Moon

mgsrocks

Came across this on youtube, looks interesting!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIexG8179K8

johnny_ultimate

Could be worth a watch alright - as a big fan of Sam Rockwell, would be very curious to see how he holds a film by himself with few other cast members to support him.

Although it does seem to fit a little too snuggly into the 'psychological sci-fi' subgenre - trailer gives off a Solaris / 2001 / Event Horizon vibe pretty strongly. Of course, they're all good films, but could be a little familiar.

Mr. Frost

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Could be worth a watch alright - as a big fan of Sam Rockwell, would be very curious to see how he holds a film by himself with few other cast members to support him.

Although it does seem to fit a little too snuggly into the 'psychological sci-fi' subgenre - trailer gives off a Solaris / 2001 / Event Horizon vibe pretty strongly. Of course, they're all good films, but could be a little familiar.

Hmmm..just there are always going to be familiarities with whatever film is made.

Looks really good. Love Sam Rockwell! Don't think it'll be too difficult for him to carry the film either seen as how he appears to be 2 or 3 characters in it!

lostexpectation

its solaris/silent running/2000, its been done, we've seen it all

It's been recieving pretty amazing reviews lately. On rottentomatoes.com it's currently at 100%

mike65

Silent Running for the 21st century alright. I like the smiley to express the computers emotion

bnt

Moon is now out, showing at the IFI for the next two weeks. The timing is probably not a coincidence, and I might just go and see it on Monday (20 July). Reviews are still almost all positive, and Kermode talks about it and other Moon movies on his video blog, here.

mgsrocks

bnt wrote: »

Moon is now out, showing at the IFI for the next two weeks.

It being shown in cineworld aswell. I hoping to see it some time next week.

Eirebear

Just back from seeing this, highly enjoyable i must say.

Rockwell is excellent and the feeling of isolation is very well put across.

JP Liz

Sam Rockwell is always watchable

David Bowie's son is the director of this film

Plasmoid

God i cant wait for this film. Anyone know any cinemas in Cork showing it, i can't find any

qwertz

Saw this movie yesterday evening. Very good old-fashioned European cinema. The audience was mostly mature with some in their mid-20's. None of those BigMac-eating folks that were going to see Brüno.

@Plasmoid, according to The Ticket it is being shown in the Cork Omniplex.

D-Generate

Just saw it in Mahon Point Omniplex Cinema in Cork.

Good film indeed. Was nice not to have a space film drenched in CGI effects

2040

Just came back from seeing this. I thought it was brilliant. Apparently it's the first in a trilogy.

Driver 8

Interesting, well-acted film. Ending seemed to tie things up a little too neatly, but it's good to see something intelligent amid all the (mostly dissapointing) blockbusters.

TheManWho

Whenever I see Sam Rockwell in this film, it reminds me of his moon pie scene in the green mile.

qz

Saw Moon this morning (brilliant film), but I have a quick q:

Is the girl that Sam saw first in the armchair and then out on the surface his grown up daughter? I had thought that it was a woman with whom he had an affair, hence why his wife Tess left him. (I have no basis for this mind, just my own mental musings). But after seeing grown-up Eve on the Comms device I figured it could be her? Can anybody shed some light on this?

bnt

I guess it looks that way, though nothing was said. There's no-one else on the cast list to fill that role.

I interpreted that scene as the wife admitting she had an affair, with Sam away on the Moon by himself.

There are many other things that were unsaid too, left to us to figure out, such as:

One of the Sams asked "why so many clones?" The answer is probably related to what happened to Sam #1: dying of some unspecified condition such as radiation sickness (losing teeth is a symptom of that). So they have to be replaced with fresh clones every three years because they keep dying - their "contract" expires, but they don't get to go "home". The "rescue party" knows this, they just leave Sam #1 to die in the truck.

