Sunshine was one of those movies that I would see in pieces and out of context for years after it came out in 2007. It would be on at a friend’s house somewhere, or on a channel late at night while staying at a hotel. It was a film I was unfamiliar with and don’t recall any advertising for it at the time of its release. In all of my random encounters with it, I never knew what movie it was until I finally saw it from start to finish a few years ago on a plane. Having finally discovered the movie and knowing what it was, I watched it again on my home screen. I’ve had thoughts to share for a long while but never bothered to do so for the site. So, here’s my long overdue review.

Pros

Sound, music, and cinematography are all great
Solid acting from a solid cast with believable characters
Technically, it’s a horror film, but it feels far more cerebral and fantastic to give you a more unique experience
Special effects hold up rather well for a movie from 2007

Cons

Predictable story with some avoidable mistakes

Plot & Thoughts

The sun is dying and not putting out as much heat as it used to, causing the earth to quickly freeze and usher in a permanent ice age that will likely kill everything on the planet. Humanity, in the most unlikely of circumstances, managed to band together to build a nuclear bomb capable of acting as a defibrillator for the sun. The theory would be to deliver the payload to the sun and jump-start it back up to its previous temperature. That also required humanity to band together to build a ship capable of traveling with this bomb to the sun called Icarus