I haven’t figured out the twist, and just saw the TV ad, but I’d say it looks more comparable to Solaris than 2001. I loved Solaris so I’m looking forward to seeing this.
Aw, is that who it is? I didn’t even realize. He is perfect - they need to record a full library of him and Morgan Freeman for our future robot nannies …
That tiny moment with the sad face on the screen just strikes me as awesome for some reason - it gives me this great sense of personality.
Damn, I didn’t realize it was such a limited release. Why? It certainly doesn’t look like a small release movie.
I’d have to cross half the country to see this in the theater nearest me. Sigh. Guess I’ll buy the DVD.
Speaking of Moon Pies. . .
Wow, isn’t that funny. I have waited for and will see this movie soley because he is in it. I think he is one of the most underrated actors of our day. It takes all kinds, I guess.
This is supposed to be out today but the closest theater to Boston playing it is in New York :( Is today actually the release date or is fandango/movietickets/other movie sites wrong?
Limited release. I’ve been yet unable to find any information about nationwide release …
Good find, thanks!
Maybe I have not seen him enough. I have seen a couple of the films he has been in and found him unremarkable. Not bad, I just do not really recall much about his performances. Maybe I have not seen him featured, although, I saw Snow Angels and he wasn’t working for me in that either. Maybe it was his character. I am willing to give him a second chance based on you folks’ strong affinity for him. I have made mistakes before. :)
Saw the movie and I really dug it. It was a great throw back to 70’s and 80’s sci-fi. The director actually showed up to my theater for Q&A after it was over. I give a A-
I just got back from this and I totally loved it. It was really clever, didn’t treat the audience like idiots, and so on.
But I have spoiler questions!
SPOILERS!
Were the dudes only meant to last 3 years? Did they have radiation sickness? Or poison? And did the first Sam Bell actually go to the moon or did him and his wife act it out?
End SPOILERS!
SPOILERS CONTINUE
I think the implication is that they’re either designed to die after three years or the cloning process is flawed and they only last three years, thus the necessity of the three year contract. It’s possible that three years is the maximum length they’d remain sane, so that’s how long they built the clones to last.
I get the impression the real Sam Bell didn’t go to the moon at all, and was simply the template used due to psych profiling and such. I was kind of expecting/hoping that it was going to have been centuries since the original Sam Bell lived or that Earth would have gone through some horrible cataclysm and Gerty had continued the cycle with the Sam clones simply because it had no idea what else to do. And, after all, his purpose is to help Sam. I would actually say the biggest “twist” in the movie is that the robot isn’t evil.
END SPOILERS
I agree that it was a very good character piece with some interesting ideas and some truly original moments despite the well-worn premise. I did find it rather depressing overall, and though movies don’t usually get to me, I still feel a little down and existentially nauseous a few hours after seeing it. This is not a knock on the movie. In fact, I’d say it’s a compliment, but if you’re going to see it, don’t expect the feelgood movie of the summer.
It really is a character piece, and Rockwell’s performance makes the movie work. I was impressed by the willingness to let the gears turn in Sam’s head versus writting a bunch of babbling dialogue for the benefit of the audience. It made the interaction fascinating to watch.
This was great! And it’s a lot better if you didn’t watch that trailer. Stupid movie marketing.
SPOILER DISCUSSION: GET OUT OF HERE UNTIL YOU’VE SEEN THE MOVIE
I wondered about this as well, but my friend Xtien pointed out that the messages from his wife and daughter are a bit problematic then. Was Tess complicit in tricking the clones? Or is it more likely that the company was simply recycling her messages to the real Sam, recorded during his first and only contract at the base? Is the emotion we see from her in the messages, and the daughter’s greeting, genuine? Faked? Do you have to come up with some elaborate scenario that the messages are computer generated?
Also, it seems that Sam Bell really is an astronaut, unless you figure the references to flight school are just implanted memories.
The simplest explanation is that Sam Bell did indeed train for and serve a three-year contract, and his messages from Eve (edited, of course) were used to emotionally feed the clones.
By the way, wasn’t it the original Sam Bell who the 15-year-old Eve talks to offscreen during the video phone call? Would he have known what was happening?
-Tom
SPOILERS CONTINUING GO SEE THE MOVIE ALREADY
The Earthbound Sam certainly reacted quickly to the “someone’s asking about Mom” comment, that’s for sure. I do have trouble believing Sam’s wife just happened to be a really, really good actor, so you’re probably right. Narratively it makes more sense that the real Sam would have been sent to the moon first, but if the girl’s only 15 that means there have only been five or maybe six Sam clones up there given the three year lifespan. I guess that does jibe with the number of video replays we saw of Sam clones getting the zap-and-flush, but some part of me thinks it’s cooler and creepier if it’s been going on longer than that.