The ending left me thinking "sequel", and a trilogy has already been mentioned. Speculation:

You have Sam #2 making it back to Earth, but that supply rocket he's in obviously belongs to the Lunar Corporation, so what now? He might escape them, try and find his daughter and her father (the original Sam). What if the original Sam doesn't know he was cloned? The Lunar Corporation would be out to destroy all Sams, including the original ... sounds a bit like The 6th Day, in a good way. How will Eve deal with the idea that there are dozens of clones of her Dad on the Moon?

Aurora Borealis

Went to see it tonight. Had forgotten just how good Rockwell is.
Very enjoyable.

Birneybau

bnt wrote: »

One of the Sams asked "why so many clones?" The answer is probably related to what happened to Sam #1: dying of some unspecified condition such as radiation sickness (losing teeth is a symptom of that). So they have to be replaced with fresh clones every three years because they keep dying - their "contract" expires, but they don't get to go "home". The "rescue party" knows this, they just leave Sam #1 to die in the truck.

[/spoiler]

I took this to mean that the clones were only bred to have a 3ish year life span before they begin to deteriorate.Hence the capsule in which they think is gonna freeze them actually destroys them.

bnt

That's another possibility, true. The weird thing is that it happens so quickly (over just a few days).

Eirebear

Birneybau wrote: »

I took this to mean that the clones were only bred to have a 3ish year life span before they begin to deteriorate.Hence the capsule in which they think is gonna freeze them actually destroys them.

Thats pretty much how i read it, although the other option is also possible.

Either way it leaves an explanation as to

Why so many?

Ive seen a lot of people saying it left too many questions unanswered, but i dont think it did to be fair, unless im missing some completely.

The only one that left me was in reference to the "Original" and wether he was dead or alive.

bnt

He's alive all right - during the phone call, the daughter calls "Dad? Someone's asking about Mom", and "Dad" answers back. That's why I think he will be in the sequel(s).

Now I think about it, the "bred for three years" idea makes less sense. All those clones (plus shipping, etc.) cost the Corporation money, so it would be in their interest to make them last as long as possible. The technology could be expected to improve over time, to make them last longer, so there would be no need to make that many up front. Result: I'm back to my original idea, that the three-year lifespan is due to something permanently outside the Corporation's control, not something they can avoid or fix, such as the conditions on the Moon.

Or I could ask the Writer/Director - he's on Twitter.

stakey

I took the 'why so many' question to be answered by what Girty mentioned with regards to the defects in clones. With each clone the genetic material is degenerates more, it looks like looking through the logs that all the Sams died a similar death too, perhaps the cloning technology could only keep the clone alive for three years, hence the contract time?

Btw, great move, wonderfully acted, shot and great soundtrack.

Eirebear

bnt wrote: »

He's alive all right - during the phone call, the daughter calls "Dad? Someone's asking about Mom", and "Dad" answers back. That's why I think he will be in the sequel(s).

Then why the need for clones? Surely the Radiation sickness (or any other disease you may point to) would have killed the original Sam also? My calculations are that his daughter was very young (0-3...there were 5 spaces gone from the clone store) when the real sam was on the moon, could she have been adopted when his wife died? Or could "dad" be the man his wife was having an affair with?

serjical_strike

i seen this trailer months ago and have been waiting to hear a release date, now i see its out and the nearest cinema to me is about a 1000 miles away.. bad times... blu-ray it will have to be i suppose.

Vim Fuego

Eirebear wrote: »

Then why the need for clones? Surely the Radiation sickness (or any other disease you may point to) would have killed the original Sam also? My calculations are that his daughter was very young (0-3...there were 5 spaces gone from the clone store) when the real sam was on the moon, could she have been adopted when his wife died? Or could "dad" be the man his wife was having an affair with?

I thought that maybe

the 3 year 'contract' is about as long they can keep a clone going before they go insane from the isolation. We see that original Sam is hallucinating even when he think he has only 2 weeks left

.

