Most people associate science fiction with “Star Wars” “Star Trek” and other big budget studio tent poles that feature alien races and large space ships that blow the shit out of smaller, but still large space ships. They associate them with special effects, weak plots, and generally deride them as being everything that’s wrong with the modern movie going experience.
Fuck those people.
Science fiction (in movies I should clarify) is more then just big budget, effects driven summer blockbusters. They are capable of being plot and character driven films with strong dialogue and morals and other angles of appreciation that film school kids cream their pants over. They just happen to be set in the future, or in an alternate past, or in a society that in someway or another is different then ours. The best science fiction directors of sci-fi today will take our world and guess what technological innovations or apocalyptic events will happen and place their story in that scenario. When people state that science fiction can’t be taken seriously, they are criticizing the use of imagination (which might be why we get a Transformers trilogy but that’s neither here nor there).
People don’t like science fiction, and it’s a shame because it gave us three of the 00’s best movies. Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men” Neill Blomkamp’s “District 9” and Duncan Jones’ “Moon”.
Moon tells the story of Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), an astronaut serving out a three year contract on the moon for Lunar inc. an energy company harvesting Helium 3 on the dark side of the moon, and shipping it to Earth. Sam is the only employ on the base; save his trusty robot companion Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey). The first act of the film describes Sam’s days as he tries to retain some semblance of sanity. The communications satellite is down so he can’t receive live messages from his bosses and his wife Tess (Dominique McElligott) only recorded messages. Sam exercises, carves his hometown out of wood, and grows his hair long. Occasionally he will have to go out on a rover to a giant reaper that is harvesting the surface of the moon for energy. Sam collects it, brings it back to the base, and launches it back down to Earth. On one of these excursions Sam hallucinates and crashes into the energy collecting behemoth, losing consciousness.
He awakens back in the infirmary, where Gerty tells him he has lost consciousness, but that everything is all right. Weak and disoriented, Sam can barely walk, so Gerty forbids him from leaving the base. This frustrates him and he sabotages a gas line, which gives him an excuse to get back on the surface. He hops in a rover and goes to the site of the reaper. He finds the first rover in the crash, and Sam Bell still unconscious in it.
Two Sam Bells, more importantly TWO SAM ROCKWELLS! Be still my fluttering heart. This was only released in 2009 and didn’t really get a lot of attention in theaters so I will stop my discussion of the plot here, for those of you still interested in checking it out. (Its on Netflix on demand right now, so go demand it.) Rest assured though that the movie is very, very good with strong performances by Rockwell, who plays the two main characters. The pacing can be a little slow, but it helps the audience feel the stress that Sam feels as he goes about his everyday life on the moon and tries to unravel the secrets of the Lunar Inc. base. Every plot twist in the movie is delivered like a sucker punch to the audience as we start to sympathize with Sam (er both of him). The film breaks stereotypes of science fiction movies, by giving us a plot driven movie with depth. “Moon” is a great science fiction movie, and like I said before, one of my favorites from the 00’s.
Sounds like a good movie
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