There are not many sci-fi movies that make you really reflect about humanity

Rating: 8/10 (11 August 2013)

Let's first recall a little bit how District 9 became popular despite of its not-entertaining-enough visual effects. I would say it is the unique view angle that the director linked humanity to aliens (so you may only have watched few movies about human turning into aliens). OK, getting back to "Elysium", I would say such a link continues: people on earth struggle to fly to Elysium for a primary reason of healing their diseases. Around such a key contradiction, the plot progresses.
As others already pointed out, that is why this movie is "smarter" than many other Sci-Fi. You can imagine these are metaphors but the movie is fluent enough to make you focus on the story itself. Compared to District 9, the director now added something new and interesting in plot: droid, hacker, etc. That is where I love a lot. The director/writer put lots of thoughts in the hacker part of the story and I, as an IT professional in my real life, think it makes sense.
For a $100M-budget movie, the graphics part is just decent or probably not that satisfying. I consider it in a way that the director was making new attempts in visual effects but that's eventually not his strength so far. The final battle, where the director set it in a hallway with "cherry-blossom"-like trees around, is more like the director's personal flavor in Japanese ninja style (but not really fascinating to me). The lack of love scene is also worth mentioning :-) Every time Max tried to make emotional communication with Frey, it didn't work out. Think about District 9 again, the dominating male actor is always the kind who puts deep emotion in his heart and appears somehow inhibited (is it a type of good man?)
Overall, I still have a high expectation for this young director, Neil Blomkamp's future movies, including an Elysium II. The good thing is I can always see new attempts but the movie would be cooler if the director is more all-round. For this movie, the scene on earth is the way very similar to District 9. Also, interestingly, as a South African- Canadian director, his District 9 was mainly filmed in South Africa while this one was in Vancouver, Canada (it should be the "Elysium" part, while the "earth" part is in Mexico). Therefore, I will be glad to see more fresh visual elements from this director for entertaining audiences better besides good stories and concepts.