Moon (2009, UK)

In writer/director Duncan Jones' (David Bowie's son) debut film - the plot-twisting, dramatic thriller and thought-provoking sci-fi film from Sony Pictures had obvious filmic references to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Solaris (1972), Silent Running (1972), Alien (1979), Outland (1981) and Blade Runner (1982). It presented the themes of loneliness and alienation, the 'discovery of identity' (and what it means to be human), and the threats of technology and an ever-present, exploitational and watchful, cost-cutting 'Big-Brother' corporation. Director Jones co-wrote the story-script with British screenwriter Nathan Parker.

On a budget of $5 million, the low-budget movie grossed only $5 million (domestic) and $9.7 million (worldwide). The special-visual effects were a combination of modern CGI blended together with old-fashioned FX techniques (e.g. an actual moonscape set and miniature models of lunar rovers and helium-3 harvesters, etc.). The film's two taglines were:

• "250,000 miles from home, the hardest thing to face...is yourself"
• "The last place you'd ever expect to find yourself."

The slow-burn, dystopian sci-fi mystery thriller was set on the far side of the Moon at a lunar harvesting and manufacturing facility (Sarang Station), manned by one human and his helpful AI robotic assistant. The LUNAR Industries' mission was to gather a very valuable and precious commodity for Earth to help supply it with an alternative energy source known as Helium-3, to cleanly fuel the planet's power needs.

• the film opened with a computer screen question: ("WHERE ARE WE NOW?") and a voice-over accompanied by a commercial:
  • "There was a time when energy was a dirty word. When turning on your lights was a hard choice. Cities in brown-out. Food shortages. Cars burning fuel to run. But that was the past. Where are we now? How do we make the world so much better? Make deserts bloom? Right now, we're the largest producer of fusion energy in the world. The energy of the sun, trapped in rock, harvested by machine from the far side of the moon. Today, we deliver enough clean-burning Helium-3 to supply the energy needs of nearly 70% of the planet. Who'd have thought? All the energy we ever needed, right above our heads. The power of the moon. The power of our future."
• the voice-over provided commentary for the striking images of how a polluted and crowded Earth with heavy energy demands had been positively transformed due to the efforts of a Japanese consortium known as LUNAR Industries, Ltd.; the corporation's logo concluded the video advertisement

A New Energy Source: HE3 From the Lunar Surface

The Logo of LUNAR Industries, LTD., Following a Commercial

• during the super-imposed title credits, a lone, bearded, long-haired astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) was viewed as the company's sole employee; he was at the end of his three-year contract with Lunar Industries; he was located at a mostly-automated lunar mining base station (on the far side) known as 'Sarang', functioning as the only contracted worker in the fully-automated base-facility (a claustrophobic, dingy-white chamber); his job was to supervise the strip-mining of lunar soil and rock (with four gigantic robotic threshing or harvesting robotic machines, with nicknames of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) to obtain Helium-3 - a major component of fusion technology, that was periodically rocketed back to Earth in canisters after its extraction - to provide the planet with green (or clean) solar fuel energy

Lone Bearded Astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell)

One of the Base Station's LUNAR Rovers

Sam Inside One of the Giant Harvesters With a Full Canister of HE-3

• Sam was shown leaving the base station - the only instance when he was required to use a small rover to travel about 15 miles on the moon's surface to enter into the belly of one of the harvesters and retrieve a fully-loaded pod or canister of Helium-3 and replace it with an empty one; he reported to HQ, via a recorded video message, that a full container load of canisters would soon be "in transit" back to Earth in a Maglev launcher
• Sam had only recorded communications with Earth, due to the base's persistently-malfunctioning satellite uplink system with signal failures; he occasionally received pre-recorded video-taped messages (i.e., a football game feed) to keep him updated; he was beginning to realize that due to his continually-isolated state, he was showing signs of stress and homesickness: ("I'm talkin' to myself on a regular basis. So, uh, time to go home, you know what I mean?")
• Sam's only real interactive contact and companion was a semi-mobile, multi-tasking AI robotic assist machine named GERTY 3000 (voice of Kevin Spacey) with a separate robotic arm and a pincer hand; the questionably-helpful, smooth-voiced, programmed GERTY used yellow smiley face emoticons on a read-out screen to communicate feelings and monitored Sam's every move; GERTY was not fully autonomous - he was mechanically connected to an overhead rail system that transported him throughout the station's base
• while GERTY gave Sam a haircut in the rec room, the robot asked Sam about his short-fuse temper and irritability: "Sam, is everything OK? Sam?... You don't seem like yourself today. Is something wrong?"; Sam admitted that he was frustrated with HQ about how the communications fix was considered a low priority, even though he had only 2 weeks left on his contract; he was also suffering from frequent headaches, and apparent lapses in his attention span

