I feel like I have to defend from the bad reviews

Rating: 9/10 (12 August 2013)

Pretty serious spoilers in here, FYI.
I really enjoyed this movie way more than I expected. I didn't hear anything good about it going into it. Two of the girls that came with me were pretty sure that they were going to fall asleep and had both heard that the movie got only got 2 out of 5 stars. I told them they were probably right, but I had to see for myself. We were all on the edge of our seats about halfway through the movie and on.
Here's my thing though. Besides the really good story in District 9, my next favorite thing was the cool weapons. Elysium definitely has some cool weapons too. The action sequences really define this movie.
For people who hated the movie, this is what I keep hearing:
"Delacort's (Foster) accent is stupid and her character is useless" That's actually valid, but the accent didn't bother me. I was going into this expecting Copley to be the main bad guy anyway.
"Kruger (Copley) dies and gets revived. Why can't the other characters?" Half of Kruger's face gets blown off. You'd pretty much assume he died. If you're listening though, you can hear him wheezing when they put him in the healing chamber. His heart didn't stop beating.
"None of the characters develop/change in the movie." There is a little bit of character development lacking, but one reviewer goes as far as to say that Max doesn't change from the beginning to end. I don't know what movie they were watching, but he literally goes from "I'd rather save myself and let billions suffer" to "I'll die so that billions can be saved."
"They don't develop the relationship between Max and Frey." I liked that the movie didn't focus on their relationship. It basically shows that they were good friends who could have become lovers as kids, but Max gets friend-zoned from his screwups. When they're older, things are too complicated for Frey to pursue anything. And... let's be honest... when you've got less than 5 days to find a way to save your life, are you going to spend every minute trying to save your life, or are you going to chase tail?
I heard the same things when I saw District 9. People who like the cheesy comic book scifis hated it, and people who like the gritty movies loved it. Same concept with this.