'Elysium' footage sneak peek: 5 things to know about the follow-up from 'District 9' director Neill Blomkamp

Yesterday, Sony previewed several minutes of footage from Elysium, the Matt Damon-led sci-fi movie that's coming out on August 9. The imaginative project looks like it's on track to be a huge hit like Inception. In a market saturated by derivative content, Elysium is a rare beast: a big-budget
movie derived from a completely original concept. Previously, all that was known about the movie was that Matt Damon and countless other poor people live on a ravaged Earth, while the rich live in a space station free of violence, poverty, and disease. The preview gave some more savory details about the feature, which comes courtesy of District 9 director Neill Blomkamp.

1. On Elysium, they can cure cancer. The clip showed a woman sunbathing, then going into what looks a cross between a tanning bed and the robot surgery machine in Prometheus. "Detecting trace amounts of cancer," the machine chirps. "Cancer cells--cleared!" This comes in handy later, because Damon's character gets exposed to radiation in a workplace accident and has just five days to live unless he can get into one of those cure-all machines.

2. Elysium is about a dystopia, with strong parallels to current social issues. Back to that "workplace accident." Damon is told by his boss that he will lose his job unless he goes into some dangeous machinery to fix a jammed door. He's on parole, making him already barely employable, and received a warning from his boss after his arm was broken by a robot roughing him up. He goes in to fix the problem, but it ends up nearly killing him. Surely, nothing like that ever happens in America...

3. Data can be downloaded from the brain. Hacking into someone's brain appears to be a very of-the-moment sci-fi concept. The first time I recall it happening was in The Matrix, and Inception explored the same concept in a more ethereal way. In Elysium, the plot hinges on Damon's crew downloading brain data from an important official from the space station. The information gives them details about how to break down their system and gain access to the fortress-like utopia.

4. Damon turns into a cyborg to get to Elysium. If you want to fight robots, you have to be part robot, right? Since he only has days to live anyway, Damon consents to having his body robot-ized so he can take on the robots that protect Elysium's residents and keep the Earthlings in place. POV shots show that it turns his vision into a video game, locking him into targets and flashing "reload" in the corner of his vision.

5. Paradise looks like a terrarium. Earth looks like--Detroit? The shots of the space station Elysium show a lush, verdant area with amazing views. Some opening shots of Earth show skyscrapers with crapshoot appendages sticking out the sides (I wouldn't want to live in one of those) that recall skyscraper cities in any number of sci-fi films, including Blade Runner. What's more interesting are flat, rundown warehouse-y areas that are similar to the slums in Blomkamp's District 9. The preview didn't connect the urban and suburban places together, but that will likely be clarified in the film itself.

Despite the sneak peeks, the preview left some of the biggest questions unanswered. How exactly does Damon gain access to the space station? How do the people in Elysium and Earth react to the insurrection? And how did things get so unequal to begin with?