bump
Man, I’ve probably had this DVD sitting around here for probably 6+ months and never got around to watching it until yesterday. Loved. It.
Original Sam: Didn’t read the thread until now and didn’t know about Jones’s comments on the movie, but even without them it always seemed pretty clear to me that the original Sam was on the moon at some point. The clones got his memories, not some artificially constructed ones, right? It seemed that the clones did remember actually traveling to the moon somehow, because they were never like “How the hell did I get up here, I never even stepped into a rocket!” As for the new clones remembering Gerty upon arrival - it’s plausible that the original Sam was in a training facility on earth to get prepared for his job. And that training facility had its own Gerty. So, even if they had just arrived on the moon, they would recognize the AI.
The clone’s intended degradation makes sense to me in that they determined that 3 years is as far as you can get without becoming crazy and unreliable. It’s likely that Sam spent 3 years on the moon–the clones seem to remember having a contract for a 3-year-job-- and returned to earth being physically healthy. To me the hallucinations* we get to see at the beginning aren’t necessarily related to the clone’s time being up and his decay kicking in - it’s the guy having been 3 years up there on his own and having gone slightly nuts.
*Him seeing his daughter is certainly one of the few elements of Moon that didn’t work for me.
Wouldn’t anyone ask how that company runs their moonbase? Few would - and they’d have to rely on their investigations on earth and whatever the company is telling them as they can’t simply travel to the moon on their own to verify anything. As for the rest: We consume cheap food, wear cheap clothes and buy other cheap products, many of which are being produced under awful conditions. Obviously, some people care about that, but many either ignore it, don’t want to know or are willing to accept that fact. According to the intro, earth went through some heavy energy crisis - I’d guess people don’t really care about how the He3 is being mined. It’s not until some very specific things happen or specific proof appears that something gets debated, e.g. Foxconn suicides.
I appreciated attention to detail. The base has that typical sterile ‘space station feel’ to it, but, at the same time, it had a a certain sense of history. See Gerty picture on the previous page - thought the coffee stains near the cup holder was one of several neat touches. I also loved how they threw little bits towards the audience to get you engaged. Small environmental cues like the “kick me” note. It’s just a little note, but it not only served as the script’s tool to show Sam’s thoughts/transformation (by him removing it) and isolation (because it was there in the first place) - it also makes you wonder about the story behind it. Which of the Sams put it there? Was it him pulling a prank because he was so lonely? Was it him expressing being pissed off at Gerty at some point?
The twist of there not being any of the obvious twists. I had seen the trailers, so I knew that there’d be a clone or doppelganger at some point. But the movie isn’t set up to make it a shocking DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNNNN reveal anyway. The clues are pretty obvious. I watched it along with someone who had no idea what Moon would be about, and he immediately guessed there was something off the second Sam 2 woke up because he had no head injuries. It was already established at this point that mankind doesn’t have magic Star Trek technology to make wounds disappear (see Sam 1 getting his hand burned and treated), and he looked younger and fresher, too. That and: How would they retrieve him from the wreckage? It’s clear that Girty itself moves through a railsystem and can’t simply leave the base.
I also liked that it has been just 15 or so years since all this started. Many other movies probably would have gone for another ‘shock reveal’ here along the line of Sam 1 actually being the 100th iteration of Sam and the moon-Sams being the last human beings alive because Earth is actually being run by robot overlords now or something. Also, there not being any stand-off situation with the Eliza crew arriving and Sam having to fight his way out or something. Would have not been appropriate for the tone and the theme of the movie, and I’m glad they kept it consistent.
Enjoyed the interplay between the two Sams and how Rockwell played them. Usually, when a movie involves clones, twins or doppelgangers it’s always partially about a conflict induced by the point that they are completely identical (same interests/preferences, same knowledge, etc.) or completely different, i.e. one person being good/sane while the other person is pretty much the opposite of that. Sam 1 and Sam 2 were the same person, but set apart from 3 years of isolated work and the resulting effect on Sam 1.
I can see why some people do mind the final voice-over, but I thought it was ok.
