I had the pleasure of watching Elysium on the big IMAX screen this past weekend and it was a blast to watch.  Director-writer Neill Blomkamp created his first intellectual sci-fi hit with District 9 on the cheap and now with a Hollywood budget, he’s able to create visual science-fiction tour de force.

“The idea of Elysium was born out of growing up in a country where wealth discrepancy is a huge issue,” says Blomkamp – Elysium:  The Art of the Film.

The year is 2159 and the Earth is overpopulated with scarce resources, rampant crime and poverty.  The wealthy class escaped to space and built a heavenly space colony called Elysium.  Our anti-hero Max played by Matt Damon clinging to life takes on mission to not only save himself but for the people of Earth.  But before I get to the down and gritty of this art book I had some minor complaints:  1) Is it just me or Jodie Foster accent really annoying? 2) When the rebel ships try to land into Elysium, bad guy Kruger uses a shoulder-mounted missile launcher with missiles that are able to go all the way up to space and knock-down the rebel ships?  3) And this leads to my next rant, if this space colony has magic healing machines that can cure cancer and is a technical marvel, Elysium doesn’t have self-defensive weapons like in Star Trek’s Deep Space Nine or Babylon 5 – what is up with that? 4) My last rant – I wished we could see more of the people living in the futuristic space colony.   But other than that, it was a wonderful summer movie.

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