Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium (2013) shows some of the positive outcomes of body modification when a human named Max (Matt Damon) is fused with a robotic exoskeleton. Using one character’s plight in a post-apocalyptic future, the film condemns huge disparities between rich and poor and the environmental and social problems they promote. As in Blomkamp’s District 9 (2009), Earth has become an environmental disaster plagued by overpopulation and the crime and starvation it produces. Only the rich can escape the polluted planet by purchasing access to an orbiting space station with forests, green lawns, golf courses, and oversized homes—shown in glorious CGI. And only a human machine can bridge the gap between rich and poor they enforce. Despite the film’s failure to address environmental racism and justice issues on Earth, Elysium provides an optimistic view of technology and the cyborg as a solution to at least some of the externalities human overconsumption has created.
As one of the many impoverished children living in an orphanage Max leaves this desecrated Earth with his friend Frey (Alice Braga) only in dreams. After Frey reads him books about extinct animals and the paradise above them in Elysium, Max wants to buy tickets to Elysium for himself and Frey and escape the hell Earth has become. Instead, Max becomes one of the masses still living in the environmental wasteland. As an adult, Max has a shaved head and a muscular and tattooed body. He has not fulfilled his dream. Instead, he is an ex-con on probation for grand theft auto working at a factory where robotic weapons are produced. Since he holds one of the few jobs in the community, however, children surround him and beg for money as he walks toward a bus.
The horrific conditions on Earth are amplified when a robot police officer accosts Max when he jokingly suggests he has committed a crime. Because this is a police state with a zero tolerance policy, the robot breaks one of Max’s arms and extends his probation by eight months. Now late for work, Max’s pay is docked, and his broken arm nearly costs him his job. The incident introduces the characters in the film and provides the impetus for Max’s body modification. At the hospital where his broken arm is cast, Max is reunited with Frey who now works as a doctor. Max seeks a reconnection with Frey, but her daughter Matilda (Emma Tremblay) has leukemia, so she refuses his advances. We are introduced to the world of the rich and its representatives at the factory where Max works. John Carlyle (William Fichtner) runs the factory and engineers software for Elysium where he plans to emigrate soon. Carlyle works for Elysium’s Defense Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster). She is a cutthroat opponent to immigration who will do anything to maintain her power, including shooting down a shuttle of illegal immigrants that includes a mother seeking medical help for her sick daughter.
These incidents foreshadow the event that will change the relationship between Earth and Elysium and introduce the useful role body modification can play. The conflicting characters have been introduced, but so has the motivation for their climactic battle: access to Med-Bays that can cure any ailment on Elysium. The Med-Bay becomes a necessity when one of the factory machines malfunctions and Max is forced to enter a radioactive compartment to clear pallets and close a door. The door slams shut before he can escape, and his manager will not allow anyone to open it. After the radiation dissipates, a robot wheels out Max. He is still alive, but has suffered a lethal dose of radiation and has only five days to live. His only hope is a Med-Bay found only on Elysium and accessed only with the help of body modification—a surgically applied armored exoskeleton and a data collecting brain implant.
The plot grows complex after this, but ultimately Max foils Delacourt’s plans to become president, uploads data from Carlyle, and (after multiple battles) downloads data into Elysium’s computer system that makes Earth’s inhabitants citizens of Elysium. The download kills Max, despite his superhuman exoskeleton, but it saves Frey and her daughter Matilda. The download also saves the lives of thousands of Earth inhabitants with medical conditions. In a final scene we see shuttles full of Med-Bays launched to Earth to cure them. Elysium fails to address the environmental degradation on Earth’s surface, but we assume the robots that once controlled humans will now clean up their waste. Despite the film’s confusing plotline, it demonstrates how humans may benefit from merging with technology. By donning a mechanical exoskeleton, Max saves those he loves, freeing Earth’s poor in the process.
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