Elysium Trailer Out

[Professor Dire]

So did anyone else see this film?

[Haruko]

I don't know, this seems to be very suited for a game. It's like they took a story writer for games and told him to write a screen play for movies.

You mean there's gonna be women in chainmail bikinis striking painful looking poses whenever the director pauses the action. Otherwise, having difficulty seeing what you mean.

[Cykeisme]

The script is only videogamey in the sense that you know where the last few levels are going to take place (on the giant space station, obviously), but it's not really videogamey because it's not clear who the big bad final boss antagonist is from the start. And that's very important.

[Coop D'etat]

A lot of people are talking about in 99% vs 1% terms, but it really works better as 1st world v 3rd world. I think it works really well if your willing to accept that industrialized middle class people live lives of the Space Rich compared to the inhabitants of 3rd world ghetto slums.

[Todeswind]

I hated it. I refuse to believe that we've got the resources to create a freaking ring world and yet somehow NONE of these technologies to create functioning eco-systems were used to improve life on Earth. The plot of this move essentially requires that every scientist, corporation and government to unanimously decide to abandon any efforts to help anyone but the stunningly wealthy in the interests of being mustache twirling twats.

And in spite of ALL of this, it also requires that after EVERYONE on the station has come to the conclusion that "poor people are icky, keep them on the crapsack world with all the factories" that these same mustache twirling villains are not willing to defend their borders.

And just from a plot hole stand point, the fucking laptop that lets you just mind fuck the station's AI is just sitting on Matt Damon's lap. You honestly expect me to believe that nobody is going to look at it and go "Hey, we should probably just undo what they did." For that matter, the program was written with the intention of just overriding who was in charge, a plausible coup. But I REFUSE to believe that there are no back up copies of the citizen registry.

[Block]

A lot of people are talking about in 99% vs 1% terms, but it really works better as 1st world v 3rd world. I think it works really well if your willing to accept that industrialized middle class people live lives of the Space Rich compared to the inhabitants of 3rd world ghetto slums.

I actually think they blended the two concepts into one.

[Panzersharkcat]

Yeah, it really bugged me that Elysium itself had no missile defenses but had to use people on the ground to do things. It also bugged me that they apparently had enough ships sitting around to provide magical health care for everybody but never bothered to use it and charge them for it. Also, how the Hell did Kruger not bleed out? Hell, how is he not missing more than "just" half his face?

[Tanasinn]

I hated it. I refuse to believe that we've got the resources to create a freaking ring world and yet somehow NONE of these technologies to create functioning eco-systems were used to improve life on Earth. The plot of this move essentially requires that every scientist, corporation and government to unanimously decide to abandon any efforts to help anyone but the stunningly wealthy in the interests of being mustache twirling twats.

You mean like in real life?

I mean, try to tell me with a straight face any sincere, meaningful efforts exist to alleviate the sufferings of the poorest people on the planet. The technology exists. The resources exist. The means could be manufactured. The thing is that people don't want to be inconvenienced and the people with stuff don't wanna share.

No doubt there are still folks on Earth doing good for Earth for the sake of doing good. But the rich pay better.

[Imperial528]

I hated it. I refuse to believe that we've got the resources to create a freaking ring world and yet somehow NONE of these technologies to create functioning eco-systems were used to improve life on Earth. The plot of this move essentially requires that every scientist, corporation and government to unanimously decide to abandon any efforts to help anyone but the stunningly wealthy in the interests of being mustache twirling twats.

The answer to that is there are people trying to help on Earth, they just don't have the resources. Someone is keeping the power networks up, food growing, etc. I'm sure the population of Elysium has some hand in it, after all, they are reliant on Earth as a resource, but they could easily build their own little sectors about the planet. No need to maintain even a single city.
According to the film, Elysium was built by a single corporation, so it doesn't even require everyone.

And in spite of ALL of this, it also requires that after EVERYONE on the station has come to the conclusion that "poor people are icky, keep them on the crapsack world with all the factories" that these same mustache twirling villains are not willing to defend their borders.

Except they clearly are, just non-lethally. They had the automated security forces and the deportation shuttles, who very rapidly rounded up non-citizens. It reminds me very much of an upper-class gated community, just in space. You also don't need everyone to be evil villains for this to work, just some good old fashioned NIMBY-ism. We also don't know how long Elysium has been up there, it may have begun as just such a community, and after a disastrous collapse on Earth (accidental or orchestrated), became a safe haven for those who had the wealth to afford a property.

And just from a plot hole stand point, the fucking laptop that lets you just mind fuck the station's AI is just sitting on Matt Damon's lap. You honestly expect me to believe that nobody is going to look at it and go "Hey, we should probably just undo what they did." For that matter, the program was written with the intention of just overriding who was in charge, a plausible coup. But I REFUSE to believe that there are no back up copies of the citizen registry.

