Impressive nonsense but much preferred WALL-E

Rating: 8/10 (21 June 2014)

This is a bleak imagining of the future on Earth: the carefree rich capitalist class all decamp to a safe and remote playground leaving the stricken poor working class to stew in poverty and grind out profits for them. Hey, isn't that the present?
Elysium is the vast elite space station of which everyone wants to be a citizen, Matt Damon plays a rather dying man eager to bring about regime change and helped by a gang of geeks armed with tinpot laptops and big ideas. And there are some good ideas in here, some good cgi cartoonery on display – pity none of the characters are worth bothering about though. I was left thinking why all the time, money and brains spent on this couldn't have instead been gone to produce Ringworld on film at last. Now there's a good story! Mentioning brains: there are a few gratuitous gruesome violent scenes in here too, probably completely acceptable to the majority of people, but such childish indiscipline doesn't appeal to me. Also, to think a change to a computer programme can reboot global capitalism and bring NHS saviours to a renewed perpetually smiling populace is not only childish but woefully misleading. If capitalism is still in force in 2154 then it will be solely because the majority of the world's human population have wanted it that way in the intervening years. It'll be entirely our fault if it turns out like this movie.
For all that, I would've absolutely loved it as a kid (especially the violence), quite like it as an adult (especially the shortness), but now to press delete and log off as a cynic "from which there's no coming back".