Reviews

Warning: Spoilers.

I love science fiction movies. I always have. One important thing to keep in mind is that sometimes the writers and directors need a pass once in a while in order to move a good sci-fi story forward. But this movie goes beyond that to the point of just being insulting with one ridiculous thing after another.

The Mild: 1) Anti-Matter explosions on a spaceship near Neptune causing CME-type particles to hit the earth similar to solar flares, causing power blackouts, sent there to pass the Heliosphere to detect aliens.

• The Earth's magnetic field protects us from that kind of thing
• The energy required would destroy that ship
• Neptune is much further away from the earth than we are from the sun
• etc.

But OK, it's sci-fi, I'll give this a pass. What's next:

2) The movie's hero does a space walk to fix an Antenna on a tower that is mounted on the earth, yet high enough to be above the atmosphere, so that it can do a better job listening for aliens.

• Taller antenna's don't accomplish this. Multiple Dish-style antennas like which are used by SETI would do a much better job at much lower cost.

I'd give this an OK, but the scene featuring this does not serve the story at all.

3) Where is the moon again?

• When going to the moon, the lead character's ship is pointing directly at the moon which is wrong. Any ship going from the earth to the moon needs to be going in the direction of where the moon WILL BE, not where it IS NOW.

But I can give this a pass because maybe their rockets are faster. Sigh. Anyway:

4) Full Gravity on the moon.

• Yes, I kid you not. Brad's character goes to the moon and walks around with hundreds of others in normal gravity. No explanation as to how this is accomplished. Just full gravity because audience: stupid.

• At one point after this some moon buggies take off across the lunar landscape in full gravity again, and oh yeah! Have a gun fight with pirates. Shortly after this, one of the buggies does a semi-soft landing to suggest lower gravity, but its quickly forgotten and back to normal dumbness.

5) On their way to Mars they pickup a distress signal by another ship that just happens to be in the same area.

• They "stop" in space to answer the call.
• No mention about the energy required to slow down, stop, accelerate again later.

6) Under Pressure! While on that space ship, a crazy monkey goes on a rampage. Our hero closes the door, and lets the atmosphere out and the monkey's head explodes.

• UGH! It doesn't work this way. If a human or any animal suddenly found themselves in a no-pressure situation, your blood would boil and the air would be sucked out of your lungs, but you would not explode. (You also would not instantly freeze to death)

7) Ship does a vertical landing on mars.

• A ship landing on mars, engine down and firing, is extremely inefficient. No parachutes are used to even slow its descent, no gentle orbit is used to burn off speed. Just land.

8) Swimming in an underwater lake on mars

• Ok I could give this a pass as its interesting. My only complaint is that the distance is very long, and his speed is very low. You'll know what I mean when you see it.

9) Climbing up the side of a rocket, from its base, as its taking off (And opening a hatch, and getting on board)

• The vibration would kill him.
• The rush of atmosphere might at least blow him off
• Opening the hatch while taking off is // never mind.

This isn't a super-hero movie. Its not a James Bond movie or even a Die Hard movie either.

10) Near Neptune, a space ship has a spinning Radar-type antenna. Hero Brad uses it to "fling" himself through the rings of Neptune to another ship.

• There's not enough energy in the spinning antenna.
• How did he aim himself so perfectly? He didn't. Of course he didn't.
• A spinning anything on any object in space would result in a counter-spin of the main object in the opposite direction and -- I give up.

There are more, but you get the idea.

The movie wants to be Part 2001: A Space Odyssey, part Gravity. While those movies had flaws too they at least tried harder to get the basics right.

So OK, I am really knit-picking. I guess its because I was thinking that somehow this was going to be a really good science-fiction movie full of yummy brain-goodness. It wasn't.

(Warning : Contains very minor spoilers so stop reading now if you hate this kind of thing).

Elysium is an OK movie for people who want to check their brain at the door, or watch 2 hours of visual effects eye candy. It looks great, but the movie makers treat the audience like brain dead idiots. There are so many plot holes in the movie that I gave up counting.

Even worse though, there are huge glaring scientific errors.

Elysium is big space station shaped like a spinning wheel. It's inhabitants live on the inside of the wheel getting artificial gravity from centrifugal force. The "top" of the wheel does not exist. It's not closed or sealed off in any way so other space ships can come and go. There is nothing to hold the atmosphere in place. GLARING TECHNICAL ERROR!

The spaceships come and go and land on the inside of the space station near its edge, where it should be spinning its fastest. GLARING TECHNICAL ERROR! Any ships would have to enter and leave from the center hub of the wheel, not the edge.

In order for Elysium to remain in space it would have to be in a Geostationary Orbit which is 22,236 Miles above the ground. Small spaceships lift-off from the earth and travel to Elysium in only a few minutes meaning the ships travel at over 7,000 miles per hour. GLARING TECHNICAL ERROR! Forget the fact that the occupants suffer no G-forces, that the ships couldn't possibly carry enough fuel etc to get there or get there that fast, etc.

I'm no scientist and I'm no math geek but this kind of stupidity in a movie has to go.

Oh and if this isn't enough, the movie also has characters that look at computer screens of pure random gibberish and suddenly realize that "This is the code that will save the day!". I mean it - except for maps and other flight data once in a while, the most important computer screen showing the most important data that is the most important part of the whole movie is just showing garbage - random characters - crap - nada - nothing. WTF, movie makers?

Sure the movie is "just" sci-fi and sure it's "just" fantasy. But really how much does it cost to hire a science consultant so that idiot stupid BS mistakes don't slip into your $150M movie?

Attention movie makers : Hire me and I'll make your sci-fi 10 times better by stopping you from making GLARING TECHNICAL ERRORS in your films.