WE, the 99 per cent, clearly have a chip on our shoulders that is manifesting itself on film.
Elysium, out today, is just the most recent in a spate of movies about the rich inhabiting a better world while the rest of us languish on a crumbling, lawless Earth. It used to be that the country club, manned by some cardigan-wearing guy named Tad, was the ultimate social fortress begging to be breached. Nowadays there are entire worlds of Tads waiting to be conquered.
It all stems from two-tier healthcare and first-class lounges in airports, tax shelters and secret societies. It's all just a matter of time before the rich get their own paradise in the sky, isn't it? Before the one per cent shouts "gardyloo" from on high, dumping all their waste and disease on the commoners below.
Neill Blomkamp's Elysium, shot right here in Vancouver and in Surrey's Bear Creek Park, takes place in 2154. Max (Matt Damon) is a guy with nothing to lose. He has had enough of the strife and illness on Earth, and modifies himself with some pretty cool weaponry to gain access to Elysium, a manufactured paradise in the sky where real estate starts at $250 million. Max goes up against Secretary of Defence Delacourt (Jodie Foster), matron of Elysium, in the hopes of saving himself and all of mankind.
In Oblivion, the promise of a new world on one of Mars' moons gave license to a giant ship sucking what remained of Earth's seawater dry. This parasitic endeavour was helped by cute maintenance man Tom Cruise, who occasionally saw glimpses of the rabblerousing cave dwellers humanity was leaving behind, among them Morgan Freeman. (With that voice? Who's going to narrate for the Hall of Presidents at Mars Disney?)
In Upside Down, futuristic Romeo and Juliet Kirsten Dunst and Jim Sturgess are just a giant leap away, mountain peak to mountain peak. The worlds meet in the middle in a giant corporation, where cubicle-dwellers have
the indignity of their higher-uppers being suspended just above their heads. It's hard to climb the corporate ladder when you're defying gravity. ..
Last year's Total Recall reboot featured a high-speed elevator which kept worker bees like Colin Farrell at bay, separate from the gentry who lived on the other, unpolluted side of the planet. In the disaster blockbuster 2012, the ultra-rich were the first people granted passage on giant arks that would survive Earth's mighty flood.
It's difficult to leave biblical allusions aside, when humankind aspiring to some heavenly place above is about as obvious as one can get. And lest you think this is all the stuff of cinema, keep in mind that in real life, more than 78,000 people have applied to be members of the Mars One mission, a one-way colonization effort slated for 2023, complete with reality show to offset costs. Million Martian meetings were held this week in Washington, DC, and in Darmstadt, Germany for interested applicants.
A world apart is a perfect caste system, the ultimate gated community, and these films play right into the prevailing political issue of the day: the economic chasm between rich and poor. Total Recall took place in 2084 and Elysium was built in 2097. Clearly the 99 per cent had better get its act together, and fast.