Overall, I did enjoy the movie but I felt it could have been

a bit more mysterious, everything seemed a bit too cut-and-dried once we learned that Sam #2 wasn't just a hallucination. The only mystery was the clone storage, which was conveniently under the floor. I was expecting Gerty to be a bit more menacing too but was glad to be proved wrong there as that's just overdone

.

bnt

Yep - the daughter has gone from about 3 to 15, so there's 12 years missing from the last Sam's life, you might say, and 4 clones have come and gone in that time. The illusion was complete - the last Sam thought he was living 12 years earlier. GERTY was in on it, obviously - another 2001 allusion (the computer keeping the mission secret).

So the original Sam is now 12 years older (40s?), and possibly a less suitable candidate for cloning. Also, I think it's still possible he was cloned without his knowledge, which might explain why so many clones: if the Lunar Corporation only had one chance to make them, and couldn't go back for more later.

The implication seems to be that the clones woke up with their real memories of Earth, unlike (say) "Blade Runner" or "The 6th Day", where all memories were implanted. Why else go to all that trouble, using Sam's real family, etc? If the clones have memories of arriving on the Moon, then the original Sam did too, was cloned there, and returned to Earth. But they do not have memories of 3 years on the Moon - so the original Sam was not on the Moon for 3 years: he returned to Earth, and never got ill or died.

The Lunar Corporation could have saved itself a world of trouble if they could have cloned other people and/or faked their memories, which leads me to the conclusion that the cloning technology was very limited and unauthorized. At the end, from the audio snippets, it seems that the cloning is uncovered and Corporation officers are put on trial. (So I'm probably wrong about the sequel.)

I like it when plots are not fully explained and airtight; it makes it fun to speculate on how to fill in the gaps. I noticed something similar with Star Wars and the Godfather films too. :pac:

AnonoBoy

bnt wrote: »

The ending left me thinking "sequel", and a trilogy has already been mentioned. Speculation:

You have Sam #2 making it back to Earth, but that supply rocket he's in obviously belongs to the Lunar Corporation, so what now? He might escape them, try and find his daughter and her father (the original Sam). What if the original Sam doesn't know he was cloned? The Lunar Corporation would be out to destroy all Sams, including the original ... sounds a bit like The 6th Day, in a good way. How will Eve deal with the idea that there are dozens of clones of her Dad on the Moon?

But at the very end:

you hear a news report about the Sam clone testifying against the corporation, so we kind of know what happens when he gets back, although that could be a while later, the courtcase might not happen straight away. Although the whole 'clone rights' courtcase could make up the bones of the second film if there was one.

bnt

serjical_strike wrote: »

i seen this trailer months ago and have been waiting to hear a release date, now i see its out and the nearest cinema to me is about a 1000 miles away.. bad times... blu-ray it will have to be i suppose.

According to the director's website, Moon is supposed to be coming to the Cork Omniplex - and their website says it's on now.

MayoForSam

Looks to be on in the Galway Omniplex too, might take a look.

MikeC101

bnt wrote: »

According to the director's website, Moon is supposed to be coming to the Cork Omniplex - and their website says it's on now.

I get the feeling from his being 1000 miles from a cinema, he may be currently residing in the Chad part of his location address

electron

The way i see it is as follows:

1. The original Sam arrives on the Moon, is cloned there and then (without knowing it) and when his contract ends, goes home and lives happily ever after.

2. A clone is awoken in the same manner as we saw, being told he had an accident, and does he remember anything? He doesn't remember anything about the crash but otherwise has all the memories of the original Sam when he arrived. He goes to work and when his contract comes to an end he is allowed to "go home" (but as we know the return capsule destroys the body).

3. There won't be any complaining from any of the Sams because they all believe they're going home in 3 years time. That's why they need so many clones.

4. Then something goes wrong and a real accident happens. When Sam doesn't return to the base, a new clone is awaken just in case, and Girty reports the situation to Earth. A "rescue squad" is sent out to investigate what happened and whether the previous Sam is actually dead.

