Rated 15 cert. in the UK, but even 12 Year olds know it should have been better

Rating: 6/10 (21 August 2013)

I wanted to be impressed. I thought that the lessons learned from reading the reviews of District 9 would have inspired the director... but sadly no. I'm sure that when the script was storyboarded the concept must have sounded great. But when the script was completed it was just full of plot holes and ridiculous science blunders.
The writing of a good sci-fi script hinges on an ability of an audience to suspend their disbelief because the plot devices are at least plausible. The concept of utopia on Elysium and Hell on earth is so poorly executed owing to insufficient contrast between the two. Society on earth is supposedly impoverished due to over-population and lack of resources. Yet the slum city of LA still apparently has running water and no-one appears to be starving. Technological distribution and evolution also appears disjointed. You can be seemingly atomically rebuilt to eradicate disease and age on Elysium, but yet on Earth you are using Medical equipment etc. from the 1980s and 1990s. Earth appears to be dirty but sunny with clear blue skies, but we are led to believe it is polluted and harmful "do you think I want to be down here breathing THIS air" states our mega industrialist and then later demanding that a subordinate doesn't breathe on him (perhaps he's just Molysmophobic).
Why does a minister for defence of an elite housing space station have to rely on sleeper agents on Earth who have to use Earth-to-space missiles to destroy incoming shuttles. Don't they have missile batteries on board the station?? If incoming shuttles can land so easily on Elysium as their is no physical barrier between space and the Elysium 'atmosphere', surely the multi-billion dollar owners would have a much larger available defence force than 2 red droids and two security gunships. Of course not... because if they did then it would take more than 3 psychotic earth thugs to overwhelm the defence building and take over.
I concur with many fellow reviewers in a summarization of great visuals, poor storyline. There was such potential within this movie framework to actually dramatize some meaningful set pieces and explain some of the back history that leads to this dystopia. Characterisation scenes would have lent reinforcement to the audience having an investiture in caring even a little for the characters. Damon's character becomes completely selfish rather than selfless. What was the point of the whole scene with the writing on the hand undying loyalty and professing "someday I'll take you there", when within half an hour he's rushing out of her house saying he can do nothing for her or the little girl (he begged her for a coffee date not 15 minutes ago LOL).
Perhaps avoiding crucial explanatory dialogue scenes was the Director's plan. If they had injected scenes to explain things and provide characterization then it would have slowed the pace of the movie down just enough for the audience to actually think about all the holes in the plot.... and throw their popcorn at the screen! Overall I was left disappointed and a little angry. Why had the director/script writers not sat down and thought.. Ya know this would be so much better if we did this and explained that and gave Matt a real reason to care.. other than not wanting to die!