Enjoyable flick, regardless of whether u think about District 9 or not when you see this

Rating: 8/10 (22 August 2013)

Just from things I hear about the film as well as my own opinion.
Visuals: Awesome, same as district 9 when looking at the slums. They did great in creating what looks like a crappy place to live lol. On Elyisum where it looks like paradise, it's typical futuristic sci-fi look, which is always a pleasure to see.
Story: Matt Damon's character gets sick, only choice is to go to Elysium (where the super duper rich ppl live) and get healed cuz they have the technology there. Not much more you can ask of a sci-fi story set-up. Damon's sickness is the incident which gives his character urgency to do something, otherwise the movie could've been just focusing on people trying to get to Elysium to escape the decaying Earth environment (which is featured in one scene, and you can't help but think about its representation of real life with illegal Mexican immigrants trying to get into the U.S.).
Characters: Matt Damon was great as usual. But I felt the cool-looking exo-skeleton that gets put on his character wasn't used as much and wasn't needed except for one piece of the plot (So they could have done it differently, the plot piece I'm saying). It gives him strength to help him through his sickness, so that explains a big reason for putting it on. I don't know, maybe they could've given Damon some time to himself to test it out and deal with any issues cuz it looks cool but he uses his super strength only a couple of times (which is related to the amount of action in this movie) and therefore felt like the skeleton wasn't even needed in the first place.
Jodie Foster's character I thought was satisfactory. I hear a lot of gripe about her accent and the confusion of what it is. But at least I could understand her. So I didn't have a problem with her(I love Sharlto Copley but I didn't understand his words a few times, as well as the character Spider).
Sharlto Copley: Like I said, there were a few times I couldn't understand what he said. Aside from that, he was great. He's the villain that is tasked with finding Damon's character. Copley was evil, smart, aggressive and portrayed him, dare I say it, perfectly. With the beard, his attitude, his sword, they created him in the right way.
Action: This may be the shallow reason for judging a movie, but my reasoning is, you got a great cast, big budget for cool stuff, but sometimes it's lacking when a little more could've been enough. It's probably the biggest part of why I gave the movie an 8 where District 9 I would give it a 9.5-10. I thought District 9's action was spectacular and sufficient. There's some recurrences of District 9, with people getting blown into bits. That was good, and weapons look cool. My gripe with the action in Elysium is there's not enough. Like not enough gun action (you see Damon use that slick-looking AK47 in the trailer or movie clip, he doesn't use it after that part of the movie. He gets another cool gun near the end. Overall, he doesn't get to kick a lot of ass with guns or his newfound enhanced strength.
There wasn't as much droids I thought there would be. If i remember correctly, he only fights droids in that scene with the AK47. Droids are only featured later on.
Overall, I'd give this 8.5 out of 10. Definitely worth seeing if you're into sci-fi action. I certainly couldn't help but think of District 9 at times, but no doubt District 9 was better.