5. Finally, so as not to disrupt the 3 year cycle (logistical/maintenance reasons), the new clone (the "tough guy"), is given the memory of Sam just as he was before he left the base and had an accident. Ie when he had only two weeks to go.

As for the radiation sickness, i think this was simply caused by going too close to the transmitter/signal blocker (or whatever it was that they found).

btw didn't like the movie too much

Outkast_IRE

electron wrote: »

The way i see it is as follows:

1. The original Sam arrives on the Moon, is cloned there and then (without knowing it) and when his contract ends, goes home and lives happily ever after.

2. A clone is awoken in the same manner as we saw, being told he had an accident, and does he remember anything? He doesn't remember anything about the crash but otherwise has all the memories of the original Sam when he arrived. He goes to work and when his contract comes to an end he is allowed to "go home" (but as we know the return capsule destroys the body).

3. There won't be any complaining from any of the Sams because they all believe they're going home in 3 years time. That's why they need so many clones.

4. Then something goes wrong and a real accident happens. When Sam doesn't return to the base, a new clone is awaken just in case, and Girty reports the situation to Earth. A "rescue squad" is sent out to investigate what happened and whether the previous Sam is actually dead.

5. Finally, so as not to disrupt the 3 year cycle (logistical/maintenance reasons), the new clone (the "tough guy"), is given the memory of Sam just as he was before he left the base and had an accident. Ie when he had only two weeks to go.

As for the radiation sickness, i think this was simply caused by going too close to the transmitter/signal blocker (or whatever it was that they found).

btw didn't like the movie too much

OK on point 1. Possible but i doubt they have the cloning facility on the moon it seems like they just got hundreds of sams ready and shipped them to the moon. No way to know if original real sam knows.

2.The clone they awaken after the accident doesnt have all the memories as he cant remeber how to carve the wood or that the photo he gets shown of their child so what memories he shares is debateable would have to see it again to be sure.

3. Exactly

4.spot on

5.would have to watch again to be sure.

As for what your calling "radiation sickness" i dont think its anything to do with radiation .
The sams have a life span of 3 years at the end of that time they start to get sick .
If you remember when he sees the videos of all the other sams before him some of them are pretty sick , one says his hair is falling out another is coughing blood.

Great film though really enjoyed it

electron

yeah, apparently the "tough guy" got a different package from everyone else"
i didn't quite notice that all of them got sick in the end. thanks for pointing it out

bnt

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

As for what your calling "radiation sickness" i dont think its anything to do with radiation .
The sams have a life span of 3 years at the end of that time they start to get sick .
If you remember when he sees the videos of all the other sams before him some of them are pretty sick , one says his hair is falling out another is coughing blood.

Great film though really enjoyed it

That was my idea, because of something specific they showed: Sam's teeth falling out, a classic sympton used in other movies IIRC. I wondered why that would happen after exactly three years - but is it always that exact? The clones are TOLD their contract is three years, but it wouldn't change much if there was variability: either way, they end up in the incinerator!

. :eek:

I'll need to see the film again, but I don't remember Sam #2 having additional memories. They all have memories of an accident, but in his case he overheard GERTY having that live conversation with Earth. Then he saw that He3 harvester out of commission (due to the actual accident), but GERTY would not let him go and look at it. So he had two reasons to be suspicious that he was not being told everything.

Overature

is this avaible to see in ireland?

MayoForSam

Overature wrote: »

is this avaible to see in ireland?

Go back 6 or 7 posts in thread, reading is good for you :rolleyes:.

Outkast_IRE

Overature wrote: »

is this avaible to see in ireland?

Ya but few and far between in cork its only in the Omniplex cinema .
I think it deserved a wider release and a bit more press coverage

stakey

So i've been giving it some thought, and I think this fits:

The original Sam starts a three year contact on the moon, he's involved in an accident which they are unable to resuscitate him from. The company decides seeing as he's beyond resuscitation to clone him, you know, with him not being able to object he's a perfect candidate and all.

