Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium will leave Netflix on March 31st, 2024. Released in 2013, Elysium struggled with critics and audiences as the follow-up to an instant classic. Neill Blomkamp continues to deal with the odd tragedy of a filmmaker who debuts with his best project. District 9 is one of the best science fiction films of the 2000s. Everything Blomkamp has released since exists on a downward slope after his outstanding first outing. While Elysium sits below District 9, it’s worth seeking out before it flees Netflix this month.
Elysium Escapes Netflix On March 31st
Neill Blomkamp directs high-concept science fiction as unsubtle social commentary. That was his comfortable niche, established after he elevated his well-received short film, “Alive in Joburg,” into District 9. Elysium is the spiritual successor to his success. The film takes place in the dystopic near-future of 2154. The working-class masses suffer on the ruined Earth while the rich live luxurious lives aboard the eponymous space colony. Matt Damon stars as Max da Costa, an ex-con working off his parole. When Max suffers a fatal dose of radiation in an industrial accident, he must find a way to Elysium to cure his condition. While the wealthy citizens of the space colony enjoy excess, the Earthlings envy nothing more than their advanced medical technology. They’ll risk death to access their incredible cure-alls. It’s as subtle as a brick through the window, yet every passing year lends credence to Neill Blomkamp’s vision.
That violently unpleasant prescience lends Elysium an unnerving quality. Elysium feels like a forecast as a handful of billionaires work toward fleeing Earth, escaping the problems they created and profited from. On some level, that makes the film hard to watch. On another, it’s the perfect movie for the modern era. In their landmark 2016 research paper, “Elysium as a critical dystopia,” Tanner Mirrlees and Isabel Pedersen outline the film as a depiction of and argument against the ultimate effects of global capitalism. In its villains, it shows us the cold, calculating cruelty of those willing to destroy lives to keep their jobs. Its heroes demonstrate the multicultural working-class coalition sacrificing everything to defeat their oppressors. It finds a kernel of utopia in its all-consuming dystopia. It’s cathartic, haunting, action-packed, and endlessly motivating as a work of subversive sci-fi cinema.
Anyone who missed Elysium over the past eleven years will find it just as powerful as it was when it dropped, if not more so. Neill Blomkamp keeps making things, but Elysium still holds a strong silver medal in his catalog. Elysium will leave Netflix on March 31st, but it won’t be gone for too long. Another streaming service will almost certainly pick it up. Elysium lives on Netflix for now, but its message will live on forever.
