The Magnificent Three and Four Others

I had a week off back in February from my classes, during which I took some time to watch some Westerns. After re-watching the remake of 3:10 to Yuma I found myself re-watching the older classic film The Magnificent Seven. It was a reasonably enjoyable film, but I can't deny it was flawed in one particular area.

If there's anything about this movie that could be considered a problem, it's that there are a few too many characters. The acting is good enough but I couldn't help noticing that half the "magnificent seven" didn't actually get that much of a chance at any individual development. The only three that really got a lot of depth were Yul Brynner's character of Chris, Steve McQueen's role of Van, and Horst Buchholz's role of Chico (fittingly, these are the three who survive)

Now to be fair, Charles Bronson's character of Bernardo O'Reilly does get a little bit of depth in a minor sub-plot, but the three Mexican children he befriends don't have much character, and this is still greatly overshadowed by the central plot.

James Coburn's character of Britt does have some amusing quirks, but he never really gets a chance to fully shine. We see his incredible knife-throwing skills in his introductory scene, but those never come up again, outside of his death scene, where he stabs a wall after being mortally wounded. Beyond that the extent of his character is his tendency to keep falling asleep in odd places. 

I'll confess I do like the costume design for Robert Vaughn's character of Lee, but I also wish they'd done a bit more with his character. He always has this mysterious sort of vibe but it never really goes anywhere and then he just gets killed off before he can really do anything.

The role of Brad Dexter's character of Harry seemed a tad bit redundant to me. He did seem to have a personality insofar as his stubborn insistence that the villagers have something valuable that they're keeping secret. One could also argue that he is the sanest of the group, as he is the only one who decides to get out when he is offered an opportunity to leave whilst everyone else decides to go back into the village and fight a large gang of bandits.

The redundant part of his character came during the climax. After leaving he has a change of heart and returns for the big showdown at the end... only to get killed off almost immediately before he can do anything. It's just that this particular character doesn't seem all that "magnificent" for one of the members of the titular group in a movie called The Magnificent Seven.

While The Magnificent Seven is a decent enough Western, I can't deny it is flawed. The funny thing is that when you look closely, a title like The Magnificent Three and Four Others would have been more accurate.

It's the End of the World as We Know It... and I Feel Funny!

2013 saw the release of two unrelated yet similar films, released around the same time (one just a few months after the other) that both had a strange setup: a bunch of guys get together to have a good time and end up trying to survive the apocalypse. Both of these films I had the chance to see in the theater, and one was (in my opinion) hilarious, while the other was (again, in my opinion) awful. Still, the connections between these two movies are quite interesting.

The first of these movies was of course This is the End, the story of a group of celebrities trying to survive after the Rapture happens while they're at a party. Personally, I really didn't like this movie (though evidently a few people disagree, as I recall when I saw it in the theater at least one person a few rows behind me kept bursting into laughter every other moment while I remained almost completely deadpan). In fact, I recall that as soon as I got out of the theater I found myself really wanting to watch The Road just because I wanted to see a good movie about the apocalypse.

None of the jokes stuck with me and the only person I really cared about at all was Emma Watson, who of course is only involved briefly because the guys were all idiots who had a completely pointless discussion about rape, and we're forced to continue watching their unfunny shenanigans when I'd much rather see Emma Watson fighting demons.

The second, as you may know, was Edgar Wright's third installment of the "Cornetto Trilogy", The World's End, a hilariously dark comedy about a few guys going on a pub crawl only to find out that their hometown has been taken over by robots as part of a massive alien conspiracy. This was a hilarious film with a wonderful cast, well-timed jokes, a bit of drama here and there to balance things out without taking over, and of course a fun narrative.

In some ways both films are quite a bit different. One centers on a group of celebrities playing themselves while the other involves a group of fictitious characters. One uses the set-up of a party while the other uses a pub crawl. In some ways, though, this also makes them surprisingly similar. Let's look at the basic structure.

In both films, we start off with an all-male group of friends, in fact with a similar number of people: This is the End has six (though that is including Danny McBride, who joins in a bit later and initially remains completely oblivious to the apocalypse happening around him), while The World's End has five. In either case, said group of friends starts off by getting together to have a good time. 

