Moon (2009)
Directed by Duncan Jones
With only three weeks left in his three-year contract, Sam Bell is eager to return to Earth. Stationed alone at a Moon-based facility with his computer assistant GERTY, an unexpected accident sets off a series of unsettling events that shake his isolation.
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39 films that influenced Moon
What critics say influenced Moon
Not coincidentally, at least as regards Moon’s milieu, it’s also the era of philosophically serious science-fiction films like 2001: A Space Odyssey , Silent Running and Solaris, the influence of which is consciously at work in Moon.
Spacey's voice and inflections are perfect, and clearly modeled on HAL 9000 in "2001: A Space Odyssey," but co-writer and director Duncan Jones has added a nice touch: a smiley face whose expressions change depending on what information Gerty is passing along.
He acknowledges his influences, which are primarily 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, Outland and Alien.
Any cinematic space odyssey of the past 40 years surely owes a debt to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey; Moon's most obvious debt is the strategic use of a computer that has a cozy name (Gerty to 2001's HAL) and maybe homicidal tendencies.
A refreshingly intelligent and surprisingly polished indie sci-fi film, "Moon" owes equal debts to "The Twilight Zone," "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Isaac Asimov's three rules of robotics, but that doesn't mean it's overly derivative.
Jones draws on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by having Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) run on a treadmill in the stark whiteness of "Mining Base Sarang."
Space is a cold and lonely place, pitiless and indifferent, as Bruce Dern's character grimly realized in Douglas Trumbull's classic " Silent Running ."
The mining operation comes from Outland; the sole man in a space station is like Bruce Dern in Silent Running, talking madly to his plants.
There’s something of a more human 2001 (1968) here and a bit of Silent Running (1972), but comparisons don’t quite do Moon justice, because it’s its own film—and in no small part due to the amazingly nuanced performance of Sam Rockwell.
In a director's statement, he's acknowledged his debt to such cerebral sci-fi classics as Silent Running (1971), Solaris (1972), Outland (1981), and BladeRunner (1982).
While 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Solaris (1972) are obvious touchstones, Jones seems more directly inspired by smaller films of the era such as Dark Star (1974) and Silent Running (1972).
This is not sci-fi action like "Terminator Salvation" or the upcoming "Transformers 2." Instead it's a more contemplative genre piece like the 1972 film "Silent Running."
Jones's debut, which had its local premiere at the last Tribeca Film Festival, is pleased to engage genre behemoths—2001, Solaris, Blade Runner—as well as B-movie classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
But since we spend so much time in a kind of “2001’’-meets-“Solaris’’ scenario, one with its strains of Ray Bradbury, we’re invited to notice how little vision or scope or psychological texture there is in “Moon.’’
Not coincidentally, at least as regards Moon’s milieu, it’s also the era of philosophically serious science-fiction films like 2001: A Space Odyssey , Silent Running and Solaris, the influence of which is consciously at work in Moon.
The well-placed inclusion of several impossible-to-predict plot twists - courtesy of screenwriter Nathan Parker - ensure that the movie's inevitable transformation from drama to thriller is just about seamless, and it's finally clear that Moon represents one of the most entertaining and flat-out engrossing sci-fi efforts to hit theaters since Steven Soderbergh's woefully underrated 2002 Solaris remake.
Reminiscent of 2002's underappreciated " Solaris " and 2007's " Sunshine ," the film creates a thick pall of dread and despair without the conventional means of tossing evil aliens or supernatural beings into the plot.
His pensive debut feature Moon is an elegy for the thoughtful storytelling of films such as Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Tarkovsky’s Solaris.
While 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Solaris (1972) are obvious touchstones, Jones seems more directly inspired by smaller films of the era such as Dark Star (1974) and Silent Running (1972).
Moon is an old-fashioned sci-fi movie in the best sense: far more psychological drama than space opera, dispensing with overweening CGI and loud flashy action sequences while harking back to subtler, more ideas-driven entries in the genre such as Solaris, Silent Running and Dark Star.
Sam’s dishevelled appearance and the film’s low budget aesthetic even resembles Dark Star to a degree while thematically Moon also strongly evokes Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris .
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I, for example, didn't mind the cribbing from 2001 and Solaris and Outland and Alien--it's a picture that knows its roots and knows our expectations, and sometimes (in the case of the HAL-ccenteric GERTY), Nathan Parker's screenplay slyly subverts those assumptions.
