Good Film, good build-up and feel, some little set-backs

Rating: 7/10 (23 July 2010)

I'm not going to add any more praise to this film, since that has been done often enough. I especially liked the build-up and the atmosphere. Definitely recommendable for people who generally enjoy sci-fi movies.
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Why don't I rate this film a perfect 10 - like so many others? 1. Some bits of the story leave you questioning the whole logic of the setting. Like the actual need for humans to be on the station, when they have to go through all that trouble to keep him "in his state". And wouldn't a one-year-contract be psychologically easier to bear? Would a nasty corporation programme a friendly A.I.? Etc. Okay, I will acknowledge that sci-fi always builds on sometimes far-fetched assumptions. Still, I don't like having too many simple questions unanswered.
2. There were a lot of quotes and references that you can't really understand, unless you know the history of sci-fi movies. I went with my girl-friend and she asked me why GERTY was being so helpful. Well, since she hadn't seen 2001 or Alien, she didn't see GERTY's behaviour in contrast to other (rather negative) examples of human interaction with A.I. As someone who's seen most of the classics, I was always thinking: "reminds me of Solaris", "he's behaving like HAL", or "a corporate rescue mission? Like in Alien3?".
I thought, sometimes the film-makers were too focused on playing with references than laying out their own plot.
3. The ending was a bit too blunt. Suddenly we hear news headlines about shares dropping and accusations of him being an illegal alien. Why? My last thoughts were: "Oh, so this movie is actually about finances and politics?" That angle was completely unnecessary. The psychology behind being an expendable clone was mind-boggling enough. The rest can easily be left up to the minds of the audiences.
Still, a good movie. 7/10