Saw it last night. Thought it was absolutely pants.

I was pretty excited for Elysium as the trailers made it look pretty decent, but they really dropped the ball here. The concept was great on paper, but no one did anything that made sense. You've guys pretty much have covered why it was awful, but I got to thinking what could've made this a great movie:

First of all, why do most movies nowadays tend to build up this interesting world and then try and tear it down in 90 minutes? This is why Dredd was such a success, it was just him trying to get on with his day. You don't need to do it about the rebooting of Elysium.

They could've had Matt Damon find out his kid is sick or something and then show him deal with that by way of getting to Elysium. Maybe have him get a hold of those shuttle launch codes that the poor people just happen to have in the beginning of the movie with not much explanation. You have Max trying to get his kid to a medi bay. That's all the premise of the movie should be. Along the lines of that Firefly episode perhaps (Ariel I think it was called?)
That would be a much tenser and  exciting sequence of events to watch, in my opinion.

They call it slang, but it's actually code.

IT gets to the fact that modern filmmaking is WAY over-stuffed with convoluted PLOT at the expense of memorable action or characters. Dredd is a good counter-point actually, as it sets up it's world, protagonists, and villain, all within 10 minutes of screen-time, without any shitty protracted flashback scenes that add nothing. Elysium is one of those rare movies that simultaneously feels like its too long, but also feels like it's missing an hour of material. That's always a sign of bad pacing.

I think the movie would've been much better if it just started cold on Damon's character, and we never even met the villains until he crosses paths with them.