Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Premise: A renegade group of former space employees travels the world, stealing space equipment in an attempt to go back to the moon.
About: A relatively unknown project that’s being directed by Doug Liman which will star Jake Gyllenhaal. The script was originally penned by Liman with the help of ‘Along Came Polly’ director John Hamburg, but has been rewritten by ‘Black Hawk Down’ scribe Mark Bowden. It’s unclear which draft this is but I’m fairly certain it’s the Bowden draft. Dan Mazeau and Ken Nolan are also credited with working on the screenplay.
Writer: Mark Bowden.
I have to say that Doug Liman is one of the more underrated directors out there. No one gives him any credit for Swingers but the guy figured out a way to balance Vaughn and Favreau’s love for improvisation with a production schedule that couldn’t afford second takes. He went on to do “Go”, a cool kinetic flick that played with time and still managed to differentiate itself from all the Pulp Fiction clones going out at the time. Mr. & Mrs. Smith was a movie I was so sure I was going to hate that I had to literally be dragged to the theater. Somehow, the movie turned out to be a good time. Then he started a franchise in the Bourne movies that had no business being as big as they were – since Matt Damon’s career was basically in the cellar when the first film premiered. His only misstep was the Hayden Christensen starrer “Jumper”, which felt like the projectionist had accidentally fallen on the fast-forward button for the entirety of the movie. It’s one of a handful of movies that actually felt like it chopped off too much film (but we did get to see Billy Elliot all grown up). So when I heard that Mr. Liman would be directing a big-budget semi-sci-fi flick about going to the moon, I wanted to check out the script.
A mysterious group of misfits is stealing rockets and boosters and, yes, even lunar landers from all over the world – even going so far as to leave “I.O.U.’s” in their wake. They appear to be a rogue collection of former space pilots and engineers led by a hot Eastern European woman named Anya. She’s one of those “save the earth” type women…but on like a case of red bull. FBI and NASA officials find out that the group is following an outdated thesis project from an ex-NASA employee which proposes how to get to the moon at 1/10 the cost of any known mission. The author of this project is an Observation Center employee named Cole – a man who has no idea that any of this is going on.
Well he’s about to. Because Cole is the last item on the list. One second he’s staring at the moon, the next he’s thrown into the back of a van, drugged, and when he wakes up, he’s on a mission to the moon. Yes, Cole is sitting in the cockpit of an old rusted Kazakhstan rocket three seconds before liftoff! Cole is equal parts surprised, terrified, and sincerely pissed off.
Apparently Anya’s group has dual motives: to mine Helium-3, a high performance energy source which can only be found on the moon and (I’m not kidding about this) to leave a Monk on the moon to establish a Lunar Lighthouse. Apparently nobody told Anya that the purpose of a Lighthouse is to guide incoming ships to safety. Since the only thing that’s going to be heading towards the moon in the next 20 years is a meteor or two and the occasional Chinese satellite, I’d say Marco the Monk is going to have a a lot of free time on his hands. I hope he brought a Gameboy.
Well, because they’re all amateurs and they don’t have Houston on their side (the American space program refuses to help) they crash land, leaving them in the position of trying to figure out how to get back home. My interest started to fade long before this, but this was the breaking point. First of all, who cares if this team gets to the moon or not? We’ve already been to the moon, oh, what… 40 years ago. I wouldn’t care if you told me my damn cousin was on the mission. Getting to the moon is old. There’s nothing special about it, even if you were able to save a couple of dollars in the process. What’s next? A renegade team that sends another rover to Mars? And maybe the two rovers clash for Martian supremacy? There could be some high drama in that. But seriously, all that happens is that they crash on a place we’ve already been before, and then try to find a way back. What’s interesting about this?
You remember that movie, “Space Cowboys?” With Tommy Lee Jones and Clint Eastwood? The whole thing was about these old men going up into space. But what they did with that script is they added another element to the story. Once they were up there, they found out they had to fix this mysterious rouge satellite. The curiosity of what was behind that satellite added another dimension to the story that made it more than just a bunch of guys going into space. That’s what “Luna” needed. That extra story element. What if they got to the moon and realized some country had a secret base there? What would the people occupying that base do to make sure the base’s existence stayed secret? That’s a story. Trying to get to the moon, crashing, then trying to get back isn’t a story. I’m sorry but it isn’t.
It was for this reason that I couldn’t recommend Luna.
Script link: Luna
[ ] trash
[x] barely kept my interest
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One thing I will give Luna is that it’s well-researched. While I wasn’t always keen on the logic behind *why* they were doing this, everything seemed plausible and realistic because of how much research went into it. I believed that what they were doing was possible. A lot of writers don’t do any research but it makes a difference. Readers know when a writer’s bullshitting and professional writers almost always research their subject matter. So when someone comes along that doesn’t, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
