Sam and Moon
Jul. 1st, 2009 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pasitheaAs I mentioned to Stacey last night, it has to be a good movie because there were so many little things I felt like nitpicking about in it.
It's true actually. It's been so long since I saw a science fiction movie that didn't just stun me with its stupid, that I've not had anything to discuss for a while.
Kind of an interesting insight into how we work. If something passes the smoke test, we just jump to the next level of rating and scarcely notice the change.
Anyhow... On to a review.
I wake up in a white room in a white machine. "Sam. You've had an accident. Don't try to move right now. We're running some scans." And afterwards there were tests...
So.... I tuned out the previews by taking a nap until the movie started and was woke up just as the opening credits started. My name is Sam. I had an accident. Years ago, I woke up in a white room in a white medical machine (a CAT scanner) The doctors ran a similar set of spacial awareness and memory tests on me. My current self is pretty laid back with hobbies and talks to plants and things... A few years later, I found out that a big chunk of my family identity was made up (My dad wasn't my biological father and all my ass-holy grandparents, uncles, etc weren't blood family) My older self was also kind of a jerk and I often think I'd like living alone and working on the moon.
That puts the film in an interesting headspace for me. It may be a while before I process that aspect of it.
As for the technical aspects of the film, there are lots of little things I could nit-pick, like "Wouldn't the 'repair crew' notice the several sets of tire tracks and footprints going out to the stalled moon rover?" or "What if Sam ever made a paper journal?" but I'll skip those. They're more geek cred points than anything.
For the good parts: I really really appreciated that the film approached many of the standard sci-fi tropes than then skirted past them. Space Madness. Alien doppleganger. Homicidal computer. Etc. Of course, there was still 'evil corporation', but it's debatable how 'evil' they really are. Corporations already treat the workforce as disposable. For 3 years, Sam had a place to live, food to eat, and full healthcare. That's more than most workers get right now. Not to mention, the cost of lifting something off the Earth to send it to the moon is very high. If you can start off by sending up a few pre-made copies of Sam and generate more on site, you'd be shaving hundreds of billions of dollars off your operation costs over the duration of the mission and if you're not paying them for the time worked there or their healthcare beyond the life of their duties, even if you pensioned Sam Alpha, you'd be saving a fortune. Is a clone's life really worth more than a solution to scarcity for the rest of the population? Sam wasn't really any different from Gurdy.
On that note, let's segway into something else that I really enjoyed in the film which was a change from pretty much every other sci-fi film I've ever seen. The movie made no attempt to 'explain' everything to us in detail. It assumed we knew H3 is fuel for fusion reactors. It assumed we knew space was very cold and dark and dangerous. Sam's illness... Radiation sickness or an imperfection of clones? Didn't say. The film assumed you knew about radiation sickness and had read enough sci-fi to consider other possibilities.
Gurdy is another good example. If you've read Asimov, you see the three laws at work in him. Was Gurdy sentient with true feelings or was he just a well-programmed simulation? Gurdy was willing to sacrifice himself for his friend/ward, but Sam2 was willing to make the same sacrifice for Sam1. Depending on your interpretation of him, Gurdy violated no programming rules. Didn't even bend them a little bit. He could have been nothing more than a well-programmed user interface. Or perhaps he was more... We don't know and it didn't say and I REALLY like. I've met many humans that I'm skeptical would pass the Turing test, but I've never seen their humanity questioned, so it was very nice to see a computer being treated as a true equal... At least to a clone... Heh. On that fine point, I could even ask, were the Sam clones truly sentient or just very good copies of a (presumed) sentient being?
So... All in all. Great film! See it while you can.
It's true actually. It's been so long since I saw a science fiction movie that didn't just stun me with its stupid, that I've not had anything to discuss for a while.
Kind of an interesting insight into how we work. If something passes the smoke test, we just jump to the next level of rating and scarcely notice the change.
Anyhow... On to a review.
I wake up in a white room in a white machine. "Sam. You've had an accident. Don't try to move right now. We're running some scans." And afterwards there were tests...
So.... I tuned out the previews by taking a nap until the movie started and was woke up just as the opening credits started. My name is Sam. I had an accident. Years ago, I woke up in a white room in a white medical machine (a CAT scanner) The doctors ran a similar set of spacial awareness and memory tests on me. My current self is pretty laid back with hobbies and talks to plants and things... A few years later, I found out that a big chunk of my family identity was made up (My dad wasn't my biological father and all my ass-holy grandparents, uncles, etc weren't blood family) My older self was also kind of a jerk and I often think I'd like living alone and working on the moon.
That puts the film in an interesting headspace for me. It may be a while before I process that aspect of it.
As for the technical aspects of the film, there are lots of little things I could nit-pick, like "Wouldn't the 'repair crew' notice the several sets of tire tracks and footprints going out to the stalled moon rover?" or "What if Sam ever made a paper journal?" but I'll skip those. They're more geek cred points than anything.
For the good parts: I really really appreciated that the film approached many of the standard sci-fi tropes than then skirted past them. Space Madness. Alien doppleganger. Homicidal computer. Etc. Of course, there was still 'evil corporation', but it's debatable how 'evil' they really are. Corporations already treat the workforce as disposable. For 3 years, Sam had a place to live, food to eat, and full healthcare. That's more than most workers get right now. Not to mention, the cost of lifting something off the Earth to send it to the moon is very high. If you can start off by sending up a few pre-made copies of Sam and generate more on site, you'd be shaving hundreds of billions of dollars off your operation costs over the duration of the mission and if you're not paying them for the time worked there or their healthcare beyond the life of their duties, even if you pensioned Sam Alpha, you'd be saving a fortune. Is a clone's life really worth more than a solution to scarcity for the rest of the population? Sam wasn't really any different from Gurdy.
On that note, let's segway into something else that I really enjoyed in the film which was a change from pretty much every other sci-fi film I've ever seen. The movie made no attempt to 'explain' everything to us in detail. It assumed we knew H3 is fuel for fusion reactors. It assumed we knew space was very cold and dark and dangerous. Sam's illness... Radiation sickness or an imperfection of clones? Didn't say. The film assumed you knew about radiation sickness and had read enough sci-fi to consider other possibilities.
Gurdy is another good example. If you've read Asimov, you see the three laws at work in him. Was Gurdy sentient with true feelings or was he just a well-programmed simulation? Gurdy was willing to sacrifice himself for his friend/ward, but Sam2 was willing to make the same sacrifice for Sam1. Depending on your interpretation of him, Gurdy violated no programming rules. Didn't even bend them a little bit. He could have been nothing more than a well-programmed user interface. Or perhaps he was more... We don't know and it didn't say and I REALLY like. I've met many humans that I'm skeptical would pass the Turing test, but I've never seen their humanity questioned, so it was very nice to see a computer being treated as a true equal... At least to a clone... Heh. On that fine point, I could even ask, were the Sam clones truly sentient or just very good copies of a (presumed) sentient being?
So... All in all. Great film! See it while you can.
