This should be in another series I could call “Movies I let sit in my Netflix streaming queue and finally watched because it was going to expire!” I wanted to catch Moon while in (art house) theaters but we went with District 9 instead as Summer ’09 wound down. Besides, this is a more cerebral Sci-Fi flick, the big screen doesn’t add anything to the plot, experience or point.
Sometime in the near future, fusion-based power is figured out to solve the Earth’s energy problems. The opening commercial implies it cures long-standing poverty issues and conflicts; I doubt the fighting part, people will find other things to kill over. Anyway, the lynchpin is Helium-3, a real isotope which is rare on Earth yet (relatively) abundant on the Moon. Most is trapped in our satellite’s regolith from being hit by billions of years of Solar wind. To get the precious commodity, a corporation built an automated mining/refinery operation but it still needs at least one person to oversee everything, namely to launch a full container of Helium-3 to Earth.
Enter astronaut Sam Bell. Currently he has two weeks remaining on his three-year contract doing the rather lonely job. It isn’t completely solitary, Sam has the base’s computer GERTY (starring the voice of Kevin Spacey) to keep him company and occasional video messages from his wife, probably others too. Due to an accident when he arrived, live communication to Earth has never been possible. Anyone with half a brain knows this is utter crap, the 1969 transmissions from the Apollo lander had only a couple-second delay and we could repair it in a matter of days to weeks. It’s a plot conceit you have to accept like the crew in Sunshine losing contact once they reach Mercury. Meanwhile, Sam keeps busy between maintenance matters with exercise, hobbies, TV reruns and counting down to when he can go home, see his daughter who was born shortly after his departure.
All is going to plan until Sam has to repair an automated miner. He misjudges his vehicle’s approach, wrecks both machines and blacks out. Later he awakens in the base’s infirmary with GERTY explaining the gist of events.
Here’s where I will stop, hoping anyone reading hasn’t seen the rest and nobody has ruined the surprise which propels the story. I again wasn’t so lucky. Somebody spoiled it for me in a conversation and I think the AusChron revealed it in their review…nice. (I’m now virtually staring at my friend Nelson for blurting out who the Final Five were in Battlestar Galactica when I told him I only saw the first season on DVD.) I think the surprise element opens up the story up for debate on the morality behind such missions. Personally, humans are gregarious creatures so we’d send a small town to live there, regardless of cost. The compensation would definitely need to be enormous since the lower gravity and radiation exposure will have permanent, detrimental effects on the astronauts; scientists know this too well from past MIR and ISS residents.
I highly recommend Moon for two strong reasons. The first one is actor Sam Rockwell. He carries 90 percent of the movie, Kevin Spacey’s part was likely dubbed in later. Normally, a one-man show can be pretty dull. It might be why most don’t bring up Castaway on their short lists for favorite Tom Hanks’ flicks. Rockwell keeps it interesting as the audience’s proxy investigator of the mystery behind the whole operation. I also think the guy is underrated by Hollywood and critics in general. Initially, he comes off like a poor-man’s Tom Cruise; see him Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy if you can bear it or the more recent corporate villain in Iron Man 2. Never mind the great job he did with the material he was given nor how much fun he was as a “red shirt” in Galaxyquest. The second is how Moon demonstrates the flexibility of great SciFi. Underneath all the whiz-bang elements, the great SciFi movies are really about how people deal with the conflicts, conditions and situations they encounter. This was true for glitzier hits The Matrix, Aliens and Star Trek II or lower-budget legends The Terminator, Soylent Green and Night of the Comet. Moon isn’t fast-paced yet it pays off more satisfactorily upon its first viewing than Kubrick’s opus 2001.