Blomkamp apologised that the footage was incomplete and needed additional effects work but you wouldn't guess that from the reaction to the showreel. Correspondents at Comic Con are prone to hyperbole, but when a supposedly rational hack like the Guardian's Jeremy Kay describes it as "the best preview footage this semi-jaded ol' correspondent has ever seen" then you have to sit up and take notice.
You'll be pleased to note that Blomkamp is sticking with the verité-style approach from District 9, but this time he has a few more Benjamins to play with and that's going to be obvious in the scope and scale of his ambitions. The story looks like it is going to be written epic.
District 9 was very obviously inspired by apartheid, and might be one of the most powerful denunciations of the Afrikaaner policy that has ever been committed to film (strange at that may sound given that it features nine foot aliens who look like prawns). Elysium has a broader political point to make. This time, Blomkamp has set his sights on capitalism, and on the haves and have-nots that the system churns out.
Kay described the plot as being set "at some point in the not-too-distant future, [when] Earth has become an over-populated disease incubator where impoverished humans scrap away on the surface, while high above them the filthy rich have decamped to an orbiting hamster wheel of a space station where everything appears to be hunky-dory. That is, until a shaven-headed Matt Damon gets sick and must break all the rules – travel guidelines, rules of etiquette: you name it, he might just break it – to get to Elysium."
The showreel reveals Jodie Foster as a sinister overseer, patrolling a command platform on the space station. Sharlto Copley checks back in with Blomkamp but whereas in District 9 he was the object of the audience's affection, in Elysium he is going to receive their hate mail - he is not a sympathetic character at all.
The three actors joined Blomkamp on stage in Hall H. Damon said he regarded Blomkamp as among the best directors working today, while Foster revealed that D9 was "a perfect film."
Can Blomkamp beat perfection? He's going to have a damn good try.
But the Elysium coverage didn't stop in Hall H. There are some rather nice viral posters around the facility, together with a cheerful, automated "border station".
Source: The Guardian
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