Cloning done, Sam's body is sent home, daughter too young to remember her original father. Tess remarries a little later.

Each clone awakes with memory of the accident, the company were able to keep his memories. Of course waking up and remembering an accident allows the clone to dismiss the reason why they were out in the first place.

Each clone is probably either a clone of a clone, or a duplicate of a duplicate, either way, I believe each clone gets sicker and sicker due to genetic degredation in the line or due to constant re-use of the original genetic material. Hence the reason for hundreds of clones.

I think the original Sam definitely died, if he had of survived and was re-united with Tess then his daughter on Earth would've recognised him.

Eirebear

I think the original Sam definitely died, if he had of survived and was re-united with Tess then his daughter on Earth would've recognised him.

She wouldnt have recognised him, remember when he calls her from the Moon she asks him to call back as there is something wrong with the picture, so its voice only.

Outkast_IRE

stakey wrote: »

So i've been giving it some thought, and I think this fits:

The original Sam starts a three year contact on the moon, he's involved in an accident which they are unable to resuscitate him from. The company decides seeing as he's beyond resuscitation to clone him, you know, with him not being able to object he's a perfect candidate and all.

Cloning done, Sam's body is sent home, daughter too young to remember her original father. Tess remarries a little later.

Each clone awakes with memory of the accident, the company were able to keep his memories. Of course waking up and remembering an accident allows the clone to dismiss the reason why they were out in the first place.

Each clone is probably either a clone of a clone, or a duplicate of a duplicate, either way, I believe each clone gets sicker and sicker due to genetic degredation in the line or due to constant re-use of the original genetic material. Hence the reason for hundreds of clones.

I think the original Sam definitely died, if he had of survived and was re-united with Tess then his daughter on Earth would've recognised him.

Ok a lot of what your saying is just guessing theres no way to know if original sam is dead or not we dont know if there was a accident or not cause the clones could be given memory implants of anything.

Each clone isnt a clone of a clone where did you come up with that, the secret room has hundreds of clones all ready to be woken when needed so presumably these were all prepared at the same time with the same genetic material, its doubtful they have a automated cloning facility on moon base so these must of been clones on earth and shipped in. This means the base was either built with the secret stoarage room for clones which is the most likely answer , or they added it later. Either way if the Real sam was sent to the moon and there was a accident they wouldnt just have a whole clone facility there ready to go just in case.

The clones have a 3 year life span to go with the 3 year contract as we see in the film of the clones that went before him some were sick as the contract was finishing. 3 years isolated was probably the amount of time they determined they could use them before psychological problems etc showed up. Sam was seeing things when he had two weeks left etc.

How would the daughter recognise him when he phones he keeps his hand over the camera so she cant see thim and she says theres a problem with the line thinking its just a connection problem.

Zombrex

My take is this

The original Sam never went to the moon. It has always been clones. As far as people on Earth are concerned it is an unmanned moon base. No one has ever missed Sam, no one has ever wondered if Sam never came back from the moon base so who is running it, no one has ever wondered if Sam did come back from the moon base who is running it. The is basically the plot of Michael Bay's The Island set on the moon

For some reason the moon base needs a human operator, and for the company it is far cheaper to have a army of expendable clones on the moon than have a group of people up there to help out if someone gets sick or killed.

Original the idea of clones was probably because the base does not have proper radiation shielding from the solar winds (the moon has no atmosphere and thus no protection). The company probably know this, that long exposure on the moon leads to death and no one is going to sign up for that. If they send a human up there he is just going to die, so instead they pretend it is unmanned and have a clone up there running the show. They eventually get sick and are told they are going home but are in fact killed and replaced.

What Girty says about the crash at the start of the 3 year stint doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Perhaps he is lying. The company would not have built an entire cloning facility on the moon in a few weeks. This would have had to have been planned before the base was built, which means the clone was planned from the start.

