Review #10: Sunshine
If our Sun was dying.
“At the end of time, a moment will come when just one man remains. Then the moment will pass. Man will be gone. There will be nothing to show that we were ever here, but stardust.” -Evil dude
Synopsis
In 2057, physics don’t exist anymore and the Sun is dying. Naturally, a crew of eight embarks in a sideways Frisbee on a follow-up mission to reignite our Sun with a nuke, after the first mission failed and was lost 7 years prior. As they slingshot around Mercury, they pick up the distress beacon belonging to the original ship, indicating that some of the original crew must still be alive. They decide that the benefit of having two nukes outweighs the risks involved in changing course to rendezvous with the original ship, so they change course to intercept. Unfortunately, the ship is damaged when the nav. officer forgets to change the alignment of the sun-shield to account for the course correction, and a space walk is required for repairs. In an unfortunate chain of events, the communications antenna is scorched, the oxygen garden is fried, and one of the crew gets toasted, making a rendezvous even more imperative.
When they reach and dock with the original ship, they find that all her systems are operational, despite her crew being long dead. They also discover that someone has sabotaged the original ship’s nuke so it can’t boom. Suddenly, the airlock connecting the two ships explodes, forcing the crew stranded on the original ship to perform a spacewalk back to their ship without space suits. One guy misses the airlock. Toast. Back on the ship, one guy obsessed with the Sun exposes himself to unfiltered sunlight in the observation room. Toast. And that nav. officer who forgot to realign the sun-shield? Kills himself from guilt. Toast. They think there is enough oxygen left in the ship to make it to the Sun now, but the ship tells them there is an extra person on board. It turns out to be the captain of the original ship, who went nuts for religious reasons, killed his crew, sabotaged their nuke, and now wants to do the same to them. He murders the botanist (toast), freezes the engineer in coolant (toa… negative toast?), and tries to kill the physicist and the pilot (not quite toast… bread, I guess). The two of them manage to escape the evil captain, and release the nuke into the Sun, sacrificing themselves and saving humanity!
Mood/Setting
Sunshine drops the viewer into a distopian-ish future where the Sun is dying, threatening to freeze the Earth. Though we only get to see ice-block-Earth at the very end, the urgency of the crew’s mission and the bleakness of their circumstances are still well represented in the film’s mood and setting. Crew tensions are extremely high, and violent outbursts and arguments are commonplace between characters. Furthermore, basically the entire plot takes place on board the one ship, creating a claustrophobic vibe which amplifies the tension from before. Humor is also notably absent from the plot. This mood of mission urgency and tension breaks upon the discovery of the rogue captain, turning the last half hour of the film into a hunt-em-down horror sequence, complete with an antagonist who spent a few too many hours in a tanning booth.
Plot Review
Damn, this movie is beautiful. If you get the opportunity to watch Sunshine, focus on the cinematography and the special effects, instead of the fact that the Sun is dying for no apparent reason. Not a moment goes by in this film where I wasn’t completely immersed in the enticing camera angles, gorgeous external views of the vessel, and creative depictions of the Sun and it’s deadly surrounding environment: space. It’s also cool how the film’s antagonist is never fully shown. I think my favorite scene of Sunshine is when the crew gathers in the observation room to view Mercury transit in front of the Sun, complete with shaky-camera effects to demonstrate the Sun’s extreme power. Like a short line for a women’s bathroom, this scene will make your jaw drop in chilling disbelief.
Sunshine actually does a pretty decent job on the “science” side of science-fiction as well. The design of the vessel is fairly realistic, and many science and space phenomena are depicted feasibly in the movie without skimping on creative value. There are a few instances where creative liberties must be granted to the film to overcome strange gravity physics or inaccurate orbital mechanics, but all-in-all, Sunshine can satisfy most of its viewers with believable pseudoscience. Despite moments of scientific realism, the film never discloses how or why the Sun is dying, even though the entire plot rests on this circumstance. Most of the time, I can push shaky science aside in favor of a well-written plot. However, when the shaky science and the main plot-line are tied together like a pair of shoes, said plot falls flat on it’s face… like the person wearing the aforementioned pair of shoes. RIP.
In addition to the overarching plot being a little underdefined, the film also utilizes some really weird and somewhat unnecessary plot devices. What was the purpose of the dude who was obsessed with the Sun? (who, by the way, was the ship’s psychiatrist! Yeah, he’s nuts!) I found his character interesting to watch progress throughout the film, but majorly unrealistic considering that this is supposed to be humanity’s best and most competent crew of eight chosen to save the planet. Also, it was kind of a curve ball to have the evil captain dude’s incentives for killing everyone be religiously based, considering religion isn’t even a prominent theme in the film before his appearance. Finally, I was thoroughly disappointed by the fact that no one cooked a marshmallow with the Sun during the movie, cause that’s what I would have done.
The movie does a pretty fantastic job of showing how the stress of the mission impacted the individual crew members psychologically. Some characters cry. Some characters yell. Others, yet, Seppuku themselves to death. Every hour nearer to the Sun the crew gets, the more their descent into insanity is demonstrated in the film, and with tenable accuracy. This is somewhat due to good writing, but can also be largely attributed to the quality of the performances delivered by the actors, who actually trained for the film by living together in a confined space for weeks before filming started. Fortunately, Eminem and Machine Gun Kelly were not cast in Sunshine, or this stunt would have culminated in catastrophic failure.
Finally, the ending of this movie, not dissimilar to a Nicki Minaj music video, is sort of uncomfortable and doesn’t really belong anywhere. Once you process what actually happened, the plot is technically sound, but the appearance of the evil captain completely changes the trajectory of the film from The Martian to Friday The 13th. In an instant, the film leaves behind its plot of scientific problem solving, and instead adopts a plot of escaping a murderous, overcooked banana pepper wielding a knife. Though I can’t imagine how the plot could have been worked differently, this immediate change of pace may turn off or confuse certain viewers expecting a through-and-through sci-fi. Oh, and SPOILER ALERT: everyone dies.
Conclusion
For those avid with the genera, Sunshine is sci-fi that is definitely worth a solid viewing. For those who aren’t, but are seeking a scratch to the itch of brilliant sci-fi special effects and cinematography, Sunshine will serve as a luminous beacon of satisfaction that can hold its own against bigger, more expensive box office hits. However, for those seeking an airtight, foolproof sci-fi plot, just don’t ask too many big questions or Sunshine will start to dim.
