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Back in 2007, I always used to catch pieces of Sunshine the movie, out of context and poorly edited. I would often catch it at my friend’s place or at a hotel on TV at odd times. It was a movie that I had no recollection of and I don’t remember any marketing campaigns for it. Like many other movies I came across randomly, I had no clue what it was about until I watched it in its entirety on a flight a few years ago. Knowing what the movie was and appreciating it, I decided to watch it once more on my home screen. This is not new to me, but I always meant to revise it for the site, so here is my review, which should have been published a long time ago.
The sun has started dying and has not been emitting as much heat as it once did, which is causing patients on earth to unclothed and rush to their home like it is starting to dissolve into a sudden ice age and the best bet for them trying to survive will be to stay hidden until everything on the planet is shredded into pieces. Somehow, in the most improbable of events, humanity was able to work together to form a nuclear bomb which could act as a defib for the sun. The concept was to blow up the bomb and send it to the sun, in return, to jump start the sun to the level it requires. This required humanity coming together once again to design a spaceship to store the bomb and facilitate the transport to the sun. It was christened Icarus. Like the myth, the first attempt was rife with failure. Cessation of communication with Earth was lost and the Icarus is now a mystery. Somehow, humanity managed to unleash the second iteration of the ship, which is aptly dressed up as ‘Icarus II’. With the remnants of earth’s resources scattered to save humankind, the Icarus II’s mission is going according to plan until they receive a distress call from the first Icarus and their plans need to take a new turn.
Will they proceed as if there were no signals and get on with the plan, or will they retrace their steps and attempt capturing the second warhead has a chance to capture and salvage the first bomb?
If you think they simply keep the course and everything turns out fine as it is supposed to with zero problems, then I do not understand what you expect out of movies, more specifically horror movies. If that were the case, Sunshine would be an unnecessarily short film that is pretty much devoid of any action or interest. As you might expect, it is obvious that the choice to deviate is chosen and consequently, everyone suffers as a result of this choice and the choices that follow which tend to have extremely negative effects. It is melodramatic and For example, Alien is a predictable movie. It fostered a new genre and a slasher classic template because designers, writers, and directors knew what to do with the opportunity. That’s why Sunshine is an exceptional film too. Like it, Sunshine explains its predictability and the surroundings that stem because of this through its elements of characters and action.
Right from the beginning towards this crucial part of the film where the choice that is wrong is made, there is a considerable amount of time spent at the characters understanding some of the traces of their personalities and why their personalities would not sit comfortably with each other.
Physicist Robert Capa (Cillian Murphy) who invented the bomb is a dull, passive man, devoid of vibrant thoughts. However, he differs in the sense that he is a critical thinker who ultimately decides to veer off track. On the other hand, the ship’s engineer Mace (Chris Evans) is a hot-tempered person who isn’t afraid to speak out against changing the plan. In a sense, Mace is a surrogate for the audience and, to some extent, helps make the film more relatable. They are the ones who we as an audience spend most time with in the film, but there are other characters such as Searle (Cliff Curtis) who are more than simple archetypes. Searle is a strange medic with an almost pathological fixation on “sol” or the sun. Quite early in the film, Searle’s story appears to twist in a different direction that makes the film much less predictable than I had anticipated. This is also true for the character Trey (Benedict Wong) ,who plays his part in the overwhelming disaster towards the end of the film in a very convincing way. Of course, there are some crew members that are easier to forget, but we all know Alien isn’t one to shy away from throwaway characters.
There’s a specific point I want to make, and at this time, I need to stress how I have been drawing parallels to other films, in this case, Alien, in order to justify myself.
What about characters from Prometheus and Alien Covenant? If not, here is a recap. The people from both movies were incredibly crucial for a certain task and were expected to be smart. You would expect them to be the best of the best that humanity has to offer for such prominent goals. Yet, they are all dull-witted morons who do unimaginable things which no rational being would do If they actually had two functional brain cells. Both of them worked to construct an interesting character with a high level of imagination and quote-able traits on par with Ripley from Alien, but executed this by making their leading female character not be a complete idiot like the rest of the cast (Most of the time, she is not). What made Ripley, in Alien, so powerful and loved was not only her ultra-skeptical optimistic caution which she used to gain the audience’s sympathy. It was the other characters being reasonable around her Angela and Elite women who all existed in the same frame by performing logically to the evidence available.
“It’s not going to be appealing if all the other characters around him or her aren’t compelling, which is one of many reasons those two movies suck.” It is not satisfactory having just one intelligent individual on a ship full of uneducated people.
On another note, Sunshine is great because it actually spends time with the character, so you get to know them. Because the characters are developed, we care about them, so when things go south for them, we sympathize for their struggles. There are one or two characters who fail to leave a lasting impression like the rest, but as a whole, the group is made up of people that you would expect to find on that ship, at the very least. They don’t appear to be morons. They just look like intelligent people who are capable of making mistakes, and unfortunately for them, the mistakes they make have disastrous consequences. How do the people on the Icarus II solve the bad things that come their way? The team is forced to act decisively to resolve the issues, and that often means that some very difficult sacrifices have to be made. With every sacrifice, the team grounds themselves deeper in their resolve, and we sympathize with them as they near the goal in desperation.
I am not stating that Sunshine is a spiritual sequel to Alien, but it most certainly does share a lot of the same positive aspects that makes them both films worth watching.
In a way, it feels like the director, Danny Boyle, was trying to make his own version of Alien by copying parts of the story that he found useful. The pace is similarly slow, letting you digest the atmosphere and the void that surrounds space. Much like a Ridley Scott film, it is a visual treat courtesy of its art style, music, and cinematography. Every part of the Icarus is shown to us through clever lighting and camera angles on the miniature set. It is extremely colorful with the aid of great effects and the use of dynamic lighting. As we watch it drift towards the sun, music captures the emptiness of space while giving the film an introspective touch. The way it is presented is so vivid that one nearly forgets that it is a horror movie.
There are little hints early on to unsettle you with the possibility of a cosmic horror scenario, but until the last act, it is primarily a character drama, which, in my opinion, benefits Sunshine. When the horror finally hits the fan, Sunshine’s tone and pace change dramatically.
Even though a movie’s plot twist in the later sections can be jarring, here, it still impresses me that the understanding was built prior to the climax. As the plot thickens, the feeling of being stranded in space becomes more overwhelming as truly magnificent finale arrives. Everything comes together in an astonishingly colorful and dramatic ending.
Sunshine is a actually a decent movie and deserves its praises. The film portrays a very ordinary plot that stays engrossing until the very end because of the realistic characters, amazing direction, brilliant cinematography, and music. For me, it is a movie that gets better every single time I watch it.
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