Did you pay attention? The laptop was just a link-up and interface. The program itself was in Max's (Damon's character) brain, and the security software mentioned presumably also wiped it. Furthermore, the existence of backup copies would be rather moot if the AI can no longer be changed, and the only person known to be capable of tampering with it is dead. You could probably try to hold extradition trials for the billions of new citizens in absentia, but we have no idea if the AI would allow that. Note that once the citizen list was updated the security robots actually turned on the human guards working with them when they tried to arrest Spider, stating their actions were illegal.

It is a rather contrived bit, however Delacourt's plan relied on more or less the same sort of logic in the AI. Otherwise the actual President could have easily just pulled up an official backup record of his election, and the AI would oust Delacourt as a traitor. Yet she seemed confident her plan would work once the software was uploaded.

Yeah, it really bugged me that Elysium itself had no missile defenses but had to use people on the ground to do things.

Given what those missiles were capable of (ground-to-space from a man-portable weapon, and it fired four of the damn things) missile defense could easily be a guy standing in a field or airlock holding one of those. I given the impression during the film that lethal measures were not allowed, hence the use of a ground-based agent who would operate outside the law.

[Guardsman Bass]

The health care super-pods only being available on Elysium doesn't really make sense. Unless they cost the equivalent of a million dollars a minute to use, somebody should realistically be trying to sell time in those things down on Earth to all the sick, desperate people while making a killing. They may be poor, but there are a lot of them.

[Panzersharkcat]

The health care super-pods only being available on Elysium doesn't really make sense. Unless they cost the equivalent of a million dollars a minute to use, somebody should realistically be trying to sell time in those things down on Earth to all the sick, desperate people while making a killing. They may be poor, but there are a lot of them.

That is the single biggest thing I find wrong with the movie. It's as if the writer thought rich people hate making money. You can make a lot of money even if you charged the equivalent of fifty bucks or something for each use.

[Ford Prefect]

Just because you guys missed it:

You mean like in real life?

I mean, try to tell me with a straight face any sincere, meaningful efforts exist to alleviate the sufferings of the poorest people on the planet. The technology exists. The resources exist. The means could be manufactured. The thing is that people don't want to be inconvenienced and the people with stuff don't wanna share.

You already live in this world, basically.

[Admiral Valdemar]

It's pretty funny people are missing the blindingly obvious social commentary here. Especially when pointing out "plot holes" that mirror reality perfectly.

And a Stanford torus is as much like a damn Ringworld as a bouncy castle is Edinburgh Castle. Those things are easily built if you have fusion powered SSTOs anything like the ones shown even in ghettos in the film.

[Ultonius]

While I did enjoy the film, there were a couple of things that bugged me a little. One was that when the first group of shuttles are approaching Elysium, I could have sworn I heard someone say that they were 51,000 km away. The promotional materials suggest that Elysium is at most 60 km in diameter. In one of Max's childhood scenes, we see that Elysium is clearly visible with the naked eye from the Earth's surface, and looks at least as big as a full moon, so with an angular diameter of maybe 30 arc-minutes. Looking at a couple of online angular diameter calculators, an object of that true diameter and that angular diameter should be less than 7000 km from Earth. The shuttles seemed to take a very direct route to Elysium, so I don't see how they could have been 51,000 km away from Elysium at any point of their flight.

The second thing was that, rather than having a roof, Elysium was open to space, since shuttles can simply fly in without requiring an airlock. While a 'Bishop Ring' habitat can be built in this way, it would require a diameter of 2000 km with retaining walls 200 km tall. This suggests that Elysium uses 'forcefields' similar to that used by Kruger, which would presumably be vulnerable to power failures.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The only call out with five in was around 15,000 klicks. The roof thing is another matter. I believe Elysium could have a roof of sorts, perhaps a field like the dense plasma shield Kruger used, is able to keep the atmosphere more or less stable for such a small torus. We have that technology today for producing "air locks" using ions to produce a barrier. But yes, otherwise, even a Ringworld may leak atmosphere to an extent, albeit, far slower than something of a Bishop ring or Stanford torus size.

[NecronLord]

But I REFUSE to believe that there are no back up copies of the citizen registry.

And the AI cares why? It's just been reset with a new president, sure, but also with completely new parameters. It could quite easily be reset to see making the Defence Secretary (or Spider) absolute Monarch, and to ruthlessly baton anyone who complains, and shoot anyone who resists.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Which indeed, was the point of the coup. Since Homeland Security have an army of robits to guard the station and act as security on Earth, any attempt to reverse the new programming would be met with a lot of messiness. It wouldn't have worked if all they did was change some metadata on files and that was that. There had to be something to make it stick.