Trivia / Elysium

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• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • Matt Damon was interested in taking part in Blomkamp's next movie after falling in love with the director's previous work.
  • Diego Luna likewise signed on without even reading the script just for the chance to work with Neil Blomkamp.
• Creator Backlash: In some interviews◊ promoting his next film Chappie, Blomkamp said he felt that Elysium had a "terribly written script" that was released too early despite its "fucking awesome" production values and effects.
• Creator-Driven Successor: While not sharing any plot, this film shares a lot with Neill Blomkamp's previous film District 9. It's about a racial population confined to slums and exploited by a wealthier class with Apartheid undertones. Eventually violence erupts and the hero must fight alongside the downtrodden people against evil mercenaries hired by the wealthy class using sci-fi guns and power armor.
• The Danza: Young Max is played by Maxwell Perry Cotton.
• Dawson Casting: Max and Frey grew up together, but Matt Damon is twelve years older than Alice Braga. Presumably Max's rough living and time in prison mean he's Younger Than They Look.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Matt Damon both shaved his head and did daily four hour workouts in the gym to match Neil Blomkamp's specific idea on how Max should look.
  • Jodie Foster also dyed her hair platinum blonde to play Delacourt.
• Fake Nationality:
  • The three most prominent Latinos in the cast are played by two Brazilians and a WASP. While Brazil, like Mexico, is in Latin America, their populations are vastly different (for starters, they speak different languages).
  • Jodie Foster claims that Delacourt is a French woman, making her an example too.
• Playing Against Type: Sharlto Copley—whose previous characters have been nebbish, wacky, and non-threatening—plays a hulking, Ax-Crazy, sociopathic enforcer for a tyrannical government.
• Playing with Character Type: Jodie Foster normally plays driven, determined women with power. Here she plays the villain who is a Well-Intentioned Extremist. While she's died in film before, this is the first time she's ever died on screen.
• Production Nickname: The production team and Neill called the Exosuit, the "Hulk Suit" since it grants the user immense physical strength. Mind you, it's nowhere Hulk-level, but it works. Doubles as Genius Bonus: In the production art for the Exosuit, it's spelt "HULC Suit". HULC is short for Human Universal Load Carrier. It's the name of the powered exoskeleton system being produced by Lockheed Martin. In the featurette, "The Tech of Elysium", Neill Blomkamp describes how the exosuit is based upon technology being developed by the US Military.
• Throw It In!: Carlyle telling Max's foreman "don't breathe on me" was an ad-lib by William Fichtner.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally, the movie was about genetic experiments escaping into the real world from a factory, the eponymous Elysium (which sounds a lot like Blomkamp's commercial for Adidas).
  • The first choice for the role of Max was South African rapper Ninja. He turned it down, and the next choice was Eminem. He was willing to do it but had to back out when they couldn't film in Detroit.
  • Kruger was originally going to be an android, then he was changed to a human who would be turned into a cyborg after getting horribly injured, until they finally settled for having him be already a cyborg, then donning a powered exoskeleton.
  • The original scene of attaching the exoskeleton would have been far more graphic, showing the removal of the subject's internal organs and their replacement with mechanical alternatives, and cutting off the top of the subject's skull in order to plug the control systems directly into the brain.
  • Some of the antagonist robots included a biosynthetic, massive wolf-like robot with a cannon for a head and an ability to deploy a massive load of robots, more humanoid and technological-looking robots, and Kruger being more like a ninja assassin than a psychotic private military corporation commander. The ugly cloak Kruger wears in his first scene may be a nod to his cloak in the concept art.
  • Kruger, after being fatally wounded, would have had his consciousness transferred to a gigantic, heavily-armed, VTOL-capable mech. The concept was later recycled into the MOOSE mech in Chappie.
  • The character of Delacourt was originally written to be a man, but was later changed to a woman.
  • Sharlto Copley tested out different accents for Kruger - English, American and Eastern European - before deciding to keep him South African. He was given an accent from a very specific part of Johannesburg.
• Word of God: The citizens of Elysium are Older Than They Look. A Freeze-Frame Bonus says that Carlyle is born in 2010, making him 144 years old. Jodie Foster says that Delacourt is 108.

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