Moon (2009) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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The sci-fi version of CTRL-C, CTRL-V.

How cool would it be to live and work on the moon? Well, for Sam Bell, it turns out to be a nightmare–and not just because of the isolation. Moon presents a new and interesting twist on several classic sci-fi themes that take the audience to places that are unexpected.

First Impressions

The trailer for this film gives off vibes of 2001: A Space Odyssey as a one-man crew of a mining operation on the moon goes about his daily routine. Until, on one outing, he discovers a body that looks like himself. The robotic/computer assistant cannot help him–believing him to be imagining things. He begins to wonder what is going on during his time on the Moon.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

After a brief commercial for the benefits and necessity of Lunar Industries HE-3 mining operations, the film focuses on Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell)–a Lunar employee in the last two weeks of his three-year contract at moon base Sarang. He is the sole occupant of the spacious habitat and is responsible for maintaining four harvesters that comb the lunar surface for Helium-3, an energy-laden isotope of helium. Sam spends his days monitoring the harvesters and collecting canisters when full so he can launch them back to Earth on drones. He also exercises, works on a wooden model of his hometown Fairfield, and talks with his only companion, a robot named GERTY (Kevin Spacey).

Sam is unable to receive live communications from Earth due to a technical glitch. After viewing a pre-recorded video from his wife Tess (Dominique McElligott) and 3-year-old daughter Eve (Rosie Shaw) he begins seeing things and accidentally burns the back of his hand. Sam drives out to Harvester 1, dubbed Matthew (each harvester is named after an Apostle; Matthew, Mark, Luke–redubbed Judas for being offline continually, and John), but has another hallucination and crashes into the harvester, pinning his rover under the larger vehicle. He awakens later in the infirmary to the pleasing sounds of GERTY making sure he’s okay.

GERTY tells Sam that he had an accident and would like him to stay in the infirmary for a couple of days. Sam regains enough strength to wander out, eager to finish his job and get back to Earth. He overhears GERTY speaking on a live link to managers at Lunar Industries about needing to speed up production with a broken harvester. When confronted GERTY claims he was recording a message and Central has asked to slow down the harvesters to allow Sam to get his strength back. Noticing that Harvester 1 is “stalled,” Sam attempts to investigate but GERTY refuses to let him leave. Sam tricks the robot and takes another rover out to Matthew where he discovers the crash site and doppelganger of himself inside.

Returning to base Sam realizes that the body he found is a clone, Sam-1. GERTY helps recuperate Sam-1 who is stunned at the revelation as well. Sam-1 believes himself to be the original, while Sam-2 is “obviously” the clone. Central sends a message that they are sending a rescue ship that will arrive in 14 hours to help fix the broken harvester. The Sams both realize that if the ship arrives and sees them both together, they will probably be killed. As the two Sams seek to cohabitate awkwardly, GERTY reveals that Sam-1 is also a clone with “edited” memories of the real Sam Bell.

The two begin exploring outside the base realizing that there must be something set up to prevent live transmissions from leaving the facility. They discover multiple “jammer” towers, but Sam-1, weakened from the crash, appears to be getting sicker. He vomits blood upon returning to base and loses a tooth. Sam-1 discovers a secret room in the base where other clones are stored awaiting to be revived as needed. They also realize that they are not shipped back to Earth at the completion of their three-year contract. Instead, they are vaporized on the station, and the next clone is thawed out. Sam-1 takes a comm device out past the jammers and calls his home. He talks to Eve (Kaya Scodelario), now 15, who tells him Tess died “years ago.”

