Former car thief Max da Costa (Matt Damon), now a parolee working for the Armadyne weapons factory in 2154 Los Angeles and recently exposed to a lethal dose of radiation bound to kill him in five days, agrees to steal "organic information" (e.g., bank codes and passwords) from the brain of Armadyne CEO John Carlyle (William Fichtner) in exchange for passage to Elysium, a man-made space station inhabited by Earth's elite, in hopes of gaining access to a Med-bay, a medical chamber capable of healing him. However, what begins as a desperate effort to save his life leads to something far greater.
Elysium is based on a screenplay written by South African-Canadian filmmaker Neill Blomkamp.
While Frey (Alice Braga) carries Matilda (Emma Tremblay) to the surface to find a Med-bay, Max and Spider (Wagner Moura) stay behind to locate the Elysium's computer core. In an attempt to stop them, Tucker (Sharlto Copley) pursues, but Max manages to kill him by hurling him over a ledge, still holding on to a grenade, which explodes as he falls. Spider breaks into the computer core and changes the computer program to read Earth's population as being "legal". As Spider prepares to download the "organic info" from Max's brain, he is warned that the download will be "lethal" to Max. Already knowing that, Max still agrees to the download. After contacting Frey for a final goodbye, Max pushes the button that starts the download and reboots the computer, killing himself in the process. President Patel (Faran Tahir) arrives with security robots, but they refuse to arrest Spider, who is now recognized as a citizen of Elysium. Meanwhile, Frey has found a Med-bay and uses it to heal Matilda, reversing her final stage lymphocytic leukemia in seconds. In the final scene, shuttles containing dozens of Med-bays arrive on Earth from Elysium to begin the process of healing the sick, causing Frey to look up and smile.
Elysium spins, like a wheel, and the resulting centrifugal force creates artificial gravity on its inner edge. This keeps both its inhabitants and the atmosphere [not really, see entry above!] effectively pinned down to the surface. It's an old concept for a practical way to achieve artificial gravity in space.
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