A first glimpse of a seriously shorn Matt Damon in **Elysium **told us two things about Neill Blomkamp's sci-fi parable: one, it's going to involve just as much alien-vaporising firepower as District 9 (marvel at that giant space cannon); and two, Damon will *not *be cuddling any baby animals in his next outing.
The film we're dubbing We Bought A Space Station (And You Can't Come In) sees Damon's grunt Max wielding a weapon called the Chemrail to bust down some doors. "Neill and the guys at Weta came up with some really gnarly weapons that don't exist in our world," he tells Empire. "This one looks like some horrible weapon someone's going to invent one day."
The movie's title refers to a space station that, with Earth a ruined , poverty-stricken shell in the year 2154, transports the wealthy serenely in orbit. It represents possible salvation for Max's irradiated footsoldier. "My character is dying," says Damon. "He wants to get there because they have health care."
Trying to stop Space Bourne getting in is Jodie Foster's cold-blooded bureaucrat, Rhodes, and Kruger, Sharlto Copley's pitiless mercenary. We don't like their chances.
Find out more in the new issue of Empire. **Elysium **is out in March 2013.