Plot
Sam Bell nears the end of a three-year work contract as the sole resident at Lunar Industries' largely automated lunar mining base "Sarang" (Hangul: 사랑 "love"). Sam oversees automated harvesters and launches canisters bound for Earth containing the helium-3 they have extracted. Chronic communication problems limit him to occasional recorded messages to his wife Tess, who was pregnant with their daughter Eve when he left. His only companion is an artificial intelligence named GERTY, who assists with the base's automation.
Two weeks before he is to return to Earth, Sam suffers from hallucinations of a teenage girl. One such image distracts him while he is out recovering a helium-3 canister from a harvester, causing him to crash his rover into the harvester. Rapidly losing air, Sam puts on his helmet, but loses consciousness.
Sam awakes in the base infirmary with no memory of the accident. He overhears GERTY receiving instructions from Lunar Industries not to let him outside the base and to wait for the arrival of rescue team "Eliza". His suspicions aroused, he manufactures a fake problem to force GERTY to let him outside. He travels to the crashed rover, where he finds an older Sam Bell, unconscious.
He brings Old Sam back to the base and tends to his injuries. The two Sams start to wonder if one is a clone of the other. After a heated argument and physical altercation, they together coerce GERTY into revealing that they are both clones of the original Sam Bell, who has long since returned to Earth. GERTY activated New Sam after the rover crash and implanted the memories of the original Sam Bell.
The two Sams begin searching the base, finding live communications jammed by transmitters located beyond the outermost perimeter of the base. They also discover that four previous clones all started to physically deteriorate three years after awakening. Told they would hibernate briefly for the journey home, they were actually incinerated after being put to sleep.
The two newest clones also find many more unconscious doubles in a secret hidden vault below the main level. Old Sam drives past the interference radius in a second rover and calls Tess on Earth. However, he gets Eve, now 15 years old, who says Tess died "some years ago". He hangs up before her father, original Sam, comes to the screen.
The two Sams realize that the incoming Eliza "rescue" team will kill them both if they are found together. New Sam suggests sending the other to Earth in one of the helium-3 transports, but Old Sam, already badly deteriorated, knows that he will not live much longer. He suggests New Sam leave instead, and alert the public to Lunar Industries' unethical practices. Old Sam plans to die by the crashed rover so Lunar Industries will not suspect anything until it is too late.
New Sam orders GERTY to revive a seventh clone to greet the rescuers, then programs a harvester to crash and wreck a jamming antenna, thereby enabling live communications with Earth. New Sam then reboots GERTY, erasing his memory records of the event. Old Sam, back in the crippled rover, remains conscious long enough to watch the launch of the ship carrying New Sam to Earth.
As the credits roll, the helium transport is depicted entering Earth's upper atmosphere, while news reports a clone's testimony on Lunar Industries' activities has stirred up considerable controversy.
Read more about this topic: Moon (film)
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