'Elysium' and Hollywood's Obsession With Dystopian Futures

While watching Elysium, I thought, "Haven't I seen this before?" Specifically, I meant the experience of sitting through a dark future that's meant to be a mirror of our own times. Dystopian sci-fi is a genre I really like, but I've been inundated by it lately at the movies. Why is Hollywood so interested in these films lately? And what do we as an audience get out of them? I tried to answer these questions in my latest Playboy column.

'Elysium' Review

I was never that much of a fan of director Neill Blomkamp's first film, District 9. It featured an incredibly clever aliens-as-disenfranchised-minorities conceit that quickly devolved into yet another big sci-fi action shoot-'em-up. Blomkamp's new film, Elysium, again marries political commentary and large-scale action. This time around, though, the action is pretty stupendous while the social critique is only so-so. My review is up at Screen International.