Elysium

[B5C]

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Set in the year 2159, where the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth, a man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds.

Finally a good movie which supports class warfare against the rich. Also this from the creators of "District 9." Which will means this will be a good movie for entertainment, but an awesome story.

I commentor said it best on io9.com:

This really could happen one day. It's a class warfare flick I can actually believe in. The flight of the privileged turns the entire Earth into a slum. Just like white flight destroyed the urban core of many cities during the 50s, 60s and 70s. The rich and powerful leave the Earth and the largely superfluous working classes with a ruined economy and a lot of environmental damage to clean up and deal with. Just like they've been doing for about 200 years now.

And it's all a Libertopian's wet dream. This is what they want to do to the rest of us. ~ Corpore Metal

[TheGodlessUtopian]

While it looks interesting and I will probably see it eventually I heard one commentator describe it as "a film for the 99%". If such is the case than I am sure it will be simply another (false) progressive jaunt deriding corporate evils while glossing over actual class dynamics. I could be wrong but generally this is what these liberal Hollywood movies do: make some generic evil rich elite, some generic poverty stricken segment, then release it with a plot tailor made to calm populist outrage.

[KurtFF8]

Also this from the creators of "District 9." Which will means this will be a good movie for entertainment, but an awesome story

Politically: District 9 failed very hard. There were so many problems in terms of the depiction of race and class in that movie, that the Left should distance itself wholly from any notion of praising D9.

This will definitely lower my expectations for this film in question.

[aristos]

Let me get this straight, just so we all understand:
a movie that posits how if the super rich depart the earth to live in a space bubble the entire civilization would collapse is now being endorsed by communists?

Or am I not understanding something?

[Tenka]

Let me get this straight, just so we all understand:
a movie that posits how if the super rich depart the earth to live in a space bubble the entire civilization would collapse is now being endorsed by communists?

Or am I not understanding something?

Yes. It is analogous to White Flight. Basically, places under a Capitalist order turn to slums when the moneyed leave, and the state's resources follow them. Probably just the tip of the iceberg but I'm not well-versed in history.

[Ele'ill]

one white man saves the universe I'd rather just go to work that day

[GiantMonkeyMan]

one white man saves the universe I'd rather just go to work that day
Clearly without rich people to guide us we'd crumble into barbarism and only a strong white guy can save the day. :rolleyes:

Will hold off from any serious criticism until I've given it a watch but my first impression from the trailer made me wary.

[KurtFF8]

Let me get this straight, just so we all understand:
a movie that posits how if the super rich depart the earth to live in a space bubble the entire civilization would collapse is now being endorsed by communists?

Or am I not understanding something?

It depends on how the decay on Earth is explained. For example if the rich folks in space still maintain control and ownership over the decayed areas, then it would make sense as a progressive story of struggle. And of course we're not sure how they departed and what the Earth folks were left with.

But as other users have pointed out, it certainly looks like yet another "white savior story" in what had originally promised to be a progressive Sci Fi film. Not surprising coming from the makers of District 9 though (that movie was all about how white folks save the day)

[Popular Front of Judea]

Why do I have the suspicion that a film depiction of Lenin's return to Russia would be slammed here as just another "white savior" movie?

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Why do I have the suspicion that a film depiction of Lenin's return to Russia would be slammed here as just another "white savior" movie?

Because Lenin championed the idea that the colonial peoples of the world would be a determining factor in the world revolution when the second international had the line that only the centers of capitalism could make revolution perhaps?

[Popular Front of Judea]

Uh right.

[Jimmie Higgins]

then release it with a plot tailor made to calm populist outrage.I'm pretty sure that it's tailor-made to try and make money first and formost.:)

I thought that District 9 was over-hyped (politically by the left and as far as the movie itself, though I think it had some effective parts) and did have some strange racial/migrant political undertones IMO. But if this movie gets halfway decent reviews, I'd see it: I like Damon and I like sci-fi.

I don't know why we'd expect or necissarily want a Marxist allegory coming from hollywood in the absense of mass workers movements. The people who made the Matrix are supposedly sympathetic to Marxism or Anarchism or something and the political assumptions of their movies are indistinguishable from typical middle-class anti-corporate populism in most Hollywood movies as far as I can tell.

These movies are crafted by people with default middle class professional views (and so attitudes in pop culture tend to have liberal populism or a sort of libertarian sentiment as a starting point) and funded by capital and distributed by massive companies. In the absense of other things going in on in terms of class struggle, most stories are going to be of the "induvidual" vs. soul-crushing systems because this is the relationship of the film or writing professional (or at leastr the ones with some induvidual creative control) to the market. If there is working class struggle within or without Hollywood, then other ideas might being to assert themselves and wind up reflected in cultural products.