The Receipt of a Delayed Video Message From Sam's Wife Tess (Dominique McElligott)

• at a communications screen, Sam received a Jupiter-uplink pre-recorded message from his wife Tess (Dominique McElligott) and his young 3-year old daughter Eve (Rosie Shaw) (she was an infant when he started his contract); they briefly chatted about missing each other and how Sam would be returning home shortly; there was an unusual but brief glitch-edit after Tess mentioned Eve's birthday
• Sam whiled away his time by carving a miniature desktop balsa wood model of his hometown of Fairfield (and its inhabitants), pruning his greenhouse plants, and watching a TV-show rerun of Bewitched; as he filled up a cup with boiling hot water in the nearby kitchen, he was distracted by the sudden sight of a long-haired teenaged girl wearing a yellow dress sitting in the chair he had just vacated; he was so startled that he accidentally burnt his hand - and then the girl vanished; he told GERTY that he was distracted by the TV, but GERTY noted that the TV had been turned off ("Perhaps you were imagining things?"); and later that evening, he dreamed that he made love to his wife
• the film took a turn during Sam's second venture out in a rover to check on two of the malfunctioning harvesting mining machines - the "twitchy" # 3 (Luke), and the "live one" # 1 (Matthew); he suffered an accident when he distractedly crashed the rover into one of the lunar threshers after seeing another hallucinatory mirage of the teenaged female figure in the distance (an image of his own grown daughter Eve that he had seen previously)

Sam Injured After A Rover Crash-Accident and Awakening in the Base Station's Infirmary

• after a dissolve to black (the loss of consciousness due to loss of cabin oxygen), Sam suddenly awoke back in the infirmary in the lunar base station; Sam asked: "Where am I?"; GERTY - who had presumably assisted Sam, told him that he had experienced an accident that he couldn't remember; shortly later, the injured Sam revived and struggled off the infirmary bed and in another room, he overheard GERTY having a strange and clandestine real-time conversation with LUNAR Central's Overmeyers (Matt Berry) and Thompson (Benedict Wong):
  • Gerty: "The new Sam is in reworking order. But we only have two working harvesters now."
• Thompson insisted to GERTY that they had to ramp up production even though there were only two remaining harvesters; Overmeyers was very upset: "This is incredible! But how do you manage to destroy a f--king rover, a harvester and an employee all on the same day?"; Sam appeared and their conversation ceased; GERTY lied about how he was making a recorded video message for HQ to update them on Sam's condition, since the "live feed" was still down; GERTY then changed the subject and attempted to convince Sam that he had suffered brain damage: "This would explain your slight memory loss and logic impairment"; the robot demanded that the injured Sam repeatedly take memory tests and strengthen his logic skills before he could return to work, and again deceitfully lied that he had been asked by HQ to "slow down" the harvesters until Sam had fully recuperated
• shortly later, with a reestablished Jupiter link with HQ, Sam was told that his request to check on the stalled Matthew had been denied; he was ordered to "stay put" at the base by LUNAR's Overmeyers, who then promised that a "rescue unit" (named ELIZA) had already been sent to fix it
• believing that he had been treated "like a child," Sam was able to convince GERTY that he had to check the exterior shell of the base station possibly hit by a mini-meteorite - after self-sabotaging the base with a minor gas leak; on another rover, Sam left the base on an unauthorized mission to revisit the site where he had earlier crashed into one of the harvesters; there, he made a remarkable discovery - he found an unconscious version of himself (doppelganger) in the damaged rover; he brought his doppelganger back to the base, and then yelled at GERTY:
  • "Who is he?...You tell me who that is!"