Granted the "good time" is a bit different in each case, given that in one it's just the five friends going on a pub crawl, and the other involves the six protagonists being the last remnants of a much larger party. We also get a whole sub-plot about Michael Cera being an annoying idiot who likes to blow drugs into people's faces without their consent.

Though the central group is entirely male, we do get a female supporting role, someone who is memorable but whose role in the story seems relatively small compared to the men. Personally, I'd say The World's End handled this much better with Sam, who despite having much less screen time does manage to stick around long enough to have an impact on the story. 

This is certainly more than can be said about how this aspect was handled in This is the End. Now granted, Emma Watson's appearance was memorable, in fact it was really the only thing I actually liked about that movie. I remember while I was saddened to see Sam leave partway through The World's End, I had grown attached enough to the other guys that I didn't mind spending most of the rest of the movie following them. 

In This is the End, I found I really didn't care much for what happened to the guys there and was way more interested in what happened to Emma Watson. Seriously, if This is the End had centered around her transformation into an action survivor during the apocalypse and the guys the movie insists on following just had a minor cameo, I think it would have been a lot better.

So in terms of structure, we have something similar, even if the apocalypse itself is different: a group of male characters and one female supporting role in what initially seems to be everyday life going out to have what they consider a "good time" only for things to start getting chaotic. Over the course of the story, the characters have to make difficult decisions to figure out how to survive as eventually they get picked off one by one.

I do find it curious how each of these films utilized a similar premise, coming out the same year only a few months apart, and yet they're also both so different. One may be great, and the other is terrible (though some might disagree with me on that point), one is British, and the other American, but it is weird that somehow in the same year two different parties managed to come out with a comedy based around the same basic premise of a few guys having fun only to get caught up in the end of the world.

David Lynch's Lost Highway Explained... Sort Of

If you have been following my blog, you'll probably know three things about me. 1. I can't stand the works of Jean-Luc Godard. 2. I love science fiction. 3. I'm a fan of David Lynch.

It's hard to pinpoint David Lynch's true masterpiece. He's got so many great films, from the heartbreaking tale of The Elephant Man to the tense enigma surrounding Mulholland Dr.. Lynch has got a lot of great stuff under his belt, but for this task we're going to look at something more specific, one that has always stood out for me but might not be as easily recognized by others: Lost Highway.

For those of you who aren't familiar with this movie (a good example of a surrealist movie I actually like), Lost Highway is a 1997 thriller directed by David Lynch. It stars Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, and Robert Blake, also featuring a great song by David Bowie and lots of shots of roads.

 If you don't recognize the star of Lost Highway, this should refresh your memory.

The plot is harder to explain, but Lost Highway employs a distinct episodic structure, with the narrative being split into three parts. The first two segments deal with separate characters in stories which are seemingly unrelated (there actually are connections, but you have to pay attention as they're easy to miss the first time round), while the third one involves an especially puzzling blend of both narratives.

So this started as a basic interpretation of the film I came up with after my second viewing, and which I hope to build on in this article. The first act of the movie follows Fred Madison, a saxophone player who is having difficulty relating to his wife, Renee. My theory is that Fred might have had some dark experiences in his past, possibly being a reformed criminal or even a former serial killer who has since tried to go clean.

The two of them go to a party where, in one of my favorite scenes, Fred encounters a strange creepy guy known only as the "Mystery Man". From the moment he first appears it is clear that there is something not quite right. He claims to know Fred and freaks both him and the audience out when he is able to pick up and answer the phone at Fred's house while still standing in front of him.

The mystery man in this case represents some kind of dark urges in the back of Fred's mind. If my theory of Fred being an ex-killer is to be believed, this is some sort of compulsion he tried to suppress long ago. Fred tries to resist but he can only go so far until he breaks. Finally, the urges take over, and he kills his wife.

By this point, Fred is caught and arrested. At this point he starts to realize what he did, but being a prisoner on death row, there isn't much he can do. The only way he can cope with his guilt is to retreat into his mind. The result is that he takes on a whole new persona

This brings us to the second part of the movie, when a guard approaches Fred's cell and encounters Pete. Fred has attempted to reinvent himself as Pete, and subsequently manages to free himself psychologically.

