I did not like it either…it irked me that the whole story was told to the viewer within the first …45mins….crap
They could have done a lot for the film by taking the epilogue off; I wonder if it was producer/studio imosed or a total afterthought.
They do seem to arrive at and face the fact that they are clones fairly easily.
it was a bit disappointing and lost some steam once it made what was happening clear. I was still impressed with how good it looked for a cheap film, and by Sam Rockwell’s performance. I think the hype did it a bit of a disservice, it would have been a farily pedestrian effort if it came out in a period with more non-action science fiction, like the ‘70s; i think it’s acclaim may have come more from a positive reaction to it as throwback sci-fi than to it as an original work.
“i think it’s acclaim may have come more from a positive reaction to it as throwback sci-fi than to it as an original work.”
I agree with this. Also I thought why not have the original clone think the new clone is a hallucination for awhile. I figured that was where it was going (which excited me) but was then left with disappointment.
Also how could this massive company let this clone escape, you’d think they’d have some sort of fail safe. Finally, how could this robot begin to break protocol? I figured it was a comment on intelligence, but a weak and poorly formed one at that.
Hallucinations and “is this real or in my head?!?” dilemmas are sci-fi cliches. Stupid main characters who can’t figure out a real-world solution before the audience does… that’s a bad movie cliche in general. Films about the troubling and traumatizing effects of isolation, and about possible ongoing solutions to the truly exorbitant costs of space travel (yes, I think cloning would probably ultimately be cheaper than spacecraft, fuel, and maintenance)… a sad rarity. Moon wasn’t acclaimed because it was a “throwback”… it was acclaimed because it was a thoughtful, well-developed speculative treatment of some classic science fiction themes.
Rockwell was very good, and the pace and atmosphere of Moon was commendable. The station felt like somebody had been living in it for years without any accountability to anyone but himself — dirty and morbid, filled with hygiene and sanitation oversights. The fact that Sam Rockwell figured out rather quickly that he was a clone? Not all that implausible, people, especially given the bizarro crap that we buy into for every other science fiction movie. He probably knew the company, and knew the capabilities of the technology of his time, and he was probably trained to recognize and avoid hallucination, anxiety, and panic. He simply considered the confusing situation and worked out the most likely solution, like a good technical analyst.
And finally, the plot twists were worth waiting for. In particular, the character’s call home to his family was a beautiful little payoff.
I think the comments on this thread make clear: we’re willing to suspend our disbelief infinitely in the face of insane devices like universal translators and light-speed travel, but when a film comes along that makes an effort to give us some hard science fiction to chew on… we become super-skeptics.
Personally, I give a big thumbs-up to Moon, and put it in the same class as Primer: science fiction that manages to be smart, in spite of (or because of) its budgetary constraints.
After reading your thoughts I can accept that Moon, as a text, could be a great addition to the sci-fi world, especially to the expert. Unfortunately I do not feel that it was pieced together very well and the atmosphere it developed around the theme of isolation was weak, look to how The Shining develops isolation almost subconsciously in the viewer.
I consider Primer a much better film and feel comparing it to Moon is a mistake.
“hard science fiction to chew on… we become super-skeptics.” Point taken.
I want to chime in and say that I liked the epilogue—did you hear the reporter that denounced the legitimacy of the clone’s story? A sobering reminder that these big corporations own a lot more than resources; they own the airwaves, and it isn’t so easy to take them down. The ending is simultaneously a triumphant story of man (or clone) overcoming one insurmountable obstacle, and a reminder that a world of conflict and isolation lies ahead.
the replacement clone was not as intoxicated as the original clone
“the replacement clone was not as intoxicated as the original clone”
Explain?
I thought it was great.
It wouldn’t have made sense if the other Sam was a hallucination because GERTY recognized both of them as existent AND the “hallucination” would have been doing tasks without the “real” Sam ever being around (he would’ve still been in the crashed rover).
The ending was well done as well and I think you’re (OP) misinterpreting the voices on the airwaves. They show the opposite of a “heartwarming defeat of a large company.” People are really skeptical of him, which is the way things would play out if it were real life. He still has a lot of fighting to do to expose the corporation and it almost leaves the film open for a sequel. Not that they would/should ever do one.
