San Diego Comic-Con 2012: Looper and Elysium Footage Details
Steve Barton
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Finally we got an early look at both Looper and Elysium. Read on for some quick impressions and more. Then pour out a 40oz in our memory because this friggin’ madhouse is killing us.
Via Evan Dickson:
The emptiness of Total Recall as a sci-fi film was easily illustrated by the next two panels on the docket. While there isn’t much in the way of horror as far as Looper is concerned, it does look like a truly original take on time travel. Thoughtful, action packed and full of rich character work – this is the kind of sci-fi film many of us have been dying for since Inception.
Something that definitely falls under the horror categories is Elysium. Director Neill Blomkamp was brought onstage to introduce the footage – which had never been seen before. We were warned that it had very rough pre-viz level effects, but – except for a few glaring examples regarding space travel – a lot of the effects work seemed finished.
The footage established Earth in the year 2154. A barren, global ghetto marred by disease, overpopulation and crushing poverty. The rich people built their own planet-like space station – Elysium – years ago, and there they exist in utter opulence and luxury. Free of disease and free of worry.
Matt Damon’s character is an ex-con who gets radiation poisoning at work and knows he will die in 5 days if he doesn’t do something about it. He knows that the only way he can be cured will be to somehow get into the heavily guarded Elysium. In order to get there, he agrees to complete a mission that involves stealing the memory of a character played by the great William Fichtner. Getting geared up for this mission means a nasty piece of bone-saw surgery into Damon’s skull (apparently without pain killers) where a highly intrusive device is implanted that will enable him to download Fichtner’s brain.
Along for the ride is an almost unrecognizable Sharlto Copley (the “hero” from District 9), who looks sort of like a homeless ninja. He literally has throwing stars that make people explode in a gory, gooey and messy fashion. We only got a few glimpses of Jodie Foster’s character, a severe but mysterious looking woman that didn’t appear to be too far off from something that Tilda Swinton might play.
All in all, the movie looks super violent, not unlike early Paul Verhoeven stuff like RoboCop and the original Total Recall. It also has some nice commentary about the haves and the have-nots – sort of an uber-extrapolation of the 99% vs. the 1% concept. Matt Damon, Jodie Foster and producer Simon Kinberg came out for the panel, where they basically sang the praises of Blomkamp and declared that they would have done the film script unseen because of District 9 alone. Oh, and Jodie Foster declared that her favorite movie of all time is Team America: World Police. Not a bad choice!
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