Moon (2009) directed by Duncan Jones

I remember sometime this year seeing Moon (2009) in a list of “must see” Sci-Fi films that were recently released. I had never heard of it, yet it seems to have had excellent reviews. The premise is that there are moon bases that harvest hydrogen energy and send it back to Earth to provide for 75% of the planet. Most of the operations are automated, however one person is needed to manage a base. I was worried at first because the story started out rather slow. Soon after I started to worry, the mysteries began to unfold and I was hooked.

I was expecting the base to be under low gravity, but it was under normal Earth gravity. This bothered me for just a little while until I remember that in just about every Sci-Fi movie or TV show, the creators choose to just assume Earth gravity on ships. Why should a moon base be any different? I just convinced myself that they had some type of gravity field generator or something, then went back to focusing on what mattered, the plot. The special effects are minimalistic, but not cheesy. Moon seemed to me to be the opposite of 2012, which had amazing special effects but such a thin plot that it was comical.

Many of the reviews I’ve seen have compared this movie to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I would argue that there really are only two similarities: there is an astronaut; there is an artificial intelligence. GERTY, the robot, has a physical manifestation complete with graphical emoticons, rather than being a just a glowing red eye (HAL-9000). The plot is completely different, but still psychological in nature. Sam Rockwell did a very good job playing the astronaut, Sam Bell. I didn’t realize that Kevin Spacey did the voice of GERTY until the credits. After going back to a few scenes, it seems like they modulated Spacey’s voice to make it more robotic. I think that is why I didn’t recognize it. I’m not complaining, just making an observation. Anyway, this is one of the best Sci-Fi movies I’ve seen in a long time. I highly recommend watching this. If you have Netflix, it is included in the free streaming service, so you have no excuse not to watch.