I think it was Kubrick who said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that you could probably judge the success of a movie by the amount of money spent on the opening titles, money that should have been spent on the film itself. Moon has obviously had a fair amount of cash splashed out on its opening titles, and IMO the film is pretty pedestrian with far too many clunky references to SF movies of the past, and just not enough investment in a strong narrative.
wow. I agree with almost everyone’s opinion on this board. I also agree that the epilogue was un-needed. It seemed kind of last minute.
Here’s what I thought:
This was not what I was expecting.
SPOILERS…
First of all, let me get Sam Rockwell out of the way, because the rest of this review is not going to touch him. He is fantastic in this, as always. I find him to have a gritty charm and he displays quite a range and sometimes a quiet pitifulness with which he leaves his mark.
The rest? I was expecting something more, to be honest. I guess that’s no one’s fault but my own. I had tried to stay away from spoilers, and all I’d heard was that he’s on the moon for several years when a doppelgänger shows up. That’s it.
What I wanted was a film that delved more into the human psyche, the nature of identity and sanity, a meditation on the effects of long-term isolation. Unfortunately I’ll have to settle for an interesting story about clones coming to terms with the fact that they were bred to live only for three years and then to be discarded.
Nothing below the surface, at least not too deep, and that’s where my disappointment lies. I was making a movie in my own head that had different aspirations. Oh well. Not a bad movie at all. Just a decent one. Faint praise, I know.
JR is in my mind. (To quote Drew,) “get out of there!”
Honestly though, I fully agree with “Nothing below the surface, at least not too deep, and that’s where my disappointment lies. I was making a movie in my own head that had different aspirations. Oh well. Not a bad movie at all. Just a decent one.”. I had been pretty excited for the film and would have liked more existential mulling. The whole discovery to resolution goes too fast.
I liked it…a lot.
I support any sci fi without excessive use of cgi. Loved the set designs, Sam Rockwell is the man (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind anyone?).
Since this is a new movie, I tend to compare it with other new releases, and it was a breath of fresh air amongst a hurricane of mediocrity. Solid movie, good vision Bowie Jr.
I forgot to mention Kevin Spacey…as a robot. It works.
@ Elmen. LOL it totally works.
But here are my thoughts.
Was it that people didn’t like it, because there was no fan boy fetishes to be fulfilled at any point in the movie? Or maybe because it didn’t pretend to be some lame ass socially political conscience, over the top video game, and shot like that 9/11 Godzilla style movie. God people are so contradictive in their opinions.
I felt Moon evoked the same sort of intelligence that movies like Solaris (original) or 2001 had. This film was autobiographical for Jones, and shouldn’t solely be consider for it’s plot. It’s a movie for people with patience which is ironic because I think it’s shorter than District 9. But it has ten times more depth.
I thought of Ramin Bahrani movies which cut the fat, that always hangs on the big budget drama films. Here Duncan Jones was getting to the point while still staying meditative. I didn’t realize there was an epilogue. It has such an immediacy, that I was completely sucked in from the first frame of Sam Rockwell.
But go praise your supposedly glorious District 9, I actually like that movie less and less every time I try to give it a chance.
Was it that people didn’t like it, because there was no fan boy fetishes to be fulfilled at any point in the movie?
I insist that Moon’s popularity is largely due to fan boy fetish fulfillment. Moon was marketed & pushed as an old-school sci-fi film, worthy of support from AICN/CHUD-going “fanboy” types. The design of the posters, it’s distirbution by an “indie” division of a major, and push in reviews/publicity to emphasize that Jones is Bowie’s son made it an attractive film to the “arthouse” crowd.
Note my quotes on both groups; I kind of feel they’re necessary when discussing things like demographics. I don’t like lumping people & labelling them, but it’s what film distributors do; when they do it well, they can build buzz & make money off of something like Moon.
I’m not putting Moon down here. I’m just saying that it’s a pretty good genre film with a lot to recommend it. I’m not sure District 9 or Primer are the best comparisons. I think the Bruce Willis movie Surrogates, which was out a couple months ago, compares better.
. Surrogates was an another 70s/80s-style sci-fi potboiler, but lazily marketed and dumped in a poor month. It is comparable to Moon in that it’s not truly bold or original, but does have a brain in it’s head, some neat effects to show you, and does tackle some issues and themes in a broad manner.
Moon was made cheaply, and as such is profitable at $7 million & change in box office. The manner in which it was marketed has kept it being talked about, and it will likely make more as it opens theatrically in regions it hasn’t hit yet, and as the dvd is released in more regions. That “fanboy” marketing was probably pretty cheap.
