How And Why ‘Mute’ And ‘Moon’ Take Place In The Same Universe
Easter eggs are in nearly every movie these days — heck there’s a whole film coming out that’sone giant Easter egg— so you can’t blame a director for dropping in a reference to his most beloved movie.
Moonwas the breakout directorial debut forDuncan Jones, winning him the attention of Hollywood and the ardor of sci-fi fans who quickly labelled the 2009 movie as a modern classic. Now, after dabbling in blockbuster studio filmmaking withWarcraftandSource Code, Jones has been given almost complete creative freedom by Netflix to pursue his longtime passion project,Mute.And some of that creative freedom goes to making a fun nod to his most beloved film.Warning: This post contains minor spoilers forMoonandMute.Mute, which takes place in a gritty futuristic Berlin, andMoon, which takes place on the on — you guessed it — the moon, are both set in the same universe. The revelation of theMuteandMoonconnection comes courtesy of a cameo fromMoonstarSam Rockwell.
The Mute and Moon Connection
InMoon, Rockwell plays a lone astronaut named Sam Bell who discovers that he has been cloned against his will to perpetually operate a Moon base on the cheap. The movie ends with the latest clone flying to Earth to confront his corrupt employer, Lunar Industries.
Rockwell’s cameo inMuteis fleeting, but offers some closure to the ending of his character. He appears as number 156 of Sam Bell’s clones in a newscast watched by the mute bartender, Leo (Alexander Skarsgard), in a court trial against Lunar Industries. And Rockwell can be seen again in a poster decorating a dimly lit street.
How Sam Bell Fits in the Film
Jones hadteased the possibilityof aMuteandMoonconnection nearly two years ago, just beforeMutewas set to start production. Indeed, a connection already exists, as Rockwell was initially set to star inMutebefore plans fell through and Jones madeMooninstead. But Sam Bell’s cameo inMutewas more than just an Easter egg, Jones toldEntertainment Weekly:
“It was really good fun. Sam was wondering, ‘How does this fit into the film?’ I was like, ‘Look, it’s a little Easter egg for those people who cared about what happened at the end ofMoon, and it fits into this universe’ — because the idea is that that story of [Moon] is ongoing in the background of this story. If we do ever a chance to do a third movie, maybe we can tie all of these things together a little bit more.”
“We had the opportunity with poster campaign of freeing Sam Bell,” Jones toldInverse.“For me, if you accept that it needed to be a science fiction film, putting it together withMoonwasn’t that much a difficulty. It was more like, how can I unobtrusively wrap up the story ofMoonin this story in a city environment.”
The cameo is relatively unobtrusive, though the connection toMoonprobably didn’t doMuteany favors. Inhis review,/Film’s Chris Evangelista calledMute, “frustrating film – one loaded with potential, but lacking distinction.”
Here is the official synopsis forMute, which is currently streaming on Netflix:
In a Berlin of the future, a mute bartender’s search for his missing lady-love takes him deeper and deeper into the city’s criminal underbelly.
