Great potential, but full of holes.

Rating: 6/10 (12 September 2013)

Well, not quite as awful as Oblivion, but not great. It was another Prometheus - astounding potential, great cast, good story, stunning visuals, but in the end just too many plot holes. I can forgive one or two, but there were many. Another example of a universe designed to serve a story, but which outgrew the story itself and ended up hindering the plot, making the whole thing feel contrived.
Also suffered from tech misalignment, something I'm seeing more and more of recently. For example, bio beds which can heal anything in seconds, even a grenade obliterated face, yet they're still using bullets, growing food, propelling ships with jets, have keyboards and 2d screens on their computers, power their exo suits with hydraulics, etc. The tech needed to build such bio beds, not to mention a vast self sufficient space station, would render everything else obsolete, including the class struggle the whole film is based on. I really wanted to like it too!
Those kinds of problems really are everywhere nowadays. Why would Spock (Star Trek - Into Darkness) need to hand deliver a device into a volcano? Why!? And why would scientists, exobiologists at that (Prometheus), take their helmets off in an alien environment which turns out to contain precisely the kind of pathogen their instruments cannot detect? Why!? The plot didn't even require them to remove their helmets, the aliens got through them anyway! Throws hands up in utter despair This is precisely the kind of slap-dash, badly thought-out nonsense you'll find in abundance in 'Elysium'. Sadly.