History Film / Moon

Then [[ItGotWorse it gets worse]].

* AsceticAesthetic: Sarang.

** Debatable. WordOfGod says the clones were engineered to last three years because that's how long the contract lasted; this limitation might be removed. Even if it can't, a number of years have passed since the base was established, and it is conceivable that medicine has marched on enough to make them live longer. Besides, once the whole world knows about them, more people than just an evil megacorp's R%D department would be trying to give them a new life.

* FamousLastWords:
-> [[TearJerker "I want to go home."]]

* {{Retirony}}: Sam has two weeks left before he can go home... to a wife that's dead and a baby daughter whose entire childhood he missed. And then the rover crash occurs and things get worse.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic: The four harvesters are named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Inverted, since screenwriter Nathan Parker insists it really ''wasn't'' symbolic; he just needed four names and the Evangelists came to mind. If he'd thought a little longer, he could just as easily have called them [[TheBeatles John, Paul, George and Ringo]].

* TheCakeIsALie

* Advertised Extra: Kaya Scodelario as teenage Eve receives top billing despite having only a minute or two of screen time. To a lesser Dominique McElligott who plays Tess is only seen in a handfull of flashbacks and videos.

* Advertised Extra: Kaya Scodelario as teenage Eve receives top billing despite having only a minute or two of screen time. To a lesser Dominique McElligott who plays Tess is only seen in a handfull of flashbacks and videos.

* {{Homage}}: According to creator Duncan Jones, he deliberately tried to recreate the feeling of old sci-fi films like ''[[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey 2001]]'', ''SilentRunning'', ''Film/{{Outland}}'', ''Film/{{Alien}}'' and ''BladeRunner''.

* TheVoice: We never see the real Sam Bell, we only hear his voice offscreen.

* RedHerring: GERTY is intentionally designed to resemble TwoThousandOneASpaceOddysey's HAL 9000 (right down to the CreepyMonotone) so that the audience immediately suspects that he is evil. In fact, GERTY is the closest thing that the Sam clones have to a friend, and he ultimately helps Sam 2 escape the lunar station to start a new life on Earth .[[spoiler: "Tess" is the one that you should be wary of]].

Advertised Extra: Kaya Scodelario as teenage Eve receives top billing despite having only a minute or two of screen time. To a lesser Dominique McElligott who plays Tess is only seen in a handfull of flashbacks and videos.

!!'''''MAJOR SPOILERS follow'''''. As the film depends heavily on twists and [[TheReveal reveals]] for its impact, [[SpoilerPolicy spoilers are unavoidable]]. If you want to keep your surprise (trust us: ''you do''), watch the film first, then come back here. And don't click any of the icons on the top of the page. {{You have been warned}}.

!!Examples:

* BilingualBonus:

* CloneDegeneration: Each clone breaks down after three years. The DVD commentary states Lunar Industries figured three years was the longest they could expect someone to "want" to work on an isolated moon base, so they designed the clones to last just that long. It leads to use of BloodFromTheMouth and ImColdSoCold.

* DefaceOfTheMoon: We see more than one shot of the tracks the harvesters are leaving behind. They're on the far side of the moon to avoid visibly defacing the moon from an Earthbound perspective, and to avoid confusing wildlife.

* {{Fanservice}}: We see Sam in the shower.
* FamousLastWords:

** The base has readouts for four harvesters. [[TheBible Matt, Mark, Luke, and John]], Luke, which is broken-down during the entire film, has been crossed-out and "Judas" written-in.

* IronicEcho:

* StockFootage: The "commercial" for Lunar Industries at the start of the film contains mostly stock footage, because the indie film production couldn't afford anything else.

Sam Bell (played by [[TheDanza Sam]] Rockwell) is an employee contracted by the Korean-based company Lunar Industries to extract helium-3 from lunar soil to fuel nuclear fusion reactors on Earth. He is stationed for a three-year term on the Sarang base, with only a robot named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) for company, and his only contact with Earth being recorded transmissions he occasionally receives from his wife and three-year-old daughter. Two weeks before completing his assignment, he begins to hallucinate, causing him to crash a lunar rover into one of the helium-3 harvesters.

