By year 2154, humanity has left Earth in an absolutely calamitous state,
a consequence of overpopulation, disease, and contamination. The elite class decides
to build a space station called Elysium and live without pollution or illnesses thanks to
special pods that can heal anything. Now Earth is only inhabited by the poor, like orphan Max
and his best friend Frey. They spend lots of time together and enjoy looking at books about Elysium,
to the point where Max promises Frey one day he'll take her there. Max begins to steal in
order to save money for tickets to Elyisum, no matter how many times the nun in charge of the
orphanage asks him to stop. Many years later in Los Angeles, Max is a former thief on probation,
trying his best to work an honest job at the factory. But even when he's well-behaved,
officer robots stop him at the bus station to check his backpack just because of his criminal
history. Max answers them with a joke, causing the robots to push him to the ground and hurt
his arm. After the robots find nothing in his bag and let him go, Max goes to the hospital
and is shocked to find Frey, who he hasn't seen in a while. While Frey takes care of his arm,
they take the chance to catch up and Max asks her out on a date, Frey accepts after some hesitation.
Afterward Max goes to work at Armadyne, the company that built Elysium and now makes robots,
owned by billionaire Carlyle. Max's manager tries to fire him for arriving late, and Max
explains he had an accident. He gets to keep his job, yet he still gets a warning. Meanwhile
a group of rebels led by hacker Spider are giving people fake IDs and getting them into shuttles to
try to reach Elysium to get medical care. In the station, Defence Secretary Delacourt receives a
message warning her of three incoming undocumented shuttles approaching Elysium, and she rushes back
to her office to take action. The shuttles are told to go back to Earth, but they won't listen,
so Delacour orders to activate Kruger, a sleeping agent she's hidden on Earth. This is against the
law, but Delacour doesn't care. Kruger arms himself with a missile launcher and manages
to take down two shuttles before they reach the station. The third one dodges the missile and
does land on Elysium, allowing a woman to run out and break into a house. She puts her sick daughter
in a healing pod and the girl immediately gets healthy, but at that moment a bunch
of robot cops show up and aggressively arrest them both to send them to Earth. Back to Max,
on his way home he bumps into his friend Julio, who wants help stealing some cars,
but Max turns him down because he doesn't want to go to jail again. The next day at work,
Max discovers an object has jammed the door to the door to the radioactive room. His manager
makes him go inside to fix it, and Max has to obey if he doesn't want to lose his job. Removing the
object turns out to be quickly, but this causes the door to close and the machine begins working
again. His coworkers try to force open the door, but they aren't quick enough and Max squirms in
pain as he's exposed to a huge dose of radiation. When they finally manage to free him, Max is sent
to the company's medical bay and a robot tells him he'll die in five days, but he can take some pills
to function until then. Carlyle shows up when he hears production stopped and orders the manager to
fire Max. In the meantime, Delacourt is called to an audience by President Patel to call her out for
violating the law when she used a sleeper agent and killed forty-six civilians. Delacourt explains
she'll do whatever is necessary to protect their home and their families from savages, which makes
Patel warn her that if she does something like this again, she'll be fired. Sometime later,
Carlyle meets with Delacourt to renew the defense contracts for the space station. Delacourt wonders
if Carlyle can override Elysium's system and put a new president in power. When Carlyle confirms
he can, Delacourt offers a 200-year contract if he puts her in power, and he accepts. At
the hospital, Frey is devastated to hear that her patient Matilda can't be cured and she must
be sent home. Meanwhile Max tries to get to his house, but he's feeling too sick and Julio has to
help him move. After throwing up, Max tells Julio what happened and asks him to take him to Spider.
Max wants to buy tickets to go to Elysium, and since he doesn't have the money, he offers to
do anything Spider needs. Spider actually has a dangerous mission that nobody wanted to take:
he's created a device that can access organic information from a person's brain and transfer
it to another. The mission would entail Max finding a billionaire and getting all their
access data so they can empty their bank accounts. Max accepts as long as Julio gets a ticket too and
if his target is Carlyle. Spider accepts those conditions and offers Max an exoskeleton suit
that can make him as powerful as a robot and will make up for the weakness caused by the radiation.
