Matt Damon clashes with robot in new Elysium clip

You’d hope that the robots of the future might be a little more gleaming and hi-tech – not to mention a bit less bureaucratic – than the ones running things on the ravaged Earth in ‘Elysium’.

But that’s what Matt Damon is faced with in the latest glimpse from Neill Blomkamp’s hotly-anticipated follow up to the acclaimed ‘District 9’.

Resembling the freaky, puppet-esque robot drivers of the Johnny Cabs in the original ‘Total Recall’, Damon’s mechanical parole officer appears to have had its sense of humour re-routed.

[Elysium clip - Damon introduces his 'hulk suit']

As previously spotted in the first major trailer for the dystopian sci-fi blockbuster, it all paints a grim picture of the Earth in 2154, as the poor inhabit a ravaged planet while the rich live the high-life – quite literally – miles above on a decadent, disease-free space station.

Damon gives the robot some sass, but his resignation tells a different story – he’s being beaten down by the system… but not for long.

As Max De Costa, Damon is a worker drone with a criminal past who, after being exposed to a cancer-causing virus, undergoes a brutal surgical transformation which fuses him to a powerful ‘hulk suit’, an exoskeleton which will allow him to infiltrate Elysium and with any luck save all mankind.

[Blomkamp talks District 9 sequel and failed Halo movie]

Also starring Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley and William Fichtner, ‘Elysium’ is looking like the cerebral sci-fi smash of the summer.

It’s unleashed in the UK on August 21.