Elysium hits all the themes of a cyberpunk movie. It has high-tech low-lifes, it has corporations in total control, it has a massive inequality gap, it has technology leading to dehumanization. But what it doesn't have, is neon-lit rainy streets at night.
Cyberpunk as a genre has themes that don't rely on visuals and yet so many cyberpunk stories use the 80s aesthetic as a short-hand for "cyberpunk". I think this makes the cyberpunk "look" feel dated even though its themes aren't actually stuck in the 80s.
This video does a great job of breaking down where cyberpunk came from. It was a product of the 1980s. Specifically (in America), the cultural fears of rising crime rates, removing regulations on corporations, and the rising influence of Japan. These were things people worried about in the 1980s and cyberpunk was able to tap into those fears by taking them to the extreme. And while some of those fears were well-founded (removing regulations on corporations), not all aspects of them remained timeless.
Elysium replaces the cultural fears of the 1980s with the cultural fears of the 2010s. Climate change, access to health care, increasing wealth gap. These things are now taken to the extreme while still following the cyberpunk template. I wish more stories were able to separate the 1980s aesthetic from the themes of cyberpunk. The themes of the genre are still relevant today even if the "look" has become dated.
If you haven't seen it, here's a trailer. And it's currently streaming on Netflix.
I really didn't like this movie. I usually have a really good suspension of disbelief, but this one violated reality far too much for me to keep caring about the story and not wonder things like:
I watched this movie in theaters and still remember how much I disliked it.
I won't argue whether it's a good movie, I only wanted to say that it was cyberpunk. For example, having his parole officer be a robot I think represented how the robots had more rights than the people (technology leading to dehumanization) even if it didn't make logical sense for a robot to do that job. Also, magical healing booths that can cure literally every ailment within seconds through non-invasive shiny light. I can see how suspension of disbelief could get stretched thin.
I felt that way too, also there was no reason for Elysium to not have healing pods in hospitals/ambulances on earth, as the tech was shown to be EXTREMELY easy to deploy. Even if they were being greedy jerks, rich people clearly still have to go to planetside. The CEO guy wouldn't have died if there was a local flying magic fix-all that zipped in to revive him, which the station later shows that it can do! They have to make them on earth already since the station doesn't have factories. Whole thing was just plot holes on top of plot holes.
We have the technology to feed and house everyone, and yet... Reality is full of plot holes I guess
That's my point entirely. Matt Damon's entire reason for going into space was because the med pods don't exist on earth at all, even though they're cheap enough that every Elysium house has one, and they're easy to deploy rapidly in large numbers as shown in the end. That means not a single aid organization exists in the world, no planetside governments exist anymore, hospital ships are gone, etc. It's literally just soulless corporations (which would in reality have med pods on earth to keep key workers operational), and police/paramilitary organizations (which would also have med pods onsite for combat injuries). Matt Damon should have a wide variety of planetside sites to heist/break into, just in LA, without going to space.