At an event in Los Angeles on Monday (April 8), a new trailer and 10 minutes of footage were shown for the first time from "Elysium," the upcoming sci-fi thriller starring Matt Damon.

Bing: More on 'Elysium' | Bing: More on Matt Damon

"Elysium" is the second film from South African writer/director Neill Blomkamp, who blew away audiences and critics with his 2009 debut, "District 9." With a much bigger budget and major studio backing from Sony, Blomkamp has been working in relative silence on the new film, but that secrecy is now starting to drop away.

In attendance at the Los Angeles event, which was beamed by satellite to other locations in the U.S. and internationally, were Blomkamp himself, producer Simon Kinberg and "District 9" star Sharlto Copley, who plays the villainous Kruger in this film. Linked via satelite from Berlin was Matt Damon, who said during a q&a session that the main reason he wanted to do the film was to work with Blomkamp after seeing "District 9."

We can't say we blame him. From what we saw yesterday -- a new trailer and 10 additional minutes of never-before-seen footage -- Blomkamp is in no danger of a sophomore slump. "Elysium" looks, in a word, stunning. 

The real world esthetic of "District 9" -- grimy, dirty, lived-in, broken-down -- has been transported to the year 2154, where "Elysium" takes place, presenting a grim view of Earth that's countered by the pristine vistas of Elysium itself. Blomkamp shot the movie in real locations in Mexico (at one point Kinberg says that a badly polluted river they found in Mexico was referred to as "poo river" by the locals) and Canada, and the difference this makes, as opposed to filming on sets or in front of green screens, is palpable.

Elysium is a gigantic space station hovering above the Earth where only the wealthiest and most privileged live in paradise-like conditions. The rest of the human race -- the 99 percent, if you will -- are surviving below on our ruined planet, now a polluted, overcrowded, poverty-blasted mess. That is where we find Max (Damon), an ex-con who is trying to walk the straight and narrow and get his act together.

But when Max is exposed to a deadly dose of radiation in the deplorable working conditions of his job, his only hope for survival is on Elysium. Going underground, he falls in with what appears to be some sort of revolutionary organization, who prepare him for his journey to Elysium by grafting a painful exoskeleton to the outside of his body.

That's not all. As the plot moves forward, Max comes into possession of information that the authorities on Elysium, led by Jodie Foster, see as a danger and dispatch their man on the ground, Kruger, to stop Max at all costs. The action is fast, furious and crunchy, with Damon going into battle against some pretty formidable security droids as well as the mysterious Kruger.

That's plenty of plot right there, but we're sure that Blomkamp's movie has a lot more surprises up its sleeve. The trailer compressed all that into an action-heavy two minutes, but the extra 10 minutes we got to see really opened up the story and the visual dynamics of the future Blomkamp has created, while giving us a taste of the emotional and socio-political underpinnings that became his trademark on "District 9" and look certain to continue here.

Make no mistake: even though he may be a little coy about it, Blomkamp has steeped "Elysium" in today's current events -- primarily the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots -- as much as he immersed "District 9" in South Africa's painful history of apartheid. Brief scenes of what passes in 2154 for working conditions and health care are not too far removed from today's cold realities.

In a private, informal q&a with members of the press after the public screening, Blomkamp reiterated that the story came first for him, not the message. Asked if he viewed himself as a "smuggler" sneaking big ideas into genre films, Blomkamp replied, "In terms of a commercial film, the amount of smuggling you get to do is limited. You're on thin ice. You can put ideas in there that are real issues. There are ideas that interest me, and the film formulates out of that. If I wanted to make a real difference, I'd make a documentary. The film does talk about topics that have a big impact on me."

Blomkamp is a huge genre fan (his favorite movie is "Aliens") and insisted that putting the genre aspects he likes into the movie is his first priority. "You've got to have slime and eggs, right? This is missing slime and eggs but it's got a copious amount of robotics and guns, so that's cool. That's covered. So I think that for me to make a film that doesn't have any of those elements, including action, is just boring to me. For me personally to get invested, to want to make it, it has to have crazy amounts of genre stuff in it."

But, he added, "As much as that is in it, I also want to have elements of, real issues is the wrong word, but things that interest me and things that I want to explore and talk about also in the film. Not just that the guy has to shoot the other guy because he's got a gun."

The poster for the movie is below, and the trailer is scheduled to debut online later today, so you'll be able to glimpse what Blomkamp, Damon, Copley, etc. have in store for us. We promise you won't be disappointed. "Elysium" shows all the signs of being epic, action-heavy, character-driven science fiction that views modern humanity through the lens of the future with an unforgiving eye. We can't wait for this filmmaker to take us there.