The first feature film directed by Duncan Jones (DavidBowie's [[NeverLiveItDown son]]), ''Moon'' was shown at the 2009 Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals, and has received a lot of critical acclaim. It has also been praised for [[ShownTheirWork scientific accuracy]], being screened at NASA's Space Center in Houston at the request of one of the professors there, due to its feature of helium-3 mining. [[DavidBowie Dad]] is reportedly very proud.

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: Mostly averted, what with it being a [[MohsScaleOfScifiHardness very hard]] sci-fi film. However, an early version of the film poster carried the tagline "950,000 miles from home, the hardest thing to face... [[TrailersAlwaysSpoil is yourself]]". The moon's distance from Earth varies between about 226,000 and 253,000 miles over the course of its orbit. Later posters fixed the error.

** Debatable. A number of years have passed since the base was established, and it is conceivable that medicine has marched on enough to make them live. Besides, once the whole world knows about them, more people than just an evil megacorp's R%D department would be trying to give them a new life.

* FridgeBrilliance: Three years of 1/6th Earth gravity plays merry hell on the clones' metabolism [[spoiler:and the 3 year placement is based on their expected life span in such conditions. As the company has been demonstrated to not particularly care about human life over profit, they essentially work their tools until they break.]]

** It's a measure of how common this trope has become in the genre that [[spoiler:having the pleasant, friendly-seeming computer actually be helpful]] counts as a twist.
** Does it? Remember GERTY did nothing to help the [[spoiler:God-knows-how-many previous Sams]] for dozens of years.
*** They never asked.

* IronicEcho: At the beginning of the film, Sam wears a shirt that says "Wake me when it's QUITTING TIME." It is later shown that every Sam clone is equipped with one of these shirts. The phrase itself is a pretty sick joke. [[spoiler: Each clone will be woken up when it's "quitting time" for the previous one.]]

* MeaningfulName: The name of the lunar base, Sarang, means "love" in Korean.
** And "nest" in Malay.

** The rescue ship's design reflects the need to pick-up harvesters for repairs.

The first feature film directed by Duncan Jones (DavidBowie's [[NeverLiveItDown son]]), ''Moon'' was shown at the 2009 Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals, and has received a lot of critical acclaim. It has also been praised for [[ShownTheirWork scientific accuracy]], being screened at NASA's Space Centre in Houston at the request of one of the professors there, due to its feature of helium-3 mining. [[DavidBowie Dad]] is reportedly very proud.

* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: The trailer shows two Sams, though it does not provide any sort of indication of the actual plot twists. However, it's cut alongside several clear hallucinations, [[NeverTrustATrailer making it look like]] Sam is either trippin' balls or some sort of ''{{Solaris}}'' thing is going on.

* EconomyCast: To the point it borders on OmegaCast. The only character we really see "live" in shot is Sam -- everyone else appears on a video screen or in a flashback, or is a robot. If it wasn't for Kevin Spacey's voice acting, this would be a film starring one person.

* GattacaBabies: Appears to be how the Sam clones are created.

!!'''''MAJOR SPOILERS follow'''''. As the film depends heavily on twists and [[TheReveal reveals]] for its impact, [[SpoilerPolicy spoilers are unavoidable]]. If you want to keep your surprise (trust us: '''you do'''), watch the film first, then come back here. You have been warned.

* {{Homage}}: According to creator Duncan Jones, he deliberately tried to recreate the feeling of old sci-fi films like ''[[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey 2001]]'', ''Silent Running'', ''Film/{{Outland}}'', ''Film/{{Alien}}'' and ''BladeRunner''.

* YouCantGoHomeAgain: Played-straight, subverted, averted... call it deconstructed. All of the Sams are on the far side of the moon and desperately want to return home to wife and daughter. Sam 1 (and his predecessor clones) never make it. Sam 2 (and maybe his successor clones) do, but their lives are a lie -- they aren't the "real" Sam; there's nothing to return to. Even if there was, they won't live to enjoy much of it. And Original Sam did his time on the moon and returned home for real -- which set up the clones in the first place.

[[redirect:{{Moon}}]]