I Tried Living Like Matt Damon In Elysium, And All I Got Was Really Tired

What do you do when a publicist approaches you and asks you to run, jump, lunge and sweat until you cry, collapse and wish you’d spent the afternoon doing absolutely anything else? You say yes, because at least it’s not just another press release.

Then, the publicist introduces you to Paul de Gelder, a former Navy diver who lost an arm and a leg in a shark attack, and who has a human arm capable of crushing your skull and a robotic one that could crush it again if he wasn’t the nicest guy on the planet.

The three of you, and a small group of “willing” participants, drive to the northern beaches at midday on a 35-degree day and run around for hours while you get shouted at by terrifying, giant men, all because Elysium is getting a home release. What a great day, right?

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What is Elysium?

Give me a second.

Starring Matt Damon as a factory worker-cum-robot-superhero-man named Max de Costa, who basically gets the stiffy from everyone he meets, punches or shoots at, Elysium features beautifully constructed sets, a glorious Stanford torus, and director Neill Blomkamp’s undeniable touch (see: everything about District 9). In its execution of ‘unsubtle action movie’, the film is surprisingly elegant.

Set in 2154, Elysium is not exactly high-fiction: in the film, Earth is a dirty world, with broken people suffering from simple ailments, overseen by a utopian oligarchy floating high in the sky in a space station called ‘Elysium’. America is a third world country, and Matt Damon its reluctant saviour.

As we said back in April, Elysium is basically Occupy Wall Street: In Space, but in this universe — unable to fight the system on their own — the world’s hard-done inhabitants rely on robotic exoskeletons to fight, and (SPOILER ALERT) die anyway. The film is better than 80% of Hollywood dystopia, but the message is still warped: there is no minor sacrifice, just total loss, even if the outcome is saving the world.

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Cool, but why did you have to run around so much?

We ran around in the sun because — for some intents and purposes — Paul de Gelder is Max de Costa. Faced with adversity, challenge and hardship, he’s continued to push his body to the limit, and remained a genuinely friendly and (except when he made me do all those push-ups) nice dude.

I mean, seriously: I’m not a fit man. I have vices mainly relating to food, alcohol and sitting down a lot, and the slow-and-steady-process of turning those vices into superpowers is not yet complete.

When I arrived at the boot camp, we were introduced to a fun and exciting warm-up: a 2.4km run, during which slowing to even a moderate jog was met with enthusiastic shouting from Paul. The warm-up was followed by interval training, squats, push-ups, more squats, some chin-ups, sit-ups, five or so burpees and any number of other exercise buzzwords, until my sweat had been replaced by screaming muscles and softly falling tears.

I also had to carry a man on my back for some distance, and then he had to carry me (if you’re reading this, I’m sorry man, I really am).

Immediately after, I messaged my girlfriend, best friend and brother and told them — in no uncertain terms — if I didn’t make it home, they didn’t get anything and that I was to be burnt on a pyre of my earthly goods. In that moment, I was a god (if a broken one).

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The upsides

• Hot photos of me, the sweet athlete
• A bottle of water
• A book
• The first chin-up of my adult life

The downsides

• Weeks of pain in muscles that I’m sure didn’t exist before or after I started to feel them hurt
• A very angry physio
• Feeling like I should actually go to the gym
• Moral ambiguity from working shamelessly in a publicity exercise. (The exchange was pretty fair though; I was punished pretty hard.)

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The aftermath

Did it work? I guess so, on a basic level. I identified with the film, and Paul de Gelder as a Matt Damon proxy, and felt my glorious self-inflicted punishment had helped some greater good (even if that greater good was exclusively a personal one).

For some reason, though, no one really asked why Elysium being available on DVD equals torturous exercise? Well, apparently, it does.

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Elysium is now available on Blu-Ray, DVD and Ultra-Violet at select retailers.

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Alex Sol Watts is a writer, marketer and musician living in Sydney. You can find him on most of the internet as @solwat