Moon (2009 film)
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Moon is a 2009 British science fiction drama film co-written and directed by Duncan Jones. The film follows Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), a man who experiences a personal crisis as he nears the end of a three-year solitary stint mining helium-3 on the far side of the Moon. It was the feature debut of director Duncan Jones. Kevin Spacey voices Sam's robot companion, GERTY.
Plot summary
In 2035, Lunar Industries have made a fortune after an oil crisis by building Sarang, an automated lunar facility to mine the alternative fuel helium-3. Helium-3 is used primarily to power fusion reactors and other things that run on fusion energy.
Sam Bell, the astronaut who maintains operations at Sarang, nears the end of a three-year work contract as the facility's sole resident. Sam oversees automated harvesters and launches canisters bound for Earth containing the extracted helium-3. Chronic communication problems have disabled his live feed from Earth and limit him to occasional recorded messages to his wife Tess, who was pregnant with their daughter Eve when he left. His only companion is an artificial intelligence named GERTY, who assists with the base's automation and provides comfort for him.
Two weeks before his return to Earth, Sam suffers from hallucinations of a teenage girl. One such image distracts him while he is out recovering a helium-3 canister from a harvester, causing him to crash his lunar rover into the harvester. Rapidly losing cabin air from the crash, Sam falls unconscious.
Sam awakes in the base infirmary with no memory of the accident. He overhears GERTY receiving instructions from Lunar Industries to prevent him leaving the base and to wait for the arrival of a rescue team. His suspicions aroused, he manufactures a fake problem to convince GERTY to let him outside. He travels to the crashed rover, where he finds his unconscious doppelgänger.
He brings the double back to the base and tends to his injuries. The two Sams start to wonder if one is a clone of the other. After a heated argument and physical altercation, they together coerce GERTY into revealing that they are both clones of the original Sam Bell. GERTY activated the newest clone after the rover crash, and convinced him that he was at the beginning of his three-year contract.
The two Sams search the facility. They find that live communications are jammed by transmitters located beyond the outermost perimeter of the base. They also discover that four previous clones physically deteriorated three years after awakening. Told they would hibernate briefly for the journey home, they were actually euthanized and incinerated.
They find a secret vault containing hundreds of hibernating clones. They realize that Lunar Industries manufactures clones to avoid paying for new astronauts. The elder Sam drives past the interference radius in a second rover and tries to call Tess on Earth. He instead makes contact with Eve, now 15 years old, who says Tess died "some years ago." He hangs up when Eve tells a male voice that someone is calling regarding Tess.
The two Sams realize that the incoming "rescue" team will kill them both if they are found together. The newer Sam suggests sending the other to Earth in one of the helium-3 transports, but the older Sam, already badly deteriorated, knows that he will not live much longer. He suggests the younger Sam leave instead, and alert the public to Lunar Industries' unethical practices. The older Sam plans to die by the crashed rover so Lunar Industries will not suspect anything until it is too late.
The younger clone orders GERTY to revive a seventh clone to greet the rescuers, then programs a harvester to crash and wreck a jamming antenna, thereby enabling live communications with Earth. GERTY advises the younger Sam to reboot him, erasing its records of the event, and Sam does so. The older Sam, back in the crippled rover, remains conscious long enough to watch the launch of the transport carrying the younger Sam to Earth.
As the credits roll, the helium transport is depicted entering Earth's upper atmosphere. News reports describe how Sam's testimony on Lunar Industries' activities has stirred up an enormous controversy, and the company's unethical practices cause a significant dip in stock value.
See also
