Almost a cult classic - Moon 44 (1990)

This review contains spoilers.

Moon 44 (1990) is what happens when you blend Aliens, Top Gun, and Blade Runner in a blender, forget the lid, and call the mess "gritty sci-fi." Directed by a pre-blockbuster Roland Emmerich, this forgotten VHS-era relic tries to pass off a corporate dystopia with model ships, prison pilots, and the mood lighting of a German nightclub.

There’s a better movie buried in the rubble, and it deserves to be unearthed.

Moon 44: A Story Analysis

Moon 44: Corporate Warfare for Dummies

Boring room

Right out of the gate, the film opens with an exposition dump that tells us this is a corporate-run mining operation, not a military one. But what do we see? Military in the boardroom, rank structures and a chain of command—basically boot camp with a logo. It’s like Weyland-Yutani bought a prison and staffed it with people who failed their screen tests for Starship Troopers.

If things were done differently...

Lean in. Make it corporate on purpose. No ranks—just contracts. The only uniform is a barcode. The ops room becomes a call centre from hell. The commander isn't a major; he's a regional manager buried in middle-tier incompetence, and the only authority is how many shuttles make their fill.

Felix Stone: Discount Martin Riggs

GLARE - can’t you see I’m undercover?

Felix Stone, our lead, is supposed to be a wild card. We’re told he’s a disgraced pilot, but there’s no evidence. No past, no scars, just the vibe of someone who watched Lethal Weapon on repeat. He’s undercover, which in this universe means glaring at people and never blending in.

If things were done differently...

Felix Stone’s story bleeds through. Flashbacks? Nah. Give us silence. Give us hesitation when he's ordered to kill. Make his biggest flaw is that he cares too much, but he's stuck in a system that rewards apathy. Then, when he rebels, it means something.

Navigators in the Chair, Pilots in the Air: Wasted Potential

The neural flight system—navigators plugged in, prisoners flying the gunships—is pure sci-fi gold. So why does the film treat it like a group project gone wrong? The tension should be palpable. One can't survive without the other, yet they hate each other's guts.

If things were done differently...

Imagine a scene where a nav hesitates, and the pilot spirals into a canyon. Or better—one nav sabotages his pilot (better than how it was done in the next topic). Give the whole setup emotional and strategic stakes. They should be sweating, synced, and terrified. Think Ender’s Game meets The Dirty Dozen.

Cartoon Villains and the Queer Panic That Won’t Die

There’s one bully, one bullied. The abuser, a “totally straight”, over-masculine guy gets his comeuppance in a moment seen from the next star system. It’s painfully stereotyped. If you’re going to tell a prison story in space, don’t default to ‘80s tropes. Do the work.

Brian Thompson is good at playing bad guys, but here, his character seems to be written from another side of the over-masculine trope: the soft guy with an armoured shell. Even though his character was cut from the same tropes as the rest of the movie, it’s good to see him play a different type of character besides 2-dimensional bounty hunters, vampires, and barbarians.

In the end, the only way the navigators could fight back against the jocks was using a “revenge of the nerds” trope – we control the food, the air, everything that runs this place… Using “traditional” tropey prisoners versus much smaller, nerdy guys made the power-play too one-sided and sometimes painful to watch.

If things were done differently...

Make the bullied character dangerous, not dead. Flip it. The abused character becomes the most dangerous person on the base with their computer skills. Give us power plays, not playground drama.

I found this interaction between the bully and the bullied very cringy.
Other ways the power play could be used

-          Professional rivalry, ex-military pilots and corporate navigators – Respect is earned.

-          Everyone is a prisoner or working off a debt to the company.

-          A crew that functions, but then introduce sabotage, where someone works for Pyrite.

-          Older washed-up pilots and younger navigators

o   Pilot: “You’re a cog in the machine.”

o    Nav: “You are the machine.”

Station Life: Grime, Grit, and a Shoulder Pat Too Far

To its credit, Moon 44 looks great. The sets feel real. The models hold up. There’s a lovely grunge to the whole thing. The canyon shots have real tension. However, the interaction between the characters becomes tiring. Then we get Major Lee, the station commander, pulling a casual shoulder pat on a female worker in front of convicts. That wasn’t in the script—it was in the era.

If things were done differently...

If the mining company isn’t military, then ditch the titles and use a Regional Resource Director, promoted for loyalty. Threats come more with silence than shouting, and they are more afraid of breaking NDA’s than people’s lives. This role comes with a stark corporate hotel room compared to the bunks of the crew in a dorm-type room.

Or a former whistleblower put out here to rot. Loyal to the station and crew, but not the company. They protect one of the navigators for personal reasons, and you have someone flawed and real.

Pyrite, Profit, and the Real Conspiracy

Pyrite, the use being the other company name, who just so happen to be pirates, and fools' gold. Who buys into pyrite?

