Moon is actually a movie that really interested me when I first learned about it. I discovered that it was on Netflix today so I wanted to finally sit down and watch it. The movie was real slow starting out. It followed the day-to-day goings on of Sam Bell, and this is a character I didn't know anything about or didn't care about, and it lasted a while. The Martian was sort of the same way, but there was something about it that really helped to latch my interest a lot faster than this movie did (perhaps because The Martian basically started out with a disaster before the day-to-day stuff). So it took me a while to get invested in the story, but once I did get invested, I got really into it. If you can make it through the slow start, this is a very interesting science fiction story. I haven't watched a lot of hard science fiction relative to the soft science fiction, but I'm thinking I'll want to seek out more of it.
One thing struck me as humorous. The sky (so to speak) on the Moon was littered with stars. However, as NASA would tell you, you can't see any stars on the Moon because there's no atmosphere to diffuse the light, and they're too dim to be seen without the atmosphere. This is a common objection from Moon landing deniers, and yet you see a lot of stars in this movie. If the Moon landing really was a hoax, I could imagine NASA would have dotted the black sky with stars, just like the director did here. Read this article for more information on that.
Themes
You should really see this movie before reading this review, otherwise the big reveals will be spoiled here.
I originally thought this movie was going to deal with the isolation of being so alone on the Moon for three years, but Bell had GERTY to keep him company and seemed to be doing relatively well. The real theme is regarding cloning. After Bell has his accident, we see Bell wake up in the infirmary with GERTY looking over him. It is soon revealed that Sam Bell is still in the lunar rover and the Sam Bell who woke up in the infirmary is a clone of Sam Bell. GERTY receives orders from Earth not to allow this Sam Bell to leave, but Bell manufactures a crisis and convinces GERTY to let him outside to check for damage. Bell finds the other Sam Bell, unconscious in the lunar rover, and brings him inside. The Sam Bell who had the accident believes himself to be the original Sam Bell -- but it soon is revealed it's even worse than that. The Sam Bell who had the accident was, himself, a clone of the original Sam Bell, who is still on Earth. Not three years, but at least a decade has passed since the mining operation began. Sam Bell was cloned hundreds of times, with each clone sent to the Moon to save money on sending astronauts there. The Bell we started this adventure with is not going home after his three-year contract. The clones are set to die after the three years expire and a new clone will be awakened to continue, unaware that there were any clones before him, thinking himself to be the original who landed and began the mining operation.
The movie presents this as unethical behavior (in fact, when the credits are about to roll, they mention that after this practice is discovered, the mining organization's stock plummets), as well they should. Cloning doesn't seem to be as common a theme in science fiction as other things like artificial intelligence, so the fate of clones and the way to treat them ethically doesn't feel like an overdone scenario to me. However, the cloning we do see in movies like Moon is not the way cloning is done in real life -- real life cloning is called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. To my knowledge, there have never been any successful human clones made (though I think a scientist in Japan once claimed that he has), but some animals, such as the sheep Dolly, have been successfully cloned. How cloning works in the real world is that the nucleus of the donor's cell is removed and the rest of the cell is discarded, then the nucelus of an egg cell is removed and the nucleus of the donor cell is inserted into the enucleated egg cell. The nucleus is reprogrammed by the host cell, then the egg (with the donor's cell nucleus) is given an electric shock until it starts to divide. In other words, real life cloning involves cloning the donor as an embryo, and the embryo must grow and develop normally. You just can't clone someone as an adult, and I'm skeptical that the clone would contain all of the donor's memories, as the clones do in this film. However, a clone does become a brand new human being, and so ultimately, I agree with the movie that this is an unethical practice. The nature of clones is an interesting one to think about, but I take it that since they are human beings and develop as such, so they have their own rights and value as human beings.
Grade: B+
Reason for grade: A bit lower of a mark because it does start off pretty slow. If it had managed to capture my attention right away, I could have easily given it an A. Still, I enjoyed the movie and it gives us something to think about, even if it assumes the clones have value rather than presenting a discussion of it.
Moon
Directed by: Duncan Jones
Written by: Nathan Parker
Starring:
Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell
Kevin Spacey as the voice of GERTY
Dominique McElligott as Tess Bell
Benedict Wong as Thompson
Kaya Scodelario as Eve Bell
Matt Berry as Overmeyers
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