At first it seems Pete has a pretty good life going on. He has a loving family and a stable job with people who appreciate him. Everything is going great until Patricia Arquette returns, this time in a blonde wig under the name of Alice. This in turn ties back to the whole idea of this world being a delusion created by Fred. In addition to trying to be a better person, he also tries to bring back his wife to make up for what he did.

We quickly find out that Alice is engaged to a notorious mobster who also happens to have a certain amount of influence over Pete. It doesn't take long for us to realize that, as is common in Lynch's settings (such as Lumberton in Blue Velvet or the titular community of Twin Peaks) Pete's seemingly ideal life has some much darker aspects. The thing is that Fred's delusions can only last for so long, and gradually they start to collapse around him.

Slowly but surely, bits and pieces of Fred's reality start to enter his fantasy. We see the Mystery Man coming out again, gradually taking control of Fred's mind by talking to Pete over the phone. In this case, the Mystery Man is arguably the truth: the subconscious part of Fred's brain that knows full well what he did. In particular it is worth noting that the conversation between the Mystery Man and Pete over the phone very closely parallels his conversation with Fred in the party scene.

Once the Mystery Man returns, things get chaotic, as Pete is seduced by Alice and the two end up planning a murder. The two of them run off, but Fred's reality is catching up to him. He and Alice manage to get out of town and begin having sex, which leads us to the crucial turning point that sets up the third and final act of the movie.

Pete begins to repeatedly say to Alice "I want you". After saying it several times, Alice stops him and says "You'll never have me." From that point on she disappears. Suddenly Pete also disappears, and is replaced by Bill Pullman.

I use the name of the actor, rather than the character, specifically because we might not actually be seeing Fred Madison, or at least, not the same Fred we saw in the first act. In fact, if you pay attention, he is never actually addressed by name. The Mystery Man even asks him to identify himself, but Bill Pullman fails to answer.

Quite simply, the delusional world Fred created in the second act has completely fallen apart in the third. This leads to a partial awakening as Fred is forced to face the reality, but he still can't quite seem to accept it. The result is a strange identity crisis (in other words, the character we're seeing here is both Fred and Pete merged together). The Mystery Man is constantly on his trail, as Fred can never truly escape his subconscious, but he is still unwilling to face it.

This brings us to the final scene of the movie, where Bill Pullman tries to navigate this strange world in which he struggles to cling to what little remains of his fantasy but the real world rapidly spills into it. He is unable to cope, so his only solution is to start over, by creating a whole new world for himself, and presumably a new identity.

This is a reasonably straight forward interpretation of the film, and it does explain a lot, though I won't pretend it's perfect. There are still moments I can't definitively explain (the infamous "time-loop" for instance, when Bill Pullman appears to leave himself the message he got at the beginning) but I think it's a pretty good starting point in trying to find the deeper layers of the film.

Tout Ne Va Pas Bien

Why is it these days I can't seem to get through a single film class without having to be subjected to the works of Jean-Luc Godard? The guy's so influential but he's not a good director and doesn't have very many good movies. I've discussed Alphaville before, but here is another example of Godard at his worst: Tout Va Bien (which roughly translates as "All is Well").

Out of all the Godard movies I've had to watch, this is probably the closest any of his works have come to actually winning me over. As we started it almost managed to earn my respect. The style was kinda interesting at first, with the idea that Godard was trying to emphasize the political situation in France at the time by trapping us in factory while the workers were on strike. All the while we had characters talking to the camera as though being interviewed, the claustrophobic feelings of our hero who never meant to get caught up in this, and even an interesting shot where we see all the rooms in the factory at once. Perhaps if the whole movie had just focused on that factory and the strike we might have had something worthwhile. 

As it happens, the movie ditches that plot early on and then jumps all over the place without ever really going anywhere. Once we get past that there isn't really a plot of any sort and we just get a bunch of stuff happening. I was completely lost by the time we got to the end. 

The only thing I can really recall being a benefit of any sort was Jane Fonda, who to be fair seems to deliver a reasonable performance with what she has to work with. She and some of the other actors do a reasonable job, but since the script is so disjointed and jumps all over the place it's not really enough to save it.