Realizing he will die anyway, Sam-1 convinces GERTY to thaw out Sam-3, and has Sam-2 take him to the crash site to leave him to die. As long as the rescue team finds a “Sam” in the crash and a fresh “Sam” in the base things will be fine. Sam-2 will meanwhile stow away onboard an HE-3 drone to get back to Earth and live his life. GERTY is happy to help with all of this since his programming is to keep Sam safe and help him. They wipe GERTY’s memory and reboot him so that the new Sam, with a new GERTY, will continue as if nothing happened. Sam-2 blasts off just as Sam-1 dies in the wreckage. A news report over the beginning of the credits reveals that Lunar Industries stock is dropping after testimony from a clone of Sam Bell named “clone 6.”

“You’ve been up here too long man. You’ve lost your marbles.” – Sam Bell

History in the Making

Moon is the first film from director Duncan Jones and one that sets the bar relatively high. Known for being the son of David Bowie, Jones grew up around his father’s music and film work, becoming interested in the business at a young age. His love for the science-fiction genre is present in this film and the other sci-fi films he has created, which include the time travel-esque Source Code, and the Blade Runner visually-inspired Mute. Fans of the genre can see inspiration from several past films which Jones blends into a unique and interesting movie that deals with corporate politics and human individuality. Moon creates a darker tone which drives the genre into further unexplored corners of the sci-fi genre. Given the wide variety and number of sci-fi films in the previous 60 years, coming up with a new idea is truly inspiring, but Moon manages to do it.

Hands down the best aspect of Moon is the inspired casting choice of Sam Rockwell in the lead role. Having been a working actor for almost two decades by this point, Rockwell was a known character actor, having appeared in Galaxy Quest, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and the big screen adaptation of Charlie’s Angels. His realistic attitude and magnetic screen presence made him the perfect everyman for the role. He also brings an amount of kookiness to the character, with several small tics that he uses to differentiate the two versions of Sam from one another. Jones even had Rockwell make a cameo in the film Mute, as a clone of Sam Bell which serves as a postscript to the story here.

Genre-fication

For fans of sci-fi films, Moon feels like a comfortable outing. It has a number of familiarities that make the viewer feel like they’ve seen something like this before, while still retaining a uniqueness of story and character. One of the first prominent films that Moon pays homage to is 2001: A Space Odyssey. The setting being the moon base is a small part of that, but the more obvious part is GERTY, the autonomous AI which appears to be covering up some corporate secret. In the end, it turns out that GERTY, unlike the HAL 9000 from 2001, really does have the best interests of Sam Bell at heart. There’s also a brief scene with Sam taking a call from his wife where she has their young daughter on her lap. This is reminiscent of a scene in 2001 when Dr. Floyd takes a call from his young daughter. But 2001 is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of film inspiration.

The design of the habitation, the uniform that Sam wears, and the designs of the computer monitors and glyphs all have roots in a number of space films including Alien, Silent Running, and Outland. Specifically, the “Purina” brand logo (consisting of 5 boxes in the shape of an ‘X’) is a common motif among the various technologies. The look of the technology creates a consistent vision of a future where these systems all work together. Audiences may not understand what all the codes and buttons do, but they all include a design aesthetic that seems as if someone does. Blade Runner is another important film that Moon borrows elements from. In that film, the Replicants are all given a short lifespan to ensure that they don’t revolt and take over. Here, Sam Bell’s clones are all given a three-year lifespan to coincide with their “contract” with Lunar Industries. So even if Sam never gets into the “shuttle” to travel back to Earth (which is secretly a killing box) he will die soon after, able to be replaced by another clone. Finally, Sam’s memory issues and visions of his family are similar to some of the hallucinations from the Russian film Solaris. In that film, the visions are brought on by a strange planet, rather than the degrading brain of a cloned worker. All together these moments create a film that is greater than their sum. Moon benefits from what has come before, but uses these other ideas as only a springboard to create something unique and entertaining.