This is where the plot of the story both works and doesn’t work.

First, we have the primary story: Pyrite is attacking the moon stations, and second, mining shuttles are going missing—two problems with one Stone.

Sure, pirates are attacking the stations and destroying them—that makes sense.
Shuttles go missing—that also makes sense.

Let’s side track for a moment: Sensors on Moon 44 pick up the Pyrite battle cruiser 52 minutes before the attack starts. If we assume the other three moons also had a warning like this, but corporate didn’t have any knowledge of who did it until Moon 46 (the last attack), then someone had disabled the alarms on 51 and 47. We know shuttles were going missing (the reason for Stone to be sent out there), so someone masterminded the theft.

I don’t think it was directly mentioned that Pyrite was behind the theft, but the commander on 44 was reprogramming the shuttles' destinations. This is where we come back to the plot.

The ship actually had Pyrite written on the side

If Pyrite was behind the theft, why destroy the moon stations that cost billions of dollars?

In the final boardroom scene, a military official says the moon was "captured." But we saw it blown to hell. So why destroy the moon stations that cost billions of dollars if Pyrite was already getting the redirected resources? It would take years to rebuild.

Because it wasn’t about the ore, it wasn’t just hijacking supply lines. The pirates were burning the evidence. Destroying the stations was a corporate black site purge dressed up as warfare.

That’s not a mining war. That’s hostile acquisition.

If things were done differently...

The easiest thing to say here is two different movies, but let’s deal with the script.

In the movie, the shuttles were unmanned, but what if they weren’t? Someone’s family member (maybe Stone’s) could have been on board, and the investigation is about finding them and the vessels. Have Stone push for answers, get blocked at every turn. Not with “You’re not cleared,” but with fear. People are scared to talk.

Instead of being a throwaway character, make the station commander a cynical, compromised suit. Maybe they know what's going on but play dumb. Or they’ve convinced themselves it’s “just numbers.” People die. Resources move. That’s the job.

Investigating Like It's 1981

Evidence and the whistle-blower

The investigation into the missing mining shuttles is paper-thin. Instead of a slow-burn mystery, we get a notebook flip and a few shots of the shuttle's onboard computer—while the villains literally explain their entire plan in parallel. It’s less Outland and more Scooby-Doo in Space.

To fix it? Drag us through it. Make Stone piece it together. Have the clues build tension—missing fuel logs, corrupted nav data, a frightened technician who disappears the next day. Let the viewer investigate with him.

If things were done differently...

Here’s the twist: the stations were sacrificed. Pyrite—named for fool’s gold, a nod to pirates and profiteers—wasn’t just hijacking the supply chain; they were cleaning house. Blowing up the stations erased evidence, buried corporate collusion, and tied up loose ends.

That’s not just sabotage. That’s scorched-earth accounting. And it’s the story the movie almost told.

Final Act: Drop the Hero Walk-Off, Go Full Dystopia

The end

Stone finishes the movie by… throwing down the location data and walking away? No fallout. No consequences. Just a “we’re done here” shrug.

If things were done differently...

Stone arrives back at the corporate headquarters to find the board talking about the fall of 44. Instead of tossing down the data and peacing out, have Stone confront the command staff, knowing the deck is stacked. He’s not a hero walking away—he’s a dead man walking.

Don’t give Stone a shrug. Give him a scar. Have him choose consequence over comfort. Either burn the system down, or walk out knowing it’s already rebuilding itself.

What Moon 44 could’ve been and my thoughts.

This was a movie I almost didn’t watch, with its corny writing and overused tropes. I reached the 19-20-minute mark and wondered why I was watching it. The ending also just (what can I say that makes this seem nice?) sucked. Malcolm McDowell’s talents were wasted in this movie.

Moon 44 had the bones. A grimy aesthetic. A tight concept. A chance to ask real questions about control, trust, and corporate sacrifice. But it took the easy road—style over substance, explosions over ethics.

If someone remade this today, slow it down. Give it Blade Runner pacing. Let the world breathe. Let the characters suffer. Score it like Tron: Legacy, not a forgotten Saturday morning cartoon. Because buried under the fog and testosterone, there’s a great story here.

Next time, put the lid on the blender and let the story mix itself.

Almost a good movie score – 3/10

Potential for a remake – 9/10

Let me know what you think of Moon 44 - was I right?

What ‘Almost a cult classic’ would you like to see me redesign for a modern audience?

Here are the movies I’m currently looking at
Damnation Alley (1977)
Galaxina (1980)
Split Second (1992)
Ghosts of Mars (2001)
Freejack (1992)

Final note: The last few nights have been rough with our 2-year-old waking up at night, and this movie being “difficult” to watch, I hope these thoughts above aren’t just ramblings.

All images remain the property of Centropolis Entertainment.