I also remember that, like Alphaville, the plot made less and less sense as the movie went on, becoming increasingly disjointed and scenes started to go on far longer than they needed to, to the point where I would have been willing to forgive the disjointed plot provided the scene just cut to something else. 

One especially noteworthy example was a scene near the end. Jane Fonda goes into a grocery store and for whatever reason everybody is rushing to buy up as many things as they can. The camera slowly moves along an aisle of cash registers. When it reaches the end, it then begins to retrace its steps until it reaches the other end of the line, and then goes back and forth repeatedly as for whatever reason things get more and more chaotic and people start pushing and shoving to get to the check-out. 

Jane Fonda, our main character, is eventually reduced to a background element, and so we keep moving back and forth along this check-out line watching people we don't know beating each other up for some reason and the camera just keeps tracking back and forth at a frustratingly slow rate.

PLEASE! Just cut to something else! I don't care if Jane Fonda suddenly decides to do a film adaptation of The Three Musketeers with flying ships just as long as it gets me out of this scene!

I don't know, maybe Godard had a reason for doing what he did, but I still say that Tout Va Bien is a poorly executed mess of a film. If you want radical films dealing with political situations there's probably a ton of better options you can look at which actually make sense.

The Formula of the Dystopian Film

The dystopian genre is one that any science fiction fan should be very familiar with. Technically speaking it could be applied to any genre, but it is commonly associated with science fiction if only because of the fascinating worlds that can be created when the two are combined. From the towering skyscrapers and machine-like workers of Metropolis to pollution-choked Los Angeles in Blade Runner to the crime-filled world of Escape From New York, a variety of different worlds have been created combining the science fiction and dystopian genres.

Even into the present day, we still see this particular style come up a lot in movies like District 9, The Hunger Games, Elysium, and most recently Divergent. Dystopian science fiction comes in all different kinds. Some stories are dark and extremely bleak, while others remain more optimistic. Escape From New York, for instance, has the president rescued, but there's no sign of any improvement (a notion most certainly confirmed by Escape From L.A., which makes post-apocalyptic New York look utopian), half the cast died in the process and the only thing that is ultimately accomplished is Snake goes free for now. However, there seems to be a structure that is particularly prevalent in most dystopian science fiction that goes something like this:

We are introduced to our hero, often in a world that is obviously corrupt in some form or another. Usually they are an ordinary individual going about doing their part in the society, but there is something that makes them stand out from other conformists. At some point, some new element is brought up that makes the protagonist an outcast from his or her world. Their eyes are suddenly opened to what is really going on and they are left to question the ethics of the world in which they lived, which in turn often leads to them being drawn into or forming a resistance (or otherwise rebelling against the government) and eventually culminates in a revolution that ends with the implication of a better future.

Now there are a ton of films that could be fit into this structure: Metropolis, Logan's Run, The Running Man, Total Recall, Dark City, The Hunger Games, Elysium, and Divergent. With some slight tweaking you could even fit in Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville. Heck, this plot isn't even strictly confined to science fiction, as The LEGO Movie of all things follows this basic structure. Granted there are variations in the details, but usually the same structure is applicable.


Now the details may vary: the heroes may be ordinary people, rogue law enforcement, or outsiders, but whatever happens there is usually some sort of catalyst that causes them to rethink their life and compels them to rebel against the dominant authority.

In Metropolis, it is Freder's first encounter with Maria, which leads him to search for her through the lower levels of the city where he witnesses (and at one point experiences first-hand) the horrible conditions faced by the workers to keep the upper levels of the city going. In The Running Man, it is Ben Richards refusing to fire on civilians, which causes him to be arrested and then framed for the mass murder he refused to commit. Logan 5 in Logan's Run stars off performing his job to catch runners by posing as one only to find himself in that position for real. The Hunger Games has Katniss being forced to volunteer to prevent her sister from being forcibly taken in a battle to the death. Beatrice in Divergent has the catalyst of finding out that her society is willing to kill her for the crime of not being able to fully conform. In all of these cases, the person is given incentive to rebel against their society.

This brings us to the other major component, which is the revolution. Once our hero and any of their friends have become outcasts, they eventually manage to play an important role in finding a better future. Metropolis does have a unique outcome in the way it ends with a compromise. Although Joh Fredersen is still presumably in charge of the city, he has to mediate with the working class in order to make things start working again. This joining together of the previously divided upper and lower classes suggests a better world for all.

