The answer to the question "What if yuppies colonised Halo?" Elysium exists as a slightly superior summer blockbuster.

Rating: 6/10 (31 August 2013)

Elysium answers the question "What if yuppies colonised Halo?" The residents of the eponymous space station are portrayed as a caricature of the American elite, swanning about their marble mansions and swimming pools in polo shirts and sports coats like they've gone for a weekend on Long Island. They are juxtaposed with citizens of Earth who live in overpopulated, arid slums, working and dying in their droves with no access to the health care and lifestyle enjoyed by the wealthy.
Elysium seems the latest in a string of post-apocalyptic/science-fiction blockbusters starring A- list actors. Tom Cruise had Oblivion, Will Smith had After Earth, Brad Pitt had World War Z. This time, Matt Damon is the hero. Elysium comes at a difficult time to stand out from the crowd, but this is the sophomore feature of director Neill Blomkamp, who wowed audiences four years ago with District 9.
The film is arguably derivative of District 9. Both are consistent in design; Blomkamp worked with many of the same production team, including editor, cinematographer, and production designer. The spaceships are aesthetically similar, Matt Damon's exoskeleton recalls Wikus van de Merwe's mech suit, and the design of various robots is strangely reminiscent of the alien "prawns".
The theme again is apartheid like social divide, extrapolated to a scale to reflect the same occurrences in the present day. On one level, this is how citizens of wealthy countries go about their daily lives, often with utter indifference to the suffering of those in poorer parts of the world. This is dystopian fiction in its purest and earliest form. But then perhaps Elysium is not saying anything new.
More intimately, this is the relationship between classes within less economically developed cities, where the wealthy live in gated communities, guarded by private security firms against the poverty and volatility of the city slums. This is the case in Mexico City, where the LA scenes were filmed, and in Blomkamp's native Johannesburg. Even the wealthy citizens of present day LA are to be found in the gated communities of Beverly Hills, far from the low income urban sprawl.
Though the divide is of wealth, the classes are represented racially and culturally. Elysium residents are mostly, but not exclusively Caucasian. Their president, Patel, is played by the Pakistani-American Faran Tahir. Yet when they are not speaking English, their language is French, characterising the Elysium citizens by drawing on the perceived high culture of France, which once influenced the elite of the antebellum South.
On Earth, the dominant cultural identity is Hispanic, a future imagined as a result of unrestricted immigration from Latin America. Society has failed Max Da Costa, played by the capable Matt Damon. He has grown up an orphan, and spent time in prison, and now works in a factory building the police robots that abuse him in the streets.
The crux of the matter as far as the plot is concerned seems to revolve around access to the nigh on magical properties of the Elysium medical bays, which appear to be located in the homes of every citizen. Whilst this clearly represents an uneven spread of medical resources, it seems that living and working in the slums of Earth would become infinitely more tolerable if the most extreme of ailments, from Leukaemia to radiation sickness, and presumably, the health problems associated with a lifetime of breathing Earth's polluted air, could be cured immediately, and automatically, at the drop of a hat. The device even offers total, instantaneous facial reconstruction, yet these features are largely wasted on the already healthy Elysium population, who treat these resources as glorified tanning beds.
Elysium takes its name from the ancient Greek afterlife, or at least the part of it traditionally reserved for the righteous and heroic. The citizens of Elysium are anything but. Most of the residents are happy to live their lives without sparing a thought for the Earth-bound masses, but some take it a step further. With no borders on Earth, illegal immigration becomes the desperate struggle for access to Elysium. Secretary of Defence Jessica Delacourt (Jodie Foster) is cold and calculated, and doesn't bat an eyelid when she orders the destruction of two illegal refugee ships, and immediate deportation of the occupants of a third. Whilst she acts outside of protocol, this goes to show what lengths some citizens are capable of going to in the defence of their borders. Soon, she plans to stage a coup against the more moderate President Patel.
For all Delacourt's coldness, she pales in comparison to the true antagonist; the vicious, psychotic mercenary Kruger, who starts out working as an agent for Elysium. Kruger is played by Blomkamp's collaborator, South African Sharlto Copley, who played the leading man in District 9. Kruger is the polar opposite of bumbling bureaucrat Wikus van der Merwe. Due to his extremity, Kruger is dismissed from employment at the start of the film, but is quickly tasked with hunting Da Costa down on Delacourt's behalf.
The film does not shy away from the graphic depiction of violence and brutality. The futuristic weapons are more likely to explode their victims than anything else, and this happens more than once. Along with the dirty, dusty streets of LA, this gritty realism contrasts with the futuristic veneer of Elysium, and sets the film apart from other sleek, sci-fi thrillers. Both Blomkamp and Damon have urged film-goers to take the entertainment value of the film above the deeper message. As such, Elysium exists as a slightly superior summer blockbuster.