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Moon

Well, GERTY wasn't a HAL knock-off. His primary purpose was to help Sam, and that's all he did. He wasn't programmed to keep him from learning he was a clone or anything.

I wonder how many dollars that programming mistake cost the company.
 
No, they can just make clones that look about forty.

You mean they look forty without first growing for forty years? That's what I object to! Magic insta-clones is one of my pet peeves of bad sci fi. A forty-year-old clone takes forty years to grow.

Also, simplicity might have been at work here. As Anwar implies, it's probably easier to give him real memories then invent fake ones.
Why give him any memories at all? For all he knows, it's perfectly natural to be born by popping out of a shelf in the wall one day and have no memories. That's normal existence for the clones. Don't tell them otherwise and they'll be none the wiser.

The issue isn't memories - these people can function just fine without any pre-existing memories - it's innate human instinct that the corporation needs to worry about, because the clones will be born with that. The clones will need a society, friends, romantic relationships and sex.

So make some more clones of both genders, maybe a dozen or two different people overall. Clone them to be sterile if you don't want offspring the normal way - but that raises another question. Why not have offspring the normal way? That's gotta be a cheaper way of maintaining your slave population than cloning. After the first generation of blank-slate clones, why not just maintain your breeding population like cattle?

It's the education and training in his memories which are important.

Only clones of a few people in he world would have the ability to do that job.
So they have some amazingly sophisticated memory-transfer technology but they can't selectively transfer only the job-skills part of the memories? And I don't see why it's difficult to invent the job-skills part of the memories and transfer that. It would be like injecting a training manual into someone's brain. If people can write training manuals, why is it so difficult to write a computer program that transfers the training manual into someone's brain (assuming the transfer tech already exists).
If he only had a three year life expectancy, the guy would barely have time to get unsatisfied and rebel.
Why can't a person rebel in one year or six months? And keeping him from rebelling is why they need to create a small society of clones to work on the moonbase. For the amount of money they're spending on cloning, they could maintain their slave colony via normal breeding. These people need to make me their CEO, I'd whip this dumb evil corporation into shape in no time! :D

But I know why this movie is such awkward sci fi - in the DVD extras, Duncan Jones said that his motive for making Moon was that he wanted to make a movie with Sam Rockwell, who rejected Jones' earlier script and said he "liked sci fi." So Jones wrote a script that would highlight Rockwell's acting skills (and he certainly achieved that goal), and is sci fi solely because that's what would get Rockwell to sign on the dotted line. The movie really comes off as a sci fi movie written by someone with little actual interest in the genre - fun on a surface level, falls apart under any kind of analysis. All the "but waitaminute" questions I'm asking are questions a serious sci fi writer would have asked himself in the process of writing the script.
 
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You mean they look forty without first growing for forty years? That's what I object to! Magic insta-clones is one of my pet peeves of bad sci fi. A forty-year-old clone takes forty years to grow.
Well, first:

1. As I said, his daughter plainly isn't over forty. So the Sam Bell clones can't literally be that age.

2. Dolly the Sheep. She rapidly aged. Is it hard to believe they just had an accelerated aging system for these clones?

Why give him any memories at all?

So he knows what to do. Clearly, the original Sam Bell was a trained professional; he knew exactly what his job entailed and how to live properly in a zero-G environment and so on. A Sam Bell without memories would be an infant who has to be painstakingly taught all these useful facts.

So, why does he need the other memories? This goes back to the simplicity thing. It may be easier to give him all of Sam Bell's memories rather than try to just give him the technical data - memory is a messy interconnected business after all, this may be the best they can technologically do.

The clones will need a society, friends, romantic relationships and sex.
No need. He's got all of those already, remember? ;) He's stir-crazy but comforted by the notion there's a family and friends back on Earth waiting for him which he can regularly communicate to.


The movie really comes off as a sci fi movie written by someone with little actual interest in the genre - fun on a surface level, falls apart under any kind of analysis.
There may be such analysis (I think Trent Roman came up with the argument that a clone wasn't very cost effective or something) but this isn't it. Whether or not Duncan Jones has a real knack for the genre will be borne out one way or the other in his subsequent movies, anyway.
 
You're right, of course. However, substitue "zero-G" with "1/6th Earth Gravity" and the point is exactly the same.
 
So Jones wrote a script that would highlight Rockwell's acting skills (and he certainly achieved that goal), and is sci fi solely because that's what would get Rockwell to sign on the dotted line. The movie really comes off as a sci fi movie written by someone with little actual interest in the genre

I'm gonna have to object to this point at least. During the lead up to the movie's release, in every interview Jones did if one thing was made clear it was his passion for the sci-fi genre. Now, whether he's always been that way or if it came from doing research to write the script for Moon wasn't clear, and frankly doesn't matter. The point is, he definitely loves science fiction.
 
^
And I think it clearly shows in the film. I think it's a very good science fiction movie, no matter what way you look at it.

Just about every fictional story, science fiction definitely included, demands some measure of suspending your disbelief. Basically, this movie asks you to believe only one thing that might take a bit of a leap: You have to buy into the fact that the corporation has reasons for using the clones the way it does. That's all.

Jones uses advanced technology as a means of telling a story you could not otherwise tell. His focus is not on the technology itself but the character(s) and how their world affects them. To me, that's good or even great science fiction.
 
Did anyone watch the special features on the DVD? The guy is planning on having a "sequel" that takes place in the same universe. Should be interesting.
 
Duncan Jones is going to be making a film called 'Source Code' before he tackles 'Mute,' his spiritual sequel to 'Blade Runner' (as he calls it) set in the same fictional universe as 'Moon.' Sam Rockwell may very well cameo as Sam Bell in the film. Judging by this description, 'Moon,' and the one piece of concept art I've seen, I have high hopes.
 
^
I'm really looking forward to his "Blade Runner"-style movie. I think I remember reading somewhere that it was to be set in Berlin. But I'm not at all sure about that. Though it would be really cool to see a future vision of Berlin.
 
It is supposed to be in Berlin, I looked it up. He is having money issues with it because it will cost $25 million to make. :lol:
 
^
:lol:

I really, really hope he'll be able to do it, though. I think it would be well worth it. Although the movie wasn't great I remember being fascinated by seeing a future version of Paris in "Renaissance". Likewise, I would love to see one of Berlin. Berlin is an amazing city, I think, and would make a terrific setting.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy future visions of North American cities just like the next person. But I wouldn't mind a bit more variation :).

$25 million. Wasn't "Moon" similarly expensive? I don't remember what the budget was at all.
 
Moon only cost $5 million (actually a little under). Thus, Mute would be five times as expensive.
 
I can't wait for Mute. I saw the concept art and it looked wonderful. It had a very retro Blade Runner feel, which is obviously the intention. I'm similarly looking forward to Source Code, which is definitely more of an urban, modern Bourne-esque thriller. I read the script, which was great, very pulsating and energetic, so I look forward to seeing what Duncan Jones comes up with.
 
Blade Runner in Berlin by Duncan Jones is basically the most inherently excellent idea for a potential film I've seen floating around lately, in all honesty. And I absolutely love the concept art. Easily the one sci-fi film I'm looking the most forward to, so I hope it is made.

The thing about Berlin: It's very modern. When I was last there East Berlin was just one big construction site. World War II and decades of Communism have resulted in a city that needed to be thoroughly rebuilt, as it were. I could see the city seeming very futuristic in a near future, really.
 
Moon got a BAFTA. I don't know if it was mentioned anywhere else. Best writer or something similar.
 
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