Meanwhile, Surrogates received a more visible but not at all unique Hollywood lauch in a slow box office month. It made $60.something, but it did this on an $80 million budget and with much more spent on marketing. You are not talking about it. No one is. It looked like a generic PG13 action film. It will be remembered as one, and I doubt the dvd release & tv sales are going to pull another $20+ million.POINT- we are talking about Moon and taking it seriously because it was sold well, and we likely fit it’s target demos. A comparable film with a much higher price tag didn’t do this. Many here think of it distastefully, but marketing does matter, and we (those who would maybe even self-apply the term “arthouse crowd,”) are as susceptible to it as other niches.
Fan boy fetishes like deeper exploration of the ideas and themes the film raises?
Law-meaning what? From your post above I’m taking it that you’re another “decent, but could have had more substance” person. I apologize for any sarcasm I’ve missed.
Based on the film, I’m going to call the not-particularly deep themes a “fanboy” positive. The people I saw it with fit how I’ve defined “fanboy” for my argument’s purposes, and do react well to clear, apparent, surface level themes. I’m not calling this a neagtive. This crowd can be resentful of more subtle themes, subtext, symbolic representation, etc.
I’m not attempting to label anyone in this thread, but there are those who would consider themselves smarter than what they would call “Hollywood” fare but would also use adjectives like “artsy” and “pretentious” as hard negatives. Moon is perfect for them. I don’t mean to offend, but the best way I think I can sum this up (and this is an oversimplifiaction)
Substance is good, in certain quantities, on the surface, and as long as it’s NOT preachy.
I think much of the audience, even when we break an audience into a couple demographic, does not react well to “not getting it” or feeling preached to. Most audience segments do react well to feeling included in a film somehow, either at it seems to be targeted to them or to specifically nod at them. (SEE: the popularity of Kevin Smith) I take this as pandering, and tend to dislike it.
I AM NOT saying that if someone loved Moon, they only did so because the filmmakers & distributors sucked up to them. I do think this can be true of films, through marketing-created predisposition and through the actual content of a film.
Haha, TJ that’s what I meant, I was responding to Pavel.
I’m sorry TJ I don’t understand your argument. I was saying that most people who enjoyed this film probably did for the action and the fad style of filmmaking that we saw in Cloverfield and the Bourne movies. And I call those fanboy fetishes. It seems like your arguing that movies develope a crowd from the way they are advertised? Well duh!!!
If a movie has thousands of advertisements its gonna develope a crowd, if it has barely little advertisements it doesn’t., or it develops a small crowd of people who purposely look for those types of films.
I wouldn’t say Moon was solely going for this or that, I think maybe you are one of those people that reads those websites and feels that way. I actually don’t trust those kinds of websites because of their fanboy fad. But I think people who did like it recognized that it was an intelligent and thoughtfull science fiction film, medidative on themes of personal identity “what makes me different from you if we are exactlye the same person?” sort of thing.
I’d hardly say this film is fan boy driven, that sounds like you’re trying to turn the tide in one direction, when it can only go up. And District 9 and Moon are comparable cause they are both indie films, that deal with science fiction in different ways. But in my opinion Moon does it better than most films this year have. Surrogate was a dumb money maker and silly Bruce Willis movie that looked and felt a lot like I, Robot.
But back to my point.
1) You ARE placing people in certain categories, but so am I, I strongly believe that people who think District 9 is the greatest film of the decade are the same people who probably felt the same about The Matrix. did they ever see Dark Ctiy?
2) Moon hardly had enough in it to fulfill a fanboy fad, most fanboys have short attention spans and like to see things blow up real good (Star Trek). they usually don’t enjoy movies with depth and don’t like a sceince fiction film that they can’t figure out with in ten minutes. Or focus on the most obvious elements of a film and miss the bigger picture. The film itself is slow and takes time to develope its themes mind you not its premise. The same reflection happened with Knowing people hated cause they found it to much about aliens or disaster, not the point of the film.
3) Marketing goes to films that look ambitious but really are not. They want people not to be confused. The last 30 hours of Moon is drastically different than District 9 which may have been inspired from the counter strike video games or Halo. Moon was inspired more likely by 2001. And you’re right Duncan Jones was Bowies son, but I learned that from Wiki, not some lame ass movie websites that probably liked Gamer.