The video feeds of his wife and baby daughter are faked. They skip intermittently at cut points. When he calls home his daughter can't see him so doesn't recognised him. Perhaps Sam doesn't even look like the actual Sam, if his memories are all implants the original Sam could be anyone.

The "rescue" ship is sent out because Sam discovers his clone. They need to clean up the base and reset.

Girty is programmed to help Sam, and this programming overrides loyalty to the company. This is a bit of a twist on the traditional mad computer.
[/LIST]

To be honest the movie had some big plot holes (eg science has advanced to cloning, memory implants and A.I computers but we still need a human on the moon to drive out to a harvester, take out some H3 and bring it back again?) and I was expecting a cool twist at the end that never came (the "twist" about the clones wasn't really a twist simply the plot, the characters figure it out pretty fast and so do the audience). And the special effects were a bit Doctor Whoish.

Blog post about plot holes, sums up them pretty well, caution major spoilers

http://stochasticgeometry.wordpress.com/2009/07/25/moon/

But I did think Rockwell was brilliant.

MikeC101

I really have to go see this soon. I can only fight my desire to highlight and read all that spoiler blanked text for so long!!

bnt

MikeC101 wrote: »

I really have to go see this soon. I can only fight my desire to highlight and read all that spoiler blanked text for so long!!

Are you in Dublin this coming Saturday evening (6:50 PM)? Director / Writer Duncan Jones is coming to the Irish Film Institute. He can answer all your questions, if he's still around after the screening. :P

(I won't be there, though - off to the USA on Friday.)

Zombrex

bnt wrote: »

He can answer all your questions, if he's still around after the screening. :P

Cool, I can barrage him with the plot holes :pac:

[Frink]: Yes, over here, m-hay, m-haven... in episode BF12, you were battling Barbarians while riding a winged appaloosa yet in the very next scene my dear, you're clearly atop a winged arabian! Please do explain it!

[Lucy Lawless]: Uh, yeah, well whenever you notice something like that.. a wizard did it.

[Frink]: Yes, alright, yes, in episode AG04...

[Lucy Lawless]: Wizard!

Crapjob Sean

bnt wrote: »

Are you in Dublin this coming Saturday evening (6:50 PM)? Director / Writer Duncan Jones is coming to the Irish Film Institute. He can answer all your questions, if he's still around after the screening. :P

Thanks for the heads up.

I liked the hell out of this movie.

Loved the soundtrack too.

bnt

There's More! Update from Duncan on Twitter:

2 Dublin Q&As & and intro for MOON this weekend. Feel free to come along! Sat-18:50-IFI, Sun-16:20-Cineworld, intro Sun-20:50-Lighthouse

Crapjob Sean

That's good looking-out, BNT

Spunge

LOVED this movie.
Definitely up there with my favourite sci-fi movies.

i think that the real sam did go to the moon and serve 3 years then it was the clones afterwards

one thing though

if the above is true then did they re-use the transmissions of his wife or did they fabricate them altogether and if they did re-use them wouldnt her responses have been off as the cloned sams could have said different things to the original

CiDeRmAn

Regarding the movie, it was fantastic, a real tonic after the visual diarrhoea that was Transformers 2, and after seeing Moon my mate and I got into a discussion about the matters mentioned above,

The tech in the movie was sufficiently close to ours that we could assume that the matter of reading a pattern from the real Sams mind would have been necessarily intrusive, the "accident" he recovers from as a cover for the awakening process may well have been employed initially for the read of his mind and then copied to the Sam clones upon awakening.
The matter of the degeneration of Sam over the three years to me boiled down to either a long term virus that will kill after 3 years of being dormant, an inbuilt genetic mistake that again kills after 3 years or a simple matter of including a toxin into the fod rations that Sam receives by the thrid year. Unfortunately Gerty's own mission to protect Sam should mean that the computer would not take part in any activity to harm him, that said it was complicit in the covering up of our Sams rover accident.

I don't know.
Here's hoping it makes enough money for Duncan to make the next two films, it's supposed to be the first part of a trilogy you know.