That's a great plot twist – right up there with John Hurt's chest buster in Alien .
And if you saw Alien, you know you can't trust big corporations who fund space missions.
He acknowledges his influences, which are primarily 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, Outland and Alien.
"Moon" borrows liberally from "Alien," "2001" and "Blade Runner" to forge an actor's showcase for Sam Rockwell.
It’s hard not the look past the strong influence of Kubrick’s Space Odyssey and Scott’s Alien, and maybe that’s the point.
Jones, who is David Bowie’s son, explores similar themes to those in his father’s sci-fi classic The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Bowie, you may recall, once starred in a film called "The Man Who Fell to Earth." "Moon" should have been called "The Movie That Fell to Earth With a Thud."
(In this way it's reminiscent of "The Man Who Fell to Earth," a similarly temperate film in which Jones' father, David Bowie, starred more than 30 years ago.)
Except for the gung ho Star Wars crew, film spacemen were suddenly a lonely breed: Robert Duvall's character in THX 1138 (1970), Bruce Dern's plant-watering loner in Silent Running (1971), the fantasy-prone cosmonaut in Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972), and David Bowie's morose alcoholic in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) all slept unhappily or alone.
Though Jones doesn't mention Bowie's work as an influence, he credits films like Kubrick's 1968 "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- "Blade Runner" and "Outland" are others -- as touchstones as he was working on the story upon which Nathan Parker would base the screenplay.
Director Duncan Jones also taps into the visual style of "Silent Running," which was directed by special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull (who worked on "2001" as well as "Blade Runner").
Zowie Bowie, David's son), is a welcome throwback to philosophically interesting science fiction films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner.
"Moon" borrows liberally from "Alien," "2001" and "Blade Runner" to forge an actor's showcase for Sam Rockwell.
Though it poses questions of the existential sort (see also: Kubrick’s movie as well as Blade Runner and both Solarises), it does so in ways that are remarkably moving and concrete.
There is also a connection to Blade Runner (though not in terms of mood, structure or look).
George Lucas changed that with his barnyard of bug-eyed critters in Star Wars.
The form blossomed for a time after Stanley Kubrick demonstrated its possibilities in 2001: A Space Odyssey, only to be eclipsed a few years later when Star Wars ushered in a cowboys-in-space era.
This is not a Star Wars -inspired space opera (although it is worth mentioning that the effects, such as shots of a rover cruising the moon's surface or a mining vehicle trundling forward, are expertly done); it is intelligent, thought-provoking material.
David Bowie's son Duncan Jones has directed an eccentric sci-fi which cleverly deconstructs the mythology of the Star Treks and Star Wars which have colonised the future of our imaginations with their glamour, self-importance and operatic sound tracks.
The lunar surface in Moon and the machines operating thereupon have a touchable reality and weight to them that I'd take a hundred times for every shiny, smooth vessel in any of your Star Wars prequels or Star Trek reboots.
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In a director's statement, he's acknowledged his debt to such cerebral sci-fi classics as Silent Running (1971), Solaris (1972), Outland (1981), and BladeRunner (1982).
While 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Solaris (1972) are obvious touchstones, Jones seems more directly inspired by smaller films of the era such as Dark Star (1974) and Silent Running (1972).
Moon shows a clear and present influence by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Stanislaw Lem's Solaris (which has been filmed twice - once in 1972 by Andrei Tarkovsky and once in 2002 by Steven Soderbergh ).
I'm probably not the first one to make that joke, but in all seriousness it might be fitting, since Bowie's classic song evoked a sense of weightless solitude that was shared by its film contemporary, 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as by other science fiction films of that mold, particularly Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris -- and the feelings of those quiet, contemplative films are exactly what Jones is paying homage to.
His pensive debut feature Moon is an elegy for the thoughtful storytelling of films such as Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Tarkovsky’s Solaris.
Sam’s dishevelled appearance and the film’s low budget aesthetic even resembles Dark Star to a degree while thematically Moon also strongly evokes Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris.
In a director's statement, he's acknowledged his debt to such cerebral sci-fi classics as Silent Running (1971), Solaris (1972), Outland (1981), and BladeRunner (1982).
And Sam's being a lunar miner is a homage to the 1981 sci-fi film Outland , where Sean Connery blows the whistle on a corrupt mining manager on one of Jupiter's moons.