it falls foul of these two errors. The Walking Dead, on the other hand, doesn’t. Though I knew the story would inevitably head towards certain plot developments, I really did feel that my choices were changing the way other characters acted, even which characters were part of my gang, and it was often difficult to decide what to do, which characters to side with – there’s a lot of grey area.

Having to form these opinions and make these decisions meant that the game demanded emotional investment. I really started to like the characters to the point that the game had a profound emotional effect on me at two major points.

The first came towards the end of chapter three. [WARNING: this paragraph has spoilers] Carley, a character I liked, was killed by the increasingly unhinged Lilly, who’d unfoundedly accused her of betraying the group. This sudden and traumatic loss was followed by the choice – do I bring the murderer back into the group’s truck to be judged, or leave her in the wilderness to die? Now, I usually try to do the 'good’ thing in games, but here, Lilly had genuinely made me angry, and I left her to die. I didn’t think “I think Lee would leave her”, I thought “I want to leave her”. That just shows how engaging the game is, how believable the characters are, how powerful character-driven games can be. And, even if my decisions don’t affect the major narrative flow and Lilly would soon have left the group by some other means, it still felt like this decision was important and resonant and revealing of me.

But this was nothing compared to the gut-wrenching final scenes of chapter five. Really, anyone who doesn’t believe video games can tell effective stories should have seen the emotional wreck I was after that. I’m glad I was playing it late at night so no-one did.

I love The Walking Dead on TV, but the game tugged at my heartstrings so much more. It’s so, so engrossing and powerful. And it doesn't even have David Morrissey in.

This is David Morrissey. He’s not in the game of The Walking Dead.

I’ll definitely come back for season 2! And I’ve never said that about a game before…

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