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We sat down with Moon director Duncan Jones and talked evil robots, scientific inspirations behind the film and how scifi needs to catch up to comic book movies. Check out the full video interview and new clips from the film.
Duncan Jones io9 Moon Interview from io9 on Vimeo.
On The Science Behind Moon:
Sam Rockwell was the initial inspiration. But Entering Space was the sort of crux of the hard science behind the film. Because it is more of a hard science-fiction film than a soft science-fiction film. There was this amazing description in Robert Zubrin's book Entering Space, on how you would go about colonizing the solar system. And one of the first things you would do is set up a base on the Moon. And the reason you would do that is because you would want to mine this thing helium 3. Which is a natural resource that you could use of fuel for fusion power. So that was the science behind it.
On how Sam inspired Moon:
I met up with Sam Rockwell about three years ago. He had read a script that I had co-written with a guy named Mike Johnson. That was for another film. It was maybe too ambitious for a first feature film. And Sam wanted to play another role than the one I really wanted him to play... We talked about about the kind of films that we both loved. There was this real cross-over in both of our tastes where we both loved these science fiction films from the late 70s and early 80s. Films like Outland and Silent Running and Ridley Scott's Alien, where you had these really sort of blue-collar characters, deeply well-drawn human beings and characters, that were contrasted with these alien environments and science fiction settings. We both got really excited about doing something like that.
On His Own Personal Reason For Making This Film:
I had been very different when I was younger than I am now. It took me a really long time to find myself and feel comfortable in my own skin, and to know what it is that I wanted to do with my life... I lacked a lot of self confidence. The difference between me now and me then were quite dramatic. I think like anyone, you ask yourself, I've asked myself, I wish I could have gone back and talked to myself when I was younger and said, "You know what, everything is going to be ok." I think that conversation between me now and me then, it just got me thinking about the idea of meeting yourself in person. Having the chance to see what you're really like And what other people have to deal with when they have to deal with you.
Video by Spencer Lund and Mike Byhoff.
Send an email to Meredith, the author of this post, at meredith@io9.com.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
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