Valiant Effort, Flawed Story

Rating: 6/10 (2 March 2010)

*Spoiler Alert*
What can I say? Based on the high praise that Moon received from critics and fans alike, I had high expectations going in. Sam Rockwell gives a fine performance as the hapless Sam Bell(s), the miniatures- driven special effects are very well executed, and Duncan Jones has definitely done his homework- referencing sci-fi greats like 2001, Outland, Blade Runner, and others. So what's the problem?
For starters there's definitely some flawed story logic. I find it very difficult to believe that cost of training and employing new workers for the mining operation would be that prohibitively expensive, especially considering that it only takes one person to staff the base. Overlooking that, if Lunar's goal was to save money by not having to train new workers for their mining operations, why not simply automate the entire process? By the looks of things, the operation was already almost completely automated. GERTY (the computer) seemed like a sufficiently sophisticated AI to oversee the day to day operations and fix problems as they arose, and with an abundant fusion power source they could have had a fleet of redundant "mining bots" ready if one of them encountered a catastrophic mechanical failure. In the rare event something did go wrong that required human attention, they could simply send a repair team.
In any case, either one of the above scenarios would be much easier and less expensive than: A) Developing human-cloning technology. B) Finding a way to prematurely age the clones to adulthood. C) Finding a way to "program" their brains with the memories of a particular individual. D) Creating hundreds (if not more) copies of them and keeping them in cryogenic stasis.
This seems like a highly-implausible level of technology for the near future, but assuming that Lunar had cracked the secrets of directly programming the human brain (in all it's incredible complexity), this only bolsters the idea that they could have programmed some type of AI to run the operations, rather than creating an army of human clones. I realize of course that the idea of clones and their ethical treatment is central to the premise of the movie, but I just wish that more thought had gone into making the circumstances more plausible.
My other main gripe with this movie is that I feel that many of it's devices seemed derivative. I know that the similarities between the look and portrayal of GERTY to '2001's HAL were a bit of intentional audience misdirection on Jones' part but come on...could he have at least tried to be subtle? The countdown to the arrival of the repair team/assassins was right out of Outland. The concept of artificially- created humans with a built-in short lifespan was right out of Blade Runner. Unchecked capitalism and devalued human lives...countless movies within the sci-fi genre, but most directly lifted from Alien(s) and Outland. I'm not saying that it isn't okay for directors/writers to pay homage to other science fiction films or touch on classic oft-explored themes, but please do so with enough restraint so as to prevent the viewer from engaging in an involuntary game of "spot the reference".
I really wanted to like this movie, and I hate to disparage it when it's clear that Jones' was making an honest effort at creating the kind of intelligent science fiction so often ignored by Hollywood. Better luck next time.