Moon (Major Spoilers)

Major Spoilers, the younger, more brash brother of Major Tom who gets invited to fewer parties and is a distant cousin to General Failure of Microsoft Windows fame... 

Only just got round to watching this as a LoveFilm rental, and boy was it worth the wait. 

This is *proper* science fiction.  None of that "evil aliens from beyond the stars" rubbish or "black hole's are actually inter-dimensional gateways" drivel or even "the Earth's core has stopped rotating, let's throw a nuclear bomb at it." nonsense.* 

The story is rather far fetched.  Not the whole clone cycle, I rather thought that was a clever idea, but more the fact that a company would run a moon base with only one astronaut.  There are a dozen reasons why that's a terrible idea.  It reminded me of an old sci-fi short story I read about a moonbase where one scientist had secretly developed a plant that could grow in the vacuum and radiation.  His activities only aroused suspicion when he started taking moon walks alone, which the company forbade for the simple reason that you might fall and puncture your suit in a location you couldn't reach on your own. 

The fact that I was thinking this only a few minutes into the film shows that I was already pigeon-holing this alongside 2001, Gattaca and Silent Running.  Like I said, proper sci-fi. 

And of course, as the story progresses, it becomes clear why he's alone on the moonbase, and why the company isn't worried about him having an accident. 

As previous reviews have said, there are a few loose ends left unresolved.  While normally this annoys me, the details here are small and insignificant, so there's no real reason to get upset about them.  In particular, I gave some thought to why the older clone is falling apart.  While it's possible he was engineered to only survive three years, his symptoms reminded me of radiation sickness, which led me to a whole new train of thought:  Is there a radioactive source in the base, is the reactor leaking, or is the base shielding defective?  And that would mean Gerty is being lied to as well, since his entire reason to exist is to keep Sam alive. 

Gerty is a brilliant concept for a computer, I really felt for that little guy.  The emoticon display that lets Sam know how Gerty is feeling was brilliant, and thinking about it, he's almost the polar opposite of HAL 9000.  While both appear unemotional, they both hide real emotion (Gerty cares about Sam, HAL is afraid to die).  HAL only cares about the mission, Gerty only cares about Sam's well-being.  But Gerty is able to lie and conceal the truth.  HAL can't.  Well, he tries after he's ordered to conceal the mission's real purpose, but this is what drives him to paranoia and murder.  But Gerty is able to disobey orders that conflict with his programming, whereas HAL is driven mad by this contradiction. 

Basically, if you enjoyed 2001, Silent Running or the majority of Mission to Mars before the stupid ending, I daresay you'll enjoy this.  The story starts characteristically slowly, but gradually builds to a pace that almost pulls it out of the genre, and there's never any point where you could put your finger on when this transition occurred.  The ending, particularly the final middle finger that's flicked, doesn't feel tacked on, it's just the culmination of the characters' journey.** 



Score: A 
Will definitely be added to my film collection on my next expedition to HMV-land.   
Which reminds me, 

OQ:  Either way you look at it, he's either a nut-job or an illegal alien and in either case, he needs to be locked up. 


* There's a whole sub-genre of popular sci-fi, and I use the work "popular" quite wrongly, where the basic plot can be described as "Problem X has been caused by humans and is going to kill us all.  Small crew save the world by setting off a nuclear bomb."   
Mostly these show up as TV movies, another phrase used quite wrongly, and they all have the same ending.  Either one member of the crew sent to solve the problem dies, or all but one of the crew dies. 

**That apostrophe is definitely in the right place.