In other words, I think this is one of the more superior genre films, that is yes “Old School”, but if it was just a genre movie, it woould have become very formulastic and turned out to be something more like, well any other money maker film. Also I think its always the movie, not when it’s released or who rekeases but HOW GOOD THE MOVIE ITSELF ACTUALLY IS!!! In my opinion this is one of the best movies of the year.
I was going to reply to this but Jesse M touched upon everything I wanted to say, and probably more eloquently than I would’ve.
Pavel-
I’m not arguing that Moon wasn’t very good; it just wasn’t great. I’m not a star or letter grade guy, but if I was I guess it would be 3 or 4 stars out of 5 or a B. You are not wrong to love it, and I am not wrong to just sort-of-like-it.
If I consider the hows and whys of why it is being received as well as it is, and has “indie cred” due to being well-marketed. I will point out that it was distributed by Sony, just as District 9 was. It made money and has generated positive buzz; this is done as much by courting audiences as it is with the film itself. A major studio did this wisely, made a small film profitable, and got it over well with audiences and critics. You claim to view films objectively, but do seem to judge ‘hollywood" films and “fanboy” audiences. When it relates to a film you like, you seem to think we should only judge films on their own merits. I don’t see how District 9‘s
(which I was also kind of indifferent about, so if you got tired of being told it was great, I’m not doing that here)
audiences & producers’ should be judged differently than Moon’s, when they were distributed by the same studio.
The Auteurs Notebook would seem to be a lame ass movie website that liked Gamer. I didn’t see it myself.
I think the major concern is the written aspect of the film. I think Jones’ directing skills are primitive but he has potential. I just think he rushed the screewriting, and the result of this was two-dimensionality, characters don’t break out of their shells , and the plot wasn’t in any way particularly moving. Saying that though, the realisation of being a clone was original and Rockwell’s performance was profound.
Well, I was disappointed. Granted I didn’t expect much going in. Sure, I love David Bowie, but that doesn’t translate to his son merely by default, it was Duncan’s first film (I think) and it certainly has all the characteristics of a debut (with the exception of those singularly talented individuals who we all should know by now).
I thought the film went along rather nicely up until the clone was revealed and then guessing the rest of the “plot twists” was elementary. I mean come on people, you were surprised? Really? As soon as the clone appeared I was thinking “ah well, I suppose he never really contacted his family either” and sure enough. I mean seriously, how can a screenwriter be so blatantly thick to think that an attentive viewer wouldn’t logically surmise that given the situation of the character? That progression is just a logical step forward, a more experienced (perhaps more clever?) writer would’ve noticed the flaw and corrected it in some way, but apparently everyone was so intimidated by the name to not bother warning the director.
That all being said though, there were quite a few good ideas, but the presentation, the approach, the execution was amateurish – which is what’s frustrating about it. I liked idea of the clones and their usefulness for the corporation, I liked the accident that caused the dilemma that revealed the clones, I liked the general look of the film, AND I liked the idea of the recorded messages. I also thought it was a good idea to have the protagonist finally get through to his wife and find out the truth. All of these were good ideas that if they were filmed/edited correctly they would’ve been more powerful. All in all, the film just needs to be re-edited. All the pieces were in place (more or less), it was just the arrangement of them that sucked terribly. Well, that and insistence of the director to show us everything that’s happening. Didn’t he study basic storytelling; it’s not what you say that makes a good story, it’s what you don’t say.
There’s never a risk involved when trying to enforce deep, sociological themes into a sci fi film about clones… the fact that Duncan Jones decided to take a more delicate approach with a sole emphasis on good storytelling is something to admire.
Eh, usually when people say things like “I saw a lot of directing mistakes”, they’re a guy on the internet with even less experience than the person they’re criticizing for being inexperienced.
^ A critic’s lack of hands-on experience does not necessarily contradict their ability to notice directorial mistakes … now whether they can back that up with a quality film of their own is questionable.
Yeah, to an extent. It just makes me think of some fat ass criticizing a nutritionist’s book on dieting. This fat ass could be 100X more knowledgeable…but he’s morbidly obese.
homer119
I saw David Bowie’s sons new movie this summer in NYC, and I was not very impressed.
I saw a lot of directing mistakes, bad cuts and sloppy fade to blacks that were both suspect of not shooting enough. While the story was interesting I had trouble with a plot element, how did the replacement clone know that the original man was a clone so quickly?
Also, the ending was laughable, a heart warming defeat of a large company summed up by an audio mix of news stations talking about the incident.
Thoughts?