The Stop Button

The Moon runs about two hours, but it’s got enough story for eight. About the only way to tell all the story it’s got overflowing would be a miniseries remake. And even then, you could probably toss on another couple of episodes to even it all out.

The film concerns South Korea’s second attempt at a moon landing. Their first attempt blew up five years before this one. Moon takes place in 2029, so the first attempt was 2024. It doesn’t so much take place in the near future as the immediate future and then the very near future. Except, for all the truthiness of Moon, there isn’t any. Korea’s doing a solo moon mission because they want to take all the water out of the moon (we’ve discovered there’s probably water under the surface, and whoever controls the water controls the spice). The United States and all the other English-speaking countries with white people have teamed up to share the moon–no word on anyone else.

The U.S.-led group also has a space station orbiting the moon at all times. It has landers on it so they can go down and do a Tom Hanks-inspired skip and sing whenever they want, but Moon almost immediately establishes no one has walked on the moon since the seventies. This new mission is going to be the first time since then. Actually, wait, it might be possible only Americans have walked on the moon, including since the seventies, which means they don’t let the other astronauts on the lunar space station go walking on the moon because Americans are dicks.

Americans are dicks is another of Moon’s subplots, it turns out. See–and buckle in–disgraced Korean Astronautics and Space Center (NASC) flight director Sol Kyung-gu, who oversaw the previous tragic mission, is back because he designed the control module, and they need him. His ex-wife (Kim Hee-ae) dumped him, moved to the United States, renounced her Korean heritage, married a white dude to raise her son with her, and became the head of NASA. Lots of Moon involves Kim telling Sol to shove it whenever they need help.

Now, there’s the subtext about South Korea wanting to strip-mine the moon and not share with anyone else, especially Kim. It’s bizarre. The geopolitical implications are all very, very strange.

But Moon doesn’t get into any of them. Not when it’s also got one of the astronauts–Do Kyung-soo–vastly unqualified for the mission. It turns out his dad (Lee Sung-min in a not-tiny but always silent cameo) was Sol’s partner on the previous mission, and when it went bad, Lee was the one who killed himself in disgrace. Another big thing about The Moon–basically all of the Korean guys in authority positions imply they frequently consider suicide instead of having to apologize or be uncomfortable. It’s so much.

But also Sol and Do don’t know they’re working together. And they have so many secrets from one another.

Presumably, Do has another secret, which somehow the film felt the need to cut–he’s supposed to be an elite ROK Navy SEAL, except he’s terrible under pressure and spends all his time not under pressure panicking about being under pressure. The other astronauts–who disobey orders and kick ass because they’re astronauts, bro–make fun of him for being such a worry wart.

There’s also Sol’s sidekick, Hong Seung-hee, taking up screen time because they wanted an ingenuine (at one point, she and Do seem like they’re going to have a long-distance connection, but it’s actually nothing, which is weird). Oh, and new KASC political appointee Jo Han-chul is freaking out about everything because he wanted an easy government job without any responsibility.

See, it could easily go eight episodes. I haven’t even gotten into the constant terror everyone finds themselves in once things start going wrong.

Not talking about what goes wrong isn’t necessarily a “no spoilers” decision, either. The Moon’s a science and technology thriller a la Apollo 13 but since it’s based in a poorly thought-out reality (courtesy director Kim’s script) and doesn’t pretend to know any of the engineering whatsoever… it’s just a bunch of words and visuals out of other movies. The special effects are great, no complaints in that department, but they’re just showing various, pre-existing visual tropes.

In all, Moon’s not original (though letting melodrama knock a science thriller off course so much isn’t common), but it’s usually compelling. Do’s not good, but he’s sympathetic. It’d have helped if they revealed he’d faked his way onto the mission, just so the KASC astronauts don’t seem incompetent. Sol’s fine, but there’s not a part there. The rest of the supporting cast is solid–Jo’s a lot of fun, always in the background.

The Moon’s a very tense, simultaneously bloated and thin special effects extravaganza. The only thing missing is the human drama, making it a phenomenal contrast between that genre and melodrama.