Moon: completely unwatchable

In my previous column I mentioned my dislike of the film ‘Moon’. I’ve always been surprised by its popularity so I’d thought I’d talk a bit more about it this week. Spoiler Alert: If you don’t want to know the plot of this film then stop reading.

The film is set on a lunar base run by an energy company mining helium-3 as fuel for their nuclear fusion reactors. Wishing to save on training costs the company has made several clones of the base’s original operator, Sam Bell, and implanted each of them with memories that make them believe that they are the original. The film begins when, while inspecting one of the lunar mining machines, a clone is injured and presumed dead. Another is brought up from a storage facility beneath the base and activated but, disobeying company orders, he goes out and finds his predecessor, who is still alive. Together they realise the truth and come up with a plan to escape and expose their employers.

My biggest complaint is that there seems to be a lack of any logic in the premise of this film. It’s ridiculous that a company that provides power to most of humanity, and is therefore probably the richest in the world, is willing to go to such length just to save money on training. I can accept that the company’s executives are all immoral but surely investing in cloning technology and hiring all the required scientists and technicians is far more expensive than just training a few astronauts to be glorified caretakers of an almost completely autonomous base. It surely would have been cheaper than building the massive jamming towers which prevent Sam from contacting anybody on Earth apart from his company handlers. These towers are the most ludicrous part of the film. If the company really wanted to have clones so badly couldn’t it have just programmed the communication equipment to display an error message whenever one of them tried to use it?

An interesting feature of ‘Moon’ is the Sams’ robotic assistant GERTY, whose allegiances we do not find out until the end. It finally turns out that since its primary function is to assist the clones it does not reveal their plans to the company. This is a nice twist and a break from the overused HAL 9000 stereotype. It does, however, seem short-sighted of GERTY’s creators not to have realised that this could happen and installed adequate safeguards against it acting contrary to the best interests of the company. Also annoying is how early in the movie GERTY communicates with company representatives through by video conference call, easily allowing one of the clones to overhear the sensitive conversation. One would have thought that, as a robot, any information could be exchanged directly between Earth and its ‘brain’, eliminating the chances of such a security breach.

I’m also not very satisfied with how the two Sams react to the realisation that they are clones. One accepts the situation almost instantly while the other goes into denial despite the overwhelming evidence. It could be that the filmmakers intended these strange reactions to be a sign of how disturbed the clones are by what they found out but their behaviour just seems unnatural. The first clone’s acceptance seems especially abrupt. I would have expected some expression of anger or shock first: as it is, it just feels as if a few scenes have been left out.

People have told me that I should ignore the flaws and logical errors and just concentrate on the film’s atmosphere. This is indeed very good, it makes us care about the clones and creates a strong feeling of mystery and uncertainty. As a physics student, I also appreciate the scientific accuracy, such as the realistic looking base and the possibility of mining lunar helium-3. These factors, however, cannot save ‘Moon’; I’m not a perfectionist and I can ignore the occasional error but this film makes so many mistakes that the good is completely overwhelmed by the bad. Even the film’s central premise is deeply flawed. This, for me, makes it completely unwatchable, apart from for the perverse pleasure of pointing out its failings.