Sam Bringing His Doppelganger Back to the Base

Sam Again Recuperating in the Infirmary

Injured Elderly Sam in the Infirmary While His Healthier Sam #2 Clone Looked On

• the disoriented, injured and tired Sam was again placed in the infirmary, and told there had been an accident that he didn't remember: ("You had an accident out by one of the harvesters"); a 'cloned' Sam #2 (Robin Chalk) that was a younger and healthier mirror-image of the elderly Sam, stood at a distance and looked at Sam who was again recuperating from injuries, including a concussion that brought further hallucinations; Sam asked GERTY: "Is there someone in the room with us?", but was told to rest [Note: Sam didn't realize at this point in the film that his injured condition was not solely due to the rover accident, but to his own cloned deterioration (at the end of his life-span)]
• Sam listened to another ambiguous message from Tess, telling him that Thompson was "promising the world - I think it was the right thing, but it's just such a long time. I suppose there are - there are things, you know, that needed to happen. I-I need time to think"
• Sam angrily asked GERTY about the other look-alike individual who was seen exercising in the rec room - and feared that he might be losing his sanity: "What the hell's going on?...Where did he come from? Why does he look like me?...I'm losing my mind"; GERTY blunted stated that both of them were named "Sam Bell," and then GERTY divulged a very crucial fact - that he had kept the presence of the second "Sam Bell" hidden from his superiors:
  • "I haven't let Sam contact LUNAR. They don't know you were recovered alive from the accident...I'm here to keep you safe, Sam"
• the two Sams remained awkward and wary around each other; the newer 'clone' (who claimed he had been there for a week) told the elder Sam: "It's the fact that I'm here talking to a clone that's slightly troubling," although Sam denied that he was a "clone"; with a double-meaning to his words, the elder Sam gratefully thanked the younger Sam for saving him from the rover wreckage: "I wanted to thank you for, um - If it wasn't for you, I'd—I, I guess I'd still be in that crashed rover. You saved my life"; the two Sams each thought that the other was an inferior clone: ("We look like each other, I guess"); they engaged in a competitive game of ping-pong; they soon realized that they both had the same memories of Tess and their daughter Eve
• the company sent a message that the ELIZA Rescue Unit (a three-man crew) would arrive in approximately 14 hours; it had purportedly been sent to "fix" the stalled harvester, but might have other nefarious and ulterior motives; the elder Sam expected, due to his promised contract, that he would be returning "home" back to Earth in a few days with the rescue team, but the suspicious younger Sam doubted that his contract would be honored:
  • "You're a f--king clone. You don't have s--t...You're not going anywhere. You know, you've been up here too long, man. You have lost your marbles"
• a frustrated Sam yelled at the younger clone: "I am the original Sam. I'm Sam f--king Bell...Me!"; Sam asked for confirmation from GERTY ("Am I a clone?") - but was ignored; the younger Sam acknowledged the factual truth that they were both interchangeable clones: "I'm in the same boat, asshole"
• the younger, smarter clone (Sam #2) was suspicious that the unethical company had a secret supply room of other 'Sam' clones inside the base - to easily replace them:
  • "What about the other clones?...We might not be the first two to be woken up. You said that that model had already been started when you got here. Well, who started it? There might be others up here right now...Think about it. How did I get up here so quickly after your crash?. They didn't ship me in from Central. There wasn't time. I must have come from the base....I bet there's some kind of secret room...Look, it's a company, right? They have investors, they have shareholders. S--t like that. What's cheaper? Spending time and money training new personnel. Or you just have a couple of spares here to do the job? It's the far side of the moon! Those cheap f--ks haven't even fixed the communication satellite yet!...You really think they give a s--t about us? They're laughin' all the way to the bank...Wake up!! There's some area that we don't know about. And I'm gonna find it"
• the younger Sam insisted on tearing the base apart to find the hidden room; the two engaged in a bloody physical struggle and argument about their identities, and in the process, Sam #2 destroyed the older Sam's tabletop miniature model of his hometown; the elderly Sam was left with a bleeding hand from his earlier burn injury