The operation to fuse the exoskeleton to Max's bones and nervous system is long and complicated,
but it ends successfully, and now Max can fight any robot that dares to stop him. Max also gets
an ID tattoo on his arm that will make the system think he was born in Elysium. Back to Carlyle,
he's encrypting his cerebral information, putting up a defense mechanism that will kill anyone that
tries to access his mind and destroying his computer when he's done. Then he gets ready
to take his shuttle to leave for the station. At the same time, Max and his group show up at
Carlyle's facility to capture him. Max shoots at the shuttle when it takes off, causing it to start
failing and eventually crash. At Elysium, Delaour is keeping an eye on Carlyle for the sake of her
own future and discovers this attack, so she sends Kruger and a military ship to defend him.
The group approaches the crashed shuttle and finds robots ready to defend Carlyle. Max destroys one
by shooting it, and he engages the other one in hand-to-hand combat, defeating it by tearing off
its head. Then they enter the shuttle and start downloading the information from Carlyle's brain,
only to find all the data is messed up. At that moment the military ship shows up,
and the group decides to run. Suddenly Max's head starts hurting, delaying everyone and
giving time for Kruger to catch up and kill most of them. Max and Julio try to escape in a car,
but the vehicle is hit with explosives and gets flipped over. Kruger approaches Max when he crawls
out and stabs him with a knife, then gets a sword in order to finish off. However Julio stops him
by trying to shoot him. His shots fail, but Kruger is furious anyway and kills Julio first. Max uses
this distraction to retrieve a gun and try shoot Kruger too, but Kruger puts up an energy shield
and falls unconscious instead of dying. After taking a short moment to mourn for Julio, Max runs
away. Meanwhile Delacourt finds out Carlyle died from blood loss, and as soon as Kruger wakes up,
she sends him after Max. Kruger and his men analyze the crashed shuttle and discover that
Carlyle had Elysium's system reboot program in his mind and now that info is in Max, so they send
droids to help with the search. To make matters worse, Delacourt declares Los Angeles a no-fly
zone, and Spider finds all signals are jammed in the city. In the evening, Frey is getting ready
to take Matilda home, and as soon as she walks outside she finds Max asking her for help with
the stab wound. Frey wants to take him inside the hospital, but Max explains he's a wanted man so
public spaces are a no. The next morning, Max wakes up in Frey's house with his wound patched
up. He discovers Matilda is Frey's daughter and she suffers from leukemia, so she doesn't
have much time left. Frey notices Max's ID tattoo and asks for help getting Matilda into Elysium,
but Max explains they'll get killed if they even try. Then Max leaves the building, only to be
found by a robot. He begins running away and tries throwing a few things at it, managing to disable
it. However all of this was still transmitted to Kruger, who immediately flies to the location. He
bursts into Frey's apartment and arrests her and Matilda for housing a criminal. Max makes it back
to Spider's hideout and demands his ticket to Elysium. Spider explains he can't send shuttles
with the signals jammed, but he also points out that Max must have something really important
in his mind for the government to activate the jamming. He takes a look at the data and discovers
Elysium's reboot program, which they could use to do a huge impact on society. However Max points
out he only has a few hours left to live, so he'll use the data as a bribe in exchange for a ticket.
Then Max returns to the robot that chased him to taunt Kruger into coming after him. Kruer shows up
and finds Max threatening to detonate a grenade if anyone tries something, which would kill him
and therefore the important data. Kruger accepts to take him to Elysium, and when Max enters the
shuttle, he discovers Frey and Matilda are there too. Kruger lets Delacourt know he has Max,
thus Delacourt disables the jamming so they can fly him over. Spider immediately gets his systems
back online and begins tracking Max through his exoskeleton. As soon as they notice he's going to
Elysium, the rebels get their weapons and board their shuttles. Sometime later, Kruger's shuttle
is almost at Elysium. Max tries to apologize to Frey for getting her involved, but at that moment
Kruger and his companion attack Max, and the fight causes the pilot to lose control of the ship. Max
accidentally drops his grenade and it explodes, hurting Kruger's face and taking out the ship's
engine. The shuttle crashes in the suburbs and the security cameras warn Delacourt, who sends her
people to arrest everyone on that ship. When Max regains consciousness and finds Frey stuck in her
seat, so he uses his new strength to help her out. Kruger and his companion also wake up and begin
fighting Max. Frey uses the chance to grab Matilda and take her inside a house to put her inside a
healing pod, but the machine has been changed and now they don't work if you don't have a citizen
ID. At that moment the guards arrive and tase Max and Frey. The next time Max wakes up, he finds
Delacourt and a bunch of technicians checking on Carlyle's data. The information is fine, but Max
will die if they try to extract it. Delacourt doesn't care and tells them to do it anyway.
