Sunshine

The premise of this film is simple enough; futuristic sci-fi apocalyptic tale where the sun is dying, and a crew is sent to nuke it into reigniting itself. The previews even made it look interesting, and Danny Boyle, although quite eccentric in his directing style, followed far too many space movie cliches to succeed with this one.

The crew of the Icarus II is the second attempt by a global consortium at this endeavor, and nobody can explain the first crew's mysterious failure. This sidebar story leaves little to the imagination, and ultimately ruins the film's integrity. As they proceed closer to the sun, things start going wrong, crew members start dying, and we are ultimately left in the dark as to what is even going on. There is too much shaky camera movement, there is absolutely no character development. In fact, I couldn't even tell you any of the characters' names even if I wanted to. Reminiscent of Event Horizon minus the gore, and obviously taking cues from Kubrick, Boyle absolutely muddles the story and inserts far too many predictable and redundant space movie scenarios.

Perhaps the best line of the film comes when a small exploratory crew docks upon the original Icarus and someone suggests that they split up. One of the characters spouts "Right, so an alien can pick us off one by one?" My sentiments exactly. The "twist" if you want to call it that is severely disappointing, and although some of the visual effects were dazzling and the premise is intriguing to say the least, there were some problems.

First of all, it is a crew of eight. Each one has an area of expertise and nobody else has any knowledge of that area. Why do space movies always follow this paradigm? Wouldn't it be better to have a larger crew so that in the case of catastrophic events, or even just an accident, everyone doesn't have to die? Second, I have little knowledge about the science of physics, particularly as it relates to the energy output of the sun and UV rays, and solar bursts, and everything sun-related, but many of the details seemed to be overlooked.

Overall, this film did not hold up to expectations. The cast was forgettable, and the story got out of control after some initial promise. It has been a long time since there was a truly good sci-fi space flick (1986), and I'm still waiting for the next. I won't give up on the genre, but I would not recommend Sunshine. 5/10.