Societal Commentary

While light on action moments, Moon is replete with commentary about the human condition. It starts the film at the end of Sam’s time on the lunar base, just as he is about to make a big change in his life. Sam’s personality is on display from the first moments of screen time with him wearing a t-shirt proclaiming, “Wake Me When It’s Quitting Time!” Or perhaps that’s just a sly nod at the larger mystery of what Lunar Industries has created. He appears to be a normal blue-collar worker who is approaching the end of his shift. Being the only employee at the station makes for a very lonely existence for three years. It doesn’t seem like something that an employer would want to foster for several reasons: it could create low morale, risk of injury, and mental instability. Of course, these are all the things that Sam experiences in his time on the base.

Sam reflects several times on the loneliness he feels, but attempts to keep working strongly until his time is up. For everything going on, he is still a very thoughtful worker, one who takes his job seriously. When the second Sam clone appears, Sam-1 is less distressed by seeing a duplicate of himself, than just wanting to shake his hand. The loneliness that he feels overwhelms everything else. Sam also begins to experience a mental breakdown the closer he gets to the completion of his contract. In the first viewing, audiences can attribute this to his exhaustion and going stir-crazy, but it is more probably linked to the degradation of his clone body. He gets distracted and burns his hand or crashes the rover into the harvester as a result. These things endanger himself, but also the program that Lunar Industries has put in place.

But Lunar Industries is not really concerned about any of this because they have set up an indentured servitude of infinite Sam Bells. Presumably, the original Sam set up some kind of deal where his genetic tissue and memories would be used to create the bodies used at Sarang base. He got some kind of payoff, not realizing that his clones would have their own feelings and perceptions of the events on the moon base. Perhaps he thought, like many do, that clones are not really entities unto themselves. Perhaps he believes that because he is the proprietor of their genetic material, that he owns them. In the future that Moon shows audiences, that doesn’t appear to be the case. The movies’ clones are people as much as anyone else, and the film uses an iteration of one of these clones to show audiences that they wouldn’t be able to tell a clone from the original person–unless they were told. This becomes one of the most effective stories about cloning and personhood put to film to date.

The Science in The Fiction

As the science-fiction genre has moved into the 21st century, the types of stories it tells have become more complex. This complexity is primarily due to the advancement of the human species and our understanding of technology. The audience’s understanding of clones and cloning has advanced much since the days of Multiplicity and The 6th Day. Clones are no longer biological xeroxes of a human, but things that are grown and cultivated. Moon doesn’t get into the technical details of cloning like some other films. What the audience realizes is that the Sam Bell that they are introduced to at the beginning of the film is the fourth iteration of Sam, meaning that Lunar Industries has had Sarang base up and running for at least 15 years with multiple versions of Sam. The one implausible aspect of the film is when the Sams find the secret room, it appears to be a near-infinite room underneath the base containing replicants of Sam. It seems like having that many bodies in storage would necessitate the need to have some kind of additional energy sources and nutrition. Since it takes a maximum of three years for a new clone to “come online,” what is the reasonable “shelf life” for one of these clones?

The shelf life is a valid question considering that each clone of Sam is only designed to last for three years. Genetically these clones have somehow been programmed to break down, both biologically and mentally, in the last several weeks of their contract. This of course still necessitates the use of the burner box to destroy the evidence of the clone, but should one die before that, perhaps GERTY is programmed to destroy the body. Presumably, the decision for Lunar Industries to go this route was a cheaper solution overall than hiring new people very three years. Perhaps Sam was the best worker, physically and mentally, and so they thought that a cloning enterprise (kept secret of course–can’t have pesky right-to-life people poking around) worked best. And the limited lifespan is meant to get the most out of the worker. Or perhaps the cloning technology at the time naturally breaks down after a few years, so that became a built-in failsafe to the process. Either way, it’s an ethically dark usage of some fascinating technology.

The Final Frontier

Moon is an unexpected story that presents a mystery about odd goings-on at a lunar base and turns it into a human drama about one man–told from multiple vantage points. What starts off as a film about the loneliness and isolation of living and working on the moon takes a much darker twist as the main character learns that his life is not what he thought it to be. It sets a precedent for a new wave of darker science-fiction films to come.

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