While the rebels arrive at Elysium and go looking for Max, Kruger's men lock up Frey and Matilda.
Kruger himself is barely alive, so he's put through a procedure that both heals him and
gets him an exoskeleton like Max's. Moments later, Max manages to get loose and hits the
technicians to make them confess Frey's location, he also takes their access cards. Delacourt shows
up to furiously scold Kruger for not handling the mission properly, but Kruger responds by stabbing
her and locking her with Frey. While Frey tries to take care of Delacourt's wound, Kruger orders
his men to get rid of every politician in the building while he looks for Max. The men jump into
action and kill every politician they can find by using grenades. When Max finds the control room,
the whole place is a mess. The monitors show him Frey and Matilda in the building, plus the rebels
getting closer. Using a communicator, Max gets in contact with Spider and asks him if the program
in his head can make everyone a citizen. Spider confirms it can, and together they make a plan.
Afterward Max goes looking for Frey and finds Kruger's thug in the room. A fierce fight begins
and Max gets the upper hand, managing to beat Kruger's man up to death. The other thug shows up
too and shoots at Max, but Max easily retrieves a heavy gun and shoots him back. Afterward,
Max takes the girls to the elevator and tells them to find a healing pod. Frey points out the
lack of ID, but Max promises he will take care of that and sends them away. At that moment,
Max hears Kruger yelling nearby, meaning he's still alive. The door opens and Max gets ready
to fight, but it's just Spider and his group. A man is sent to help Frey and Matilda while Max and
the rebels go to Elysium's system room, only to be found by Kruger, who starts killing anyone he
can get his hands on. Max and Spider run away and try closing a door behind them, but Kruger blocks
them. Suddenly Max's head starts hurting again, giving Kruger the opportunity to get through and
attack. Max fights back and Spider tries to help, causing Kruger to drop his sword off the platform.
Kruger retaliates by stabbing Spider's hand with a knife, then goes after Max again. As the two of
them continue to fight, Spider removes the knife from his hand and rushes to hack the door to the
system room. Kruger overpowers Max and stabs him as he teases him for disappointing a child,
this makes Max furious and jumps on Kruger to tear off his exoskeleton. Without the machine support,
now Kruger can't defend himself from Max's robot strength and thinks of using a grenade to bring
them both down. Max reacts quickly and frees himself from Kruger's hold before throwing him
off the platform. At that moment Spider opens the door, and as soon as he and Max get inside,
Spider locks it again to leave the incoming guards outside. While Frey finds the pod and puts Matilda
inside, Max connects his brain to Elysium's system. Spider does all the necessary programming
then gives Max a remote control to trigger the reboot, explaining that Max won't survive if he
chooses to press the button. Max uses the computer he's connected to in order to contact Frey,
apologizing for not being able to be with her but also pointing out he kept his promise from their
childhood and brought her to Elysium. Max begins remembering all his happy memories with Frey as
kids as he presses the button. While Patel arrives with more guards to break down the door and arrest
Spider, the system reboots, leaving the ship with no power for a few seconds. When it activates
again, the system adds new citizens to the database. The healing pod reads Matilda as a legit
patient and begins curing her while the robots refuse to arrest Spider because arresting Elysium
citizens is against the law. Now that everyone on Earth also counts as an Elysium citizen,
the system detects all the poor people in need of medical attention, so they send down shuttles to
help them. While everyone in the slums runs to the ships to meet their salvation, Frey comes
outside and looks at Earth in sky, thinking of all the wonderful memories Max left her.