Okay, so it's well made and features another one of those intense and intensely wacky Sam Rockwell performances, but so what? I didn't hate it, but ultimately haven't we seen this type of film before? The guy alone who gets well...lonely...and maybe starts to see things and go crazy? Except in this one, he's not crazy, he just starts out lonely and then gets plopped into this whole mean business made clones scheme. And by the end he stays lonely and dies, but he exposes the evil plan! Isn't that enough? He's the good guy! It all just feels rather overly simplistic. There's not really much, if any, moral or ethical discussions about cloning in general, Sam just kind of goes with it and is like- okay, fine, clones, yeah, moving on to the next plot development...
All the emotional stuff too- he's got a daughter and wife and is crazy lonely (have I mentioned he's lonely enough?) and the piano music is sad and mournful- it's all supposed to make us sympathetic, but, and this is especially in regards to the kid and the wife, we never see them aside from some oh so overdone video feed footage and that's just not enough for me. Same thing goes for the supposed bad guys who are never featured on screen.
I'm kind of dulled by the lack of genuine villains in movies in general. It's just as true in Battleship or or Battle: Los Angeles or Signs or War of the Worlds or Day the Earth Stood Still (remake)- bunch of ugly aggressive aliens come with a vaguely defined plot to kill us for no discernibly justified reason other than we exist. They talk in some clicking, slobbering, non-subtitled language that is ultimately unnecessary because they're moronic actions speak for themselves and they try to kill us with their ridiculously powerful and awesome-looking technology and then we defeat them via the aid of a ragtag group of survivors who determine the ONE, incredibly convenient weakness of the bad guys and slaughter them all. The end. There's no notion of maybe the aliens could be characters. Who speak. With us. In English. Maybe they have a real reason to want to kill us. And we talk about it with them. Maybe those peace talks do eventually break down and we resort to regretful violence and it becomes emotionally hard for us to go to lengthy war with them because those peace talks took a couple of years of communication and we've sense made some friends with the aliens. That way there are feelings on both sides. And stakes- "I don't wanna kill this new pal I made, we're buddies." Maybe there continues to be heavy tolls on both sides in this lengthy war and actual peace has to be made after too many have died and then the aliens fly off saying, "sorry this whole thing was a mistake, we should never have come, you humans are far too primitive for us to want to deal with you right now, we'll talk after you've evolved." That's what I want. Not Moon. Not- we're the invisible and implied bad guys of the story by proxy of doing a couple of things that technically DO yield the salvation of the planet's population and fuel even though those things are actually morally questionable actions that could be discussed by the protagonist of this story but ultimately never are in any significant way. Needs of the many, people.
I'm not gonna mention all of the 2001: A Space Odyssey references and homages and obvious steals- GERTY is the most obnoxiously weak ripoff of HAL in a long time and he feels more so like a theft of a classic character because he really doesn't do much aside from emoticon and act detached in that vaguely creepy Kevin Spacey kind of way, I mean HAL adds the whole technology angle to 2001 and explores the whole evolution of machines thing which connects back to the primary theme of evolution in general and questions of the limits and/or lack of limits of technology for humanity- whereas GERTY is just kinda sinister and then just kind of nice and then just plain old overly informative of everything that's going on. He doesn't go anywhere.
I am reminded of Andrei Tarkovsky's brilliant Solaris, arguably one of the best science fiction films ever made and still rarely seen. Not only is it about a man alone in a unique setting, he's also alone in an emotionally consistent way, there are scenes of him on Earth which explore his character much more deeply and establish a sympathy with him for the audience that not only makes us care about him but also preps the majority of the psychological and potentially religious and most definitely other-worldly themes and ideas and events of the story. Moon spends no time on Earth. Sam is just in space, on the moon, and there are some references to his life back on Earth, but not much else.
Finally more than all of that stuff combined is the fact that Moon sets up like a bazillion potential avenues of thematic and emotional material and doesn't go anywhere with it. Like I said no moral issues are taken with the cloning. There are ultimately no psychological questions asked about possibly all of this stuff taking place in Sam's head. There's an established bad guy that Sam just feels obligated to defeat in whichever way he can, despite there being no genuine discussion of their motives. Naturally, the big bad business types are evil by nature of their actions taken against Sam. We don't consider even the possibility that Sam could just say- yeah, maybe this is for the best, the Earth needs this fucking energy and the real Sam on Earth is a real human being, he deserves his life, my sacrifice is necessary. Or maybe- fuck the real Sam, I count just as much, I deserve life! Whatever perspective Moon wants to take is fine, there's just no real exploration of that perspective in the film as it stands.
Okay, this is supposed to be me not hating on a film, I did like it, I just wish it had done more or endeavored to have done more. Say what you will about the supposed flaws of Prometheus, at least it attempts to ask large questions given the large nature of its circumstances. Imagine if that film had simply featured David the android as an android and that was it. Nothing else said about him. No desires on his part to be more than the sum of his parts. No father issues. No need to also ask questions of the Engineer. No peering into people's dreams. Just him being creepy with his blond hair and Lawrence of Arabia obsession and him doing his job with the language stuff. Or imagine Shaw without her fucking cross and belief in and ultimate issues with God.
Pros- Really well made. It's pretty. Technically fantastic. It looked and sounded like he was on the moon. It was, as near as I can tell, scientifically accurate. It was paced well, the editing was calm yet swift when it needed to be in the more tense moments. I like the ambition of doing a science fiction film in the current era of Transformers and big loud endless explosions and action that doesn't have any of that. That's fine. The acting is very good.
But ultimately the movie becomes something of a plodding affair of one thing that happens and then another thing that happens. It has a story. It tells it's story. The end. There are no grand attempts to leave things open-ended or interpretive. It believes by virtue of not being a Transformers type film it will be inherently loved by those seeking a quieter supposedly more introspective science fiction movie.
Simply because you endeavor to make a film that is the opposite of all that is hated in Hollywood right now doesn't really give you a free pass to the auteur level. There still needs to be something more than just a story that features vaguely interesting events. Simply because you prove you can direct a film in a competent manner that isn't a blockbuster, doesn't make me feel as though you're a genius filmmaker.
Duncan Jones is, I'm sure, a very good director. I have yet to see Source Code. Moon tells me he is promising, but hasn't proved he's brilliant.
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