The mediator between head and hands must be the heart... or is it the nervous system? I always get those two mixed up.

More recent dystopias seem to involve a much more violent revolution. Granted, things got pretty chaotic in the climax of Metropolis but the situation was ultimately resolved peacefully. We fast forward ahead to later dystopian movies and the authorities get much more vicious. The result ends up being that a peaceful solution is not possible, and the only hope is to overthrow the prevailing authority. In many cases the authorities aren't just negligent but also extremely dishonest, resulting in cases like The Running Man where the heroes ultimately seek to expose their treachery. Elysium involves multiple parties trying to gain control of the titular station for their own ends, but the only one with good intentions is the hero.

It's interesting as well to look at the much bleaker dystopian movies by contrast, as they seem to be less common. Blade Runner and Escape From New York both involve a gradually decaying society but there is never any real sign of improvement by the end. If anything things have only gotten worse in Escape From New York, with society collapsing even further and getting even darker by the time of Escape From L.A.. Blade Runner never really sees any drastic changes in society. Deckard is never fully satisfied with living in the crowded and pollution-choked world of his story but he more or less accepts it for what it is and just tries to get by.

It is curious that we don't see many bleaker dystopian films. Between The Hunger Games, Elysium, and Divergent, the genre has found a strange popularity in the present day, but you still don't see very many darker films, barring possible exceptions like District 9.

The Secret Philosophical Themes Behind Amélie

Amélie is a 2001 comedy film by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (the director of The City of Lost Children, A Very Long Engagement, and Alien: Ressurection) starring Audrey Tautou (The Da Vinci Code). It tells the story of Amélie Poulain (Tautou), an imaginative, fun-loving and friendly, but very shy waitress, living in Paris. One day, she accidentally discovers a box that has been hidden in her apartment. When she opens it, she finds treasures that once belonged to a young boy years before. Amélie discreetly returns the box to its owner, and his reaction inspires her to strive to make others happy. One by one, she observes the people around her, and finds small but effective ways to improve their lives.

At first glance, Amélie appears to be simply a really fun comedy set against the backdrop of a somewhat stylized Paris, but if you strip away its layers and look closely, it actually deconstructs a philosophical concept.

For those of you have never taken an ethics course, the concept in question is known as Utilitarianism and entails quite simply that one should attempt to do as much good for as many people as possible. John Stuart Mill, a major believer in this ideology, stated “Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness”. Amélie herself seems to hold this perspective even if she does not immediately realize it, given she changes the lives of several different people.

At the same time, however, the movie brings this concept into question — just how far should one go with this ideal? While she means well, Amélie goes to extreme lengths in her quest to make others happy. For instance, in an attempt to convince her father to travel more, Amélie steals his prized garden gnome. Then with some help from one of her friends, she has postcards mailed back to him depicting the gnome in front of various landmarks. While this eventually works, it does leave the father extremely frustrated for much of the movie as he tries to understand what is happening, and there is still the fact that Amélie basically committed an act of theft, even if it was done with good intentions. 

She also creates a fake letter from the dead husband of a neighbor saying he loved her (up until this point, the neighbor was grieving over his death but believed him to have been cheating on her) and outright lies about how it got to the neighbor. 

In another instance, she recovers a scrapbook dropped by the man she likes, and rather than immediately returning it, she keeps it and spends time looking through his secrets first. When she finally decides to return the scrapbook, instead of simply handing it to him, Amélie leads its owner through an elaborate set-up which ultimately allows him to watch her put the book into the bag on his bicycle. She then sends him a series of obscure clues by which she hopes to meet him.

Additionally, Amélie spends so much time helping others she eventually realizes she is neglecting herself. While she was able to help her friends in discreet and subtle manners, this does not work in her pursuit of romance. At one point, Amélie watches a television program which talks about a woman with the same name as her (also played by Tautou), who died from exhaustion at the young age of 23 because she spent so much time helping others she failed to look after herself, which in part inspires Amélie to search for her own happiness as well. 

