Elysium trailer
Elysium plot
The following content describes the plot for the movie.
In 2154, two classes of people exist: the wealthy, who live on an advanced space station called Elysium, built by the Armadyne Corporation, where there is no disease, poverty, or war; and the poor, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. A high-ranking Elysian government minister, Jessica Delacourt (Jodie Foster), employs vicious South African mercenary Kruger (Sharlto Copley) to eliminate the illegal immigrants attempting to reach Elysium and use its advanced Med-Pods. President Patel (Faran Tahir) disagrees with her methods and threatens to dismiss her, in addition to firing Kruger.
Delacourt convinces Armadyne’s CEO, John Carlyle (William Fichtner), to write a computer program that can override Elysium’s controls and make her President in return for renewing Armadyne’s defense contracts on Elysium for the next two hundred years. Carlyle agrees, and, after creating the program, stores it in his own mind for safekeeping until he leaves Earth for Elysium. Meanwhile, Max De Costa (Matt Damon), an ex-con who lives in the ruins of Los Angeles and works in one of Armadyne’s factories, reconnects with an old friend, Frey (Alice Braga), who works as a nurse in a rundown hospital and has a daughter, Matilda, who is dying of leukemia.
After an industrial accident exposes him to lethal levels of radiation that will kill him in five days, Max is fired by Carlyle and seeks help from a smuggler, Spider, who agrees to help Max infiltrate Elysium and use a Med-Pod to cure himself if, in exchange, Max helps him steal corporate information from Carlyle’s mind that Spider (Wagner Moura) can profit from. Spider arranges for him to receive bio-medical implants, including a rudimentary exoskeleton that increases his strength, and a transmitter to steal the information directly from Carlyle’s mind and transfer the information to Spider. He then intercepts Carlyle’s Bugatti spaceship with help from his friend Julio and Spider’s men, and steals the data from Carlyle’s mind.
Upon learning of the attack, Delacourt deploys Kruger and his men to rescue Carlyle, and, in the ensuing firefight, Carlyle is mortally wounded while Julio sacrifices himself fighting Kruger so Max can escape, but Max is stabbed in the process. Max seeks Frey for help treating his wound, but when she asks him to help smuggle Matilda into Elysium so she can be cured, he refuses. Meanwhile, Delacourt launches a manhunt through Los Angeles and demands Max be captured alive. When Max returns to Spider to remove the information from his head and get his ticket to Elysium, they discover Carlyle’s program, and realize that it could be used to rewrite Elysium’s systems and make the people of Earth citizens as well. Max refuses, and instead bargains with Kruger to be taken to Elysium in exchange for the reboot program (threatening suicide by a live grenade). Frey and Matilda are captured by Kruger’s men and taken to Elysium as well. As they are landing, one of Kruger’s men attacks Max in an attempt to disarm Max of the grenade, with the grenade ultimately detonating, crashing the airship and severely mutilating and disfiguring Kruger’s face.
They are surrendered to Delacourt, who prepares to extract the program from Max’s mind, which, due to the security added by Carlyle, will kill him in the process. Kruger’s men put their boss in the Med-Pod and his face is reconstructed from a maxillofacial program, but are chastised by Delacourt for letting the situation get out of hand. In response, Kruger stabs Delacourt and leaves her to die with Frey and Matilda. Despite Frey’s best efforts, Delacourt refuses her help, and dies. Max escapes and rescues Frey and Matilda, sending them to the surface of Elysium to use a Med-Pod.
Realizing that the Med-Pod won’t work on Matilda as she is not a citizen of Elysium, Max resolves to use Carlyle’s program to make everyone on earth a citizen and leaves to confront Kruger. He then meets with Spider, who arrives with his men to help him. Kruger receives a more advanced, military version of Max’s exoskeleton, granting him superhuman strength and agility. He then madly rampages through Elysium’s base of operations looking for Max while his men kill most of Elysium’s leaders, intending to use the program in Max’s head to make Kruger president of Elysium. As Max and Spider reach the main control hub, they are ambushed by Kruger, who stabs Spider’s hand and attempts to kill Max by disabling his suit. Max rips Kruger’s link to his exoskeleton out of his head and disables his exoskeleton, and uses this advantage to kill Kruger with his own explosive. Spider and Max make their way to the Elysium’s main computer, where Max radios Frey to say goodbye. Max activates the program he stole from Carlyle, knowing that the process will kill him. As Max dies, everyone becomes a citizen of Elysium, and Matilda is cured. As everyone on Earth is now a citizen of Elysium, Med-Pods are flown out to Earth and President Patel is deposed by Spider with the help of reprogrammed sentinel robots aboard Elysium.
Source: Wikipedia
Our verdict: Intelligent thought provoking movie. Sci-fi at its best.
Related items: – Elysium on DVD and Blu-ray available to order/pre-order from AMAZON.