How David Bowie influenced the 2009 sci-fi movie ‘Moon’
Filmmaker Duncan Jones made his directorial debut in 2009 with Moon, a science fiction drama starring Sam Rockwell. The plot revolves around an astronaut who experiences an existential crisis as he comes towards the end of a solo expedition, during which time his spaceship has been mining helium-3 on the far side of the moon.
Jones is the son of David Bowie, whose birth name is, of course, David Jones, and his first wife, the journalist Angie Bowie (nee Barnett). As well as Moon, Jones has also taken the directorial reigns on Source Code, Warcraft and Mute, but it is certainly Moon that he is best known for, having won the BAFTA for ‘Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer’.
It had been pointed out that Jones’ father had inspired Moon, but it wasn’t until the cast and crew members suggested such a link to him that he began to realise it. After all, much of Bowie’s musical output concerned themes of space, particularly the isolated figure of Major Tom from his iconic songs ‘Space Oddity’ and ‘Ashes to Ashes’.
“Moon was certainly in no way a conscious reflection of what my dad had done,” Jones told The Los Angeles Times in 2009, “But there’s no getting away from the fact that I grew up around the same things that were informing him, and I am the sum of my experiences, and my experiences tend to overlap [with] what my dads were.”
The character-driven focus of some of Bowie’s best songs was also present in the cinematic inspirations for Moon. Jones and lead actor Sam Rockwell spent time preparing for production by watching a number of sci-fi classics, including Blade Runner and Alien, both of which feature isolated characters who question their existence, whether it be from a philosophical standpoint in the case of Rick Deckard or physical for Ellen Ripley.
“They were about human beings and not going for just one action set piece, or special effects set piece,” Jones said of being drawn to such films. “They really were about people, they were character-driven films, but that just happened to have these very alien or unusual environments. And that was where science fiction came in, but really it was about people. And that’s a very different approach than most science-fiction films that get made today.”
So while Jones undoubtedly wanted to free himself from the shackles of being the son of one of the most famous people to ever walk the earth, he couldn’t help but be influenced by the kind of themes and motifs that his father expressed in some of his most vital and ever-lasting tracks. In that light, Moon might just serve as a homage to Jones’ late legendary father.
