Why should I discuss the nature of science fiction films here? Because when I watched this movie, the first thing I thought of was the classic "Blade Runner". The story of Blade Runner also took place in LA. In that movie, LA is portrayed as a rundown city occupied by Asians. The elite stay in the pyramid-shaped building to enjoy the daylight and quality of life. And the ground is always damp, and the sky is dark. The spacecraft that shuttled through the air kept playing advertisements to open up the interstellar outer domain, but in the film, apart from a copy of the person, no one came back from the outer domain, and there was no direct description of the outer domain. The setting of this era is the most fascinating part of this classic film. Even though the interstellar travel or copying predicted in the film today is still out of reach, it is about the Asian occupation of the U.S. and the U.S. fear of Asian invasion. Today’s conjecture is very appropriate. If it weren't for this background setting, Blade Runner might just be a second-rate action movie.
Back to Elysium this time. This movie has many similarities with "Blade Runner" at the beginning, and it also gives a grand, radical and pessimistic worldview. And this worldview is based on the politics of today's reality, giving people reason to believe that the future of mankind might really be like this. In fact, the setting of this heavenly paradise and hell on earth in the movie is not the ultimate form of capitalist development that depends on monopoly, production and consumption in the legend? The elite has become a god-like existence, and the vast dick silk class has been completely reduced to proletarians, abject poverty and slaves. If you go back to the era when capitalism flourished after the First World War, Lang's "Metropolis" has long shaped a similar world, a story of conflict between the elite and prosperity on the ground, and the conflict between enslavement and resistance on the ground. It's just that the final reconciliation plan given by the director at that time was the harmony of brain and hand, and the expectation of building the Tower of Babylon (it coincided with the overriding policy of stability in a certain country today). In today's West, which has already experienced the occupation of Wall Street, such an answer is bound to be untenable.
So the most important question is what kind of political stand the film "Elysium" takes in such a radical setting. Is it turning left to resolve conflicts through violence and revolution? Or those who turn right to maintain the status quo and protect the benefits? If it is to the left, then the film will become a new left-wing literary and artistic film; if it is to the right, it is also politically incorrect in the name of the United States today. But the problem is that once such a proposition is thrown, the middle route does not actually exist. Obviously, this kind of ideological discussion should not be undertaken by a commercial film, so the director had an idea to put this problem aside, abandon the entire first half of the film’s rendering and accumulation of this contradiction, and give the defenders and elites of the system. The conspirator, Comrade Ju Di, unexpectedly sent out a bento, which reduced the challenge of the proletariat to the system into a personal grievance between two dicks, and turned it into a melee plot of small mercenaries beating old mercenaries. Class contradictions have transformed into contradictions among the people. Thus diverting the audience's attention from an unsolvable problem. As a result, the viewing value of the film as a commercial film has been preserved.
But at the same time, this film also missed the opportunity to become a classic sci-fi movie with an excellent background setting. If we look back at the previously listed "Blade Runner", the film itself does not give an answer or solution to the desperate world, but the director is very wise to replace the original with a bigger problem. contradiction. Let the film change from discussing the fall of the world around it to the ultimate proposition of the existence of human beings. This is the "sublimation theme" we talked about in Chinese classes when we were young. On the other hand, the handling of the film can be called a negative teaching material, reducing the major theme to a skirmish, and the result that everyone is happy with is nothing more than popularization of "free medical care". It must be said that "the era has been reduced, the structure has been narrowed, and the mind has been reduced" (by the way, thanks to the daily for providing us with such an aura of parallelism).
In short, there must be a better solution. In other words, incomprehension itself is also a way or attitude. If this incomprehension can be expressed and rendered, this movie will definitely be a better movie than it is now. After all, the pursuit of utopia and its destruction is one of the best art themes known to mankind. But unfortunately, the director gave up treatment (mistake, thinking) either due to commercial considerations or due to some kind of mental inertia shared by contemporary people. So this movie can only stay in a sincere action blockbuster. to the extend. Originally, as science fiction movies are gradually declining as serious art movies, it is really rare to have such a work that dares to face sharp topics, but in today's environment, people seem to be more willing to avoid key issues. This may not be the fault of a movie, but the problem of the contradictory world we live in. But just like this movie, the crisis in our world has actually reached a time when there is no middle ground to choose from, and there is no way to move forward without a stand. Here, science fiction movies probably can't give us any predictions that we can refer to. Movies can evade the question of position. We can't. We can only use history to practice the prediction itself.
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