Later on she even finds herself struggling with everyday activities, such as at the end, when, under the belief that the man she likes is seeing another woman, she has difficulty cooking. In fact, Amélie eventually has trouble appreciating the things she does for other people, as was shown when she completely ignores her excited neighbor’s attempts to talk about the “letter” she got (which Amélie had recently gone through the trouble of forging).

When she finds a man she likes, she wants to pursue a relationship, but even when he follows her clues, she cannot bring herself to confront him. She finally gains some confidence when she receives a tape from “the glass man” (an elderly artist whom Amélie helped to perfect one of his paintings), but ultimately Amélie is only able to confront him when she meets him by accident.

It could be argued that Amélie also has a tendency to see things in black and white; which at one point actually goes against her utilitarianism. Amélie sees a grocer mistreating her friend, and as a result, she decides to take it upon herself to punish him. She does this by repeatedly breaking into his apartment while he is at work and changing things to annoy him, such as changing his alarm clock, replacing his slippers with an identical pair of a different size, and switching the speed dial number for his mother with a psychiatric hotline. As hilarious as all of Amélie's pranks are, it is also a perfect example of a major flaw in her line of thinking.

Amélie's methods do help the person the grocer bullied, allowing him to interact more openly with customers, develop a close friendship, and discover a hidden artistic talent. However, Amélie thinks nothing of the man she continuously humiliates. This is a good example of the extremes Amélie is willing to go to, seeing as it clouds her judgment and unwittingly creates a double standard — Amélie is willing to help the partner by punishing someone she sees as a bad man, rather than trying to help them both by finding a way for them to reconcile their differences. 

Ultimately, Amélie can be seen almost as a deconstruction of utilitarianism. It emphasizes that while it may seem like a reasonable perspective it has its problems, particularly in the question of how far you should go. It also raises the point that even while helping others, you will still need to help yourself.

Duncan Jones' Moon and the Ex-Novum

If there is one thing I learned taking a science fiction class, it is that one of the most important elements in identifying a work as science fiction is the "novum", which is derived from Latin and roughly means “new thing”.

In short, this is the speculative element; often a new or revolutionary idea that is explained through scientific means without resorting to magic or the supernatural. It can be almost anything, though some common examples include depictions of “futuristic” technology (with varying degrees of accuracy in regards to contemporary science) such as spaceships robots and artificial intelligence, various depictions of time travel, the discovery of aliens in one way or another, or visits to unexplored locations.

All of these could be seen as a "novum", or "new thing".

In Duncan Jones’ science fiction film Moon, one can see a variety of different possible novums, including the Lunar mining base, the artificially intelligent computer GERTY, and the process of cloning. 

However, I'm more interested in looking at an example of an ex-novum, specifically, the setting of the film’s title. The absence of a novum within the film’s setting makes it intriguing, but in a very different manner from prior Moon-based science fiction stories. The general environment and tone of moon are in a very interesting way reflective of a drastic change in the outlook of the science fiction genre, especially with regards to space travel.

The moon has always been a popular choice of location for science fiction stories. In film it goes as far back as George Méliès' A Trip to the Moon, released in 1902. 

That film, however, drew loosely from the novels From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells. The former of these two involved a group of arms enthusiasts constructing a massive canon with which to launch a manned projectile toward the moon (Verne even attempted to accurately use contemporary science in designing his method). The latter novel had a scientist develop a peculiar form of metal which could cancel out gravity, allowing him and the protagonist to fly to the Moon where they encounter a race of aliens called “Selenites”.

With these earlier stories, one can see a romantic tone in how the moon is depicted. Subsequently, the moon itself becomes a novum- the “new thing” to be discovered; often with the filmmakers trying to provide creative speculation on how one could travel there and what they would find when they arrived. 

Even the later movie Destination Moon, released in 1950, reflects some of this attitude despite the filmmakers striving to depict the moon as accurately as possible for the time. Simply landing a rocket on the Moon is considered a triumphant achievement.

Now if one is to move into the present- following the actual moon landings in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s- and to look at Moon, there is clearly a very different outlook on the experience of being on the moon. In fact, there is not even any need to show how the protagonist arrives. The film simply starts with him already there, reversing the formula of older stories of lunar exploration. In A Trip to the Moon and Destination Moon, the heroes start on off on Earth and want to get to the Moon; in Moon, the hero starts off on the Moon and throughout the movie wants to get back to Earth. 

