Prometheus vs. the Plutocracy

Matt Damon as a mythic hero in a dystopian future

By Dan Hagen

“Elysium” takes the planet’s present plutocracy to its logical conclusion, with immortal billionaire one percenters living in paradise on a space station and billions abandoned on the dying hell that is Earth.

This dystopian fantasy is grafted adroitly onto the myth of Prometheus, personified here by Matt Damon, doing his stoical thing augmented this time by exoskeletal super strength. And if you need to cast a flinty-eyed space vixen who has the charm of Leona Helmsley and the ethics of Dick Cheney, you can’t do better than Jodie Foster.

I call my basic unit of movie rating the Day Breaker. That’s a film absorbing enough that it makes a clean break in your day, wafting away your troubles on the breeze and providing you some points to pleasantly ponder. This film is one of them. Predictably, conservatives have gotten their panties in a twist over the clearly relevant dystopia in "Elysium." The problem for right wingers is that they cannot suggest any possible objection or alternative to the one percent owning all there is to own and billions of people dying in squalor and agony ‑ unless it's a fraction of one percent owning everything. The film's horror show is their philosophical IDEAL, and they can't stand seeing it exposed.