• Sam confessed to GERTY that he was scared of Sam #2's anger issues - and admitted that he also had some past anger issues which had caused his wife Tess to leave him for 6 months (to live with her parents), after which she had given him a "second chance" to change; when Sam directly asked GERTY if Tess had really received his 100+ recorded video messages, GERTY deflected the question
• Sam's next question of GERTY - "Am I really a clone?" - resulted in a stunning answer - he revealed the film's plot twist about GERTY's role in LUNAR's businesss; GERTY clearly explained to the older Sam that every time a new clone was needed after a three year period of service, the old Sam was retired, and a new clone was awakened:
  • "When you first arrived at Sarang, there was a small crash. You woke up in the infirmary. You suffered minor brain damage and memory loss. I kept you under observation and ran some tests....Sam, there was no crash. You were being awakened. It is standard procedure for all new clones to be given tests to establish mental stability and general physical health. Genetic abnormalities and minor duplication errors in the DNA can have considerable impact"
• [Note: Spoiler: GERTY described what had apparently happened after Sam's rover crash - without telling LUNAR Industries, he had awakened or activated the new doppelganger Sam #2 clone and implanted the memories of the 'original' Sam Bell into this new clone; then against orders, GERTY sent the newer Sam #2 to the crash site in another rover to rescue the still-alive elderly Sam (it now made sense how Sam had been quickly brought back to the base); the company's intention was to have the injured Sam replaced with a new cloned Sam version, who would again be told that he was at the start of a new 3-year contract; however, now there were two Sams - something that had never happened before.]
• the fraudulent Japanese consortium (LUNAR Industries) that was running the operation was regularly cloning replacement Sams inside the base station as a cost-effective measure to avoid paying for new astronauts, but they didn't expect two clones to meet each other
• GERTY's next answer to Sam's inquiry about Tess and Eve was even more emotionally stunning and sad - all of Sam's memories of his family were actually fake: "They are memory implants, Sam. Uploaded, edited memories of the original Sam Bell. I am very sorry"; the elderly Sam realized that his dozens of messages to his wife Tess had never been sent, and Tess' messages to him were old recordings that Tess had sent to the 'original' Sam Bell
• during an uncomfortable conversation with Sam #2, the younger clone made two additional revealing admissions:
  • "I wasn't supposed to find you. LUNAR instructed GERTY to lock me inside the base while you were out there"
  • "Right around the time I was awakened, I walked in on GERTY talking with Central. He was having a live conversation...They don't want us to be able to contact Earth. They lied to us. They've been lying to us since the beginning. They've been lying since forever"
• the two Sams, after becoming suspicious about GERTY's live conversation with LUNAR, decided to join together to search the outside of the base; the two drove in separate rovers outside the "working perimeter" of the base where the newer Sam discovered that live long-range communications to Earth were deliberately being jammed by tall transmitting antennas surrounding the entire base
• during the exploration of the exterior of the base, elder Sam was beginning to physically deteriorate after three years of service, and was throwing up blood; he hurriedly returned to the base where he threw up more blood and realized he was losing teeth
• upon his return, after GERTY helpfully volunteered a password for access, Sam played back archival video footage of four previous Sams (all appeared to be physically debilitated as their 3-year contracts expired); they were each prepared to be launched on a three-day return journey back to Earth in a cyrogenic or hybernation protection pod; to his horror, Sam realized that the pods were actually euthanasia-incineration pods
• once the two Sams were back inside the base, the elder Sam told his younger counterpart that he had found a large chamber ("secret room") below the launch area; the two entered the secret, out-of-bounds level of vaults below the hibernation chamber, where they observed hundreds of ready-to-use, unactivated cloned Sams stored in 'cryosleep' pull-out drawers: "Jesus Christ, there's so many of 'em"
• moments later, the elder Sam asked GERTY: "Why did you help me before - with the password? Doesn't that go against your programming or something?"; GERTY answered: "Helping you is what I do"