Sam Bell feels none of the adventure or excitement that was displayed in Méliès' explorers or the heroes of Destination Moon. Instead, there is a very grim outlook towards living on the moon. Sam is alone, his only companions being a computer and, later on, a clone. The first Sam shown is slowly going mad from his prolonged isolation and increasing homesickness. Though slightly more level-headed, the second clone to appear is hardly any more enthusiastic about his job.

The reason for this change has to do with the actual landings on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. A Trip to the Moon and Destination Moon were both made prior to the Apollo Missions, while Moon was released 37 years later. Prior to the 1960’s, the idea of voyaging to the moon seemed like a fantastical idea. It was a significant piece of history when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, but by 1972 the landings had started to seem much more mundane and pointless, eventually leading to the end of the program. 

The transition in science fiction can be said to have happened around Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, released just before the first moon landing. In addition to providing one of the most accurate depictions of the moon during the era, this film took a different approach from those before it by focusing less on the first landing on the Moon, and instead looking at where humanity could conceivably go after. While the characters seem to treat working on the moon as mundane, Kubrick still seeks to impress the audience with the technological advancements that have been made in his world. Though advanced technology is prominently featured in Moon, it is hardly treated as impressive. There is also very little speculation regarding the nature of the moon itself. 

George Méliès showed absolutely no concern for contemporary science, even by the standards of his time, when making A Trip to the Moon, preferring instead to let his imagination run wild. 

I'm sure we all remember when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had to deal with the Selenites after landing on the moon. Boy, it sure was a good thing they brought their umbrellas.

Even Destination Moon, one of the first to actively try to be as realistic as possible, still mistakenly depicted the moon having jagged mountains. 

By the time Moon was released, the moon was no longer the undiscovered country it had been seen as before; leading to a very dull, realistic look at the Moon as a smooth rocky terrain with rolling hills. This is probably the closets of all three to the real lunar surface.

Most of the few contemporary films that show the moon otherwise are more likely to use it as a source of humor. A famous example would be the original Wallace and Gromit film A Grand Day Out, where the main characters build a rocket in their basement in order to go to the Moon for a holiday. The moon as seen here has a breathable atmosphere and a surface that appears to be made entirely of cheese.

Nick Park's photo-realistic vision of the lunar surface.

When the movie begins, Sam has only a few weeks left in his contract and is looking forward to going home. He is visibly unhinged from his long-term isolation, and even shows little concern for himself, evidenced by his worn clothes and initially dishevelled appearance. It is also established that his isolation may have affected his sanity. He appears to be growing increasingly homesick, not helped by the discovery of being a clone.

This provides a sharp contrast to A Trip to the Moon (where isolation is not taken into account) and Destination Moon (where it is acknowledged, but mainly during the climax when the possibility is raised of someone having to stay behind), as well as the extensive lunar activity depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Moon shows that its setting is no longer a desirable place to visit, but rather something that must be endured to achieve a long-term goal.

Another day on the moon.

Well, it could be much woise. At least I'm not Sam Bell.

I heard that, Joe Sweeney!

The visuals are very monochromatic throughout: consisting primarily of white and shades of grey, adding to the idea of the moon being a dull and uninteresting environment in which to be working . Many of the shots go on longer than would be normal in a film, often lasting from seven to eighteen seconds. This helps to emphasize the vastness of the moon and space, and also emphasizes Sam’s complete isolation. Similar shots were used in 2001: A Space Odyssey but were mixed with a haunting score to create a sense of curiosity and intrigue as the men travel to the crater where they've made a grand discovery. 

Hey Rick, judging by this ominous music I have a feeling something mysterious is about to happen.

Moon’s outdoor scenes help to remind the viewer how far from home Sam Bell really is, combined with the film’s own score, a small amount of diegetic sound in the form of the machines and Sam’s breathing. Unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sam is not travelling to investigate a grand discovery related to the existence of extra-terrestrial life, but is, at least initially, just doing the routine job of repairing a broken machine.

Throughout history, humanity has speculated on the nature of the moon and wondered how to get there. Moon provides a very different perspective, changing the experience of being on the moon from a grand adventure to an intolerable and isolated destination.