In Greek mythology, the Elysian Fields is where heroes who were granted immortality by the gods were sent.
In the movie Elysium, it is a high-tech space station where the very wealthy live and have access to all the luxuries that can be afforded, including medical machines that offer instant cures to most medical conditions.
Everyone else lives below on the overpopulated, disease ridden “Third World slum” that Earth has become.
Those who maintain Elysium will stop at nothing to enforce the anti-immigration laws and preserve their citizens’ lifestyle, even destroying ships that attempt to get there.
Matt Damon stars as a factory worker who contracts cancer after an industrial accident and has five days to get to the space station in order to be cured. In order to do so he must don a powerful exoskeleton and kidnap a rich businessman in order to hijack his way into Elysium.
However, he must go up against the station’s secretary of defence (Jodie Foster) and her violent secret police forces.
Elysium is written and directed by Vancouver-based but South African born Neill Blomkamp, whose previous movie, District 9, explored other political sociological and political themes. Even though it looks similar to both Oblivion and After Earth, I think it will be better than both and offer a different experience.
Disney originally planned to do a direct to video release of its Cars spin-off called Planes, but were so impressed with the finished product that they decided to do a theatrical release as well.
This is not the first time this has happened. Toy Story 2 was originally planned as a video only release and look what it did at the box office.
While Planes is not expected to do the business that Toy Story 2 did, it still looks charming. It is the story of a crop dusting plane with dreams of competing as a high-flying air racer but two things stand in his way: He is not built for racing and has an ironical fear of heights.
With the help of a seasoned aviator, he hopes to overcome his deficiencies. The talented voice cast includes Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Brad Garrett, Teri Hatcher, Cedric the Entertainer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, John Cleese and expect some Top Gun in-jokes as Val Kilmer and Anthony Edwards are the voices of two F/A-18E Super Hornets (which replaced the F-14 Tomcat featured in Top Gun).
The two other new movies this week opened on Wednesday. We’re the Millers is a comedy starring Jason Sudeikis as a drug dealer who hires stripper Jennifer Aniston and two teenagers to be his family with the hopes that the charade will help him smuggle an RV full of pot from Mexico to the United States.
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters is a sequel that sees the son of Poseidon return with his demigod friends to help fulfill his destiny and retrieve the Golden Fleece.