Well, I’m assuming there are other moon bases. Surely it’s not one guy generating 70% (?) of the Earth’s energy by sending back canisters of helium 3. I don’t know that there’s any support for that in the movie. But you can also look at the comment about the number of Sam clones as a reference how long the company intends to keep the base running.
And isn’t Sam #2’s final act on the base – reprogramming the harvesters to knock over the jamming towers and break open a live feed – ultimately how he “rescues” all the clones? Sort of a final act of compassion? My first reaction was that the movie was a sort of existential meditation on how limited life is, but there’s a lot here about compassion. I think it’s not as bleak as it initially feels.
I just had another great conversation with Xtien about Gerty. I’ll let him get in here and post about it, but what a great movie take on the rogue AI trope (Gerty reminded me a bit of Bishop for how the audience is faked out into believing he’s going to be a villain, which I agree with you is the big “twist”). The more I think about Gerty’s interaction with the Sams and the events of the movie, the more depth his character has. What a wonderfully written – and visually designed – robot character! I love how interactive he and Sam are when it comes to working together: loading the canisters, Sam tricking him into letting him outside, Gerty agreeing to unfreeze a third clone, and finally Gerty’s suggestion to Sam – basically Gerty’s suicide – about how to cover Sam’s tracks. What a great character he was.
-TomIn other words, GTFOOTT if you haven’t seen this film and you care about spoilers. Or even if you don’t. The less you know the better.
Absolutely spot on, Matt. I remember starting to wonder this too, at some point, wondering if we would get a Planet of the Apes style reveal with a decimated Earth at the end. I started to dread this a bit because it would have slotted the film as a Twilight Zone episode (that is to say, cool but small), but it stuck with me until the live feed scene.
This makes me think more about loneliness, and leads me to pose what may seem a ridiculous question. Which is more lonely? A man who finds out he is totally alone in the universe? Or a man separated from millions of people on that blue marble over there that he can never reach?
I love what lack of human contact can do to a person means to this movie. And I mean this in relation to not only the Sam character(s), but also to the character of Gerty. Look at touching in this movie. The request for a handshake. The way Gerty consoles Sam by touching him on the shoulder. Even the fight. God, I’m tearing up as I write this.
Which may lead to surprise in my next observation…
I disagree. Wholeheartedly.
I find this to be a film about compassion and hope. About redefining what it means to be human through those concepts. In fact, as sad as so many aspects of this film were, the more I think about this film, the better I feel.
This is encapsulated in one particular moment in this film, but I can point to many others. The one moment I’m thinking of is Sam2 returning Sam1 to the moon rover. He takes such care. They have this beautiful conversation about interviewing the wife for an internship. Then you see Sam1 fade out. Then Sam2 carefully puts his helmet on. At this point I thought, “Well, we can just cut to Sam2 driving back to the base.” Nope.
We see him carry Sam1 to the rover. We see him lower Sam1 into the rover. We see him return to his own rover. All along we see him treating Sam1 with such care. None of this can be easy for him, either emotionally or physically. Furthermore, as far as movie vocabulary is concerned, the filmmaker doesn’t need to show any of this. I have to admit that once he got to the crashed rover I thought, “Well, crap, he can just toss Sam1 anywhere now. Why bother going to all this work. Just toss him out and pop the hatch on the crashed rover and get your ass back to base.”
But he didn’t. He took care to treat Sam1 with respect. And, yes…love.
It was at this moment that I understood the film.
-xtien
“Nineteen to Two.”
I love this point. Very nice. I remember having an inkling of a thought of this as both Sams were heading out in the Moon rovers in search of the jammers. Wondering if they would run into other bases. Wondering how big this area they were mining on the dark side actually was.
As the film progressed they started to show higher, more topographical maplike shots of the moon. At least this is how I recall it. There was one shot in particular that I think showed areas the harvesters had already scoured. I started to wonder how much actual area the dark side actually represented. How did this jibe with the opening commercial’s claim that this resourse was basically inexhaustible?
Beautiful. I saw this only as him helping Sam3. But clearly it’s bigger than that. Nice.
Also, what was going on on Jupiter?
-xtien
“That’s where I hide my Leprechauns.”