• after another trip in a rover beyond the perimeter, the older Sam pulled out a portable communications device and called Tess, but instead reached teenaged daughter Eve (Kaya Scodelario), now 15 years old, who bluntly told him that her mother Tess was dead and had "passed away some years ago"; stunned when she turned to tell her off-screen father: "There's someone asking about Mom," Sam hung up before her father [Spoiler: the "Original Sam"] was called to the video screen; Sam was devastated and cried to himself: "That's enough. I want to go home!"
• [Note: The film's major spoiler was that neither of the two Sams was an 'original' -- BOTH OF THEM WERE CLONES of the first "Original Sam" who had long ago returned to Earth.]
• back in the base, the elder Sam told Sam #2 that there was a conspiracy, and that they would be in a deadly, problematic predicament once the menacing ELIZA 'rescue team' arrived in just seven hours; if they found the two of them together - they would likely be eliminated: "That crew they're sending us, if they find us awake at the same time, they aren't going to let us live"; as the elder rested, Sam #2 viewed a playback of Sam's recent phone call with Eve - and also learned the truth about how everything was questionable
• with only 5 hours until ELIZA's arrival, in a race against time, cloned Sam #2 confronted GERTY about having found the off-limits "hidden room" with additional clones, and then ordered: "We need to wake up a new clone"; GERTY refused: "New clones can only be awakened once a three-year contract is completed"; Sam #2 insisted: "If you don't wake up another clone, me and the other Sam will die...You want me and the other Sam to be killed?" - GERTY agreed to comply
• [Note: Spoiler: This new clone would be the 7th clone. There had been 4 previous clones before the two of them; in reality, the elder clone was #5, and Sam #2 was actually Sam #6!]
• Sam #2 explained to the older Sam that he had found a way to avoid their predicament; both Sams had finally decided to work together to defeat their common foe; GERTY would be instructed to put the new clone's unactivated body into the crashed rover as a diversion, in time to greet ELIZA; meanwhile, the elder Sam would be returned to Earth in a Helium-3 transport, to expose LUNAR's conspiracy; and the ELIZA team would be greeted by Sam #2
• however, the older Sam disagreed with the plan - he knew that he was sick and deteriorating ("And it was a good plan. You know, you just picked the wrong guy to go back"); instead, he insisted on being driven back to the crashed rover to expire there (where he had been found earlier), while the newer, younger cloned Sam #2 would be sent back to Earth to expose the truth; upon ELIZA's arrival, they would be greeted by the 7th new clone who had awakened in the medical facility
• to make the plan work, it was necessary to wipe GERTY's memory cache that had recorded everything in the previous day; the ever-helpful GERTY volunteered and agreed to be rebooted once Sam #2 had launched; Sam #2 also programmed a harvester to crash into the jamming antenna to activate the Live-Feed communications with Earth
• the older Sam - after being placed into the damaged rover, was alive long enough to witness the launch of the younger cloned Sam #2 back to Earth; the ELIZA also arrived and the team entered the base just as the younger cloned Sam (actually #6) was launched, and the new 7th clone awoke in the infirmary; the rescue team seemed to be fooled by the deception once they found Sam's dead body in the rover

The Launching of Cloned Sam #2 (#6) to Earth

• just before the closing credits as the launcher entered Earth's atmosphere, news reports (in voice-over) were broadcast about the controversy stirred up by Sam's (clone #6) testimony and evidence back on Earth, alerting the public to LUNAR's unethical practices:
  • "Lunar Industries stocks have slipped a further 32% after accusations. Clone 6, the clone of Sam Bell, has been giving evidence at CAA's Board of Directors meeting in Seattle...."
• the voice of a radio talk show host was heard next, casting doubt on the clone's believability:
  • "You know what? He's one of two things. He's a wacko or an illegal immigrant. Either way, they need to lock him up. Line two"

[Note: The plot of the story continued in the film's sequel Mute (2018), that provided an epilogue to the original film. In part, it revealed that the "original" Sam (who had served his 3-year stint on the moon), had been cloned (all of his memories were copied, to be implanted in future employees) and then returned to Earth. The dystopian company continued to create clones with his memories as its current and back-up work-force on the Moon. In a dramatic scene (seen on a TV broadcast), the 156 awakened clones of Sam appeared and testified in court after a lawsuit had been brought, charging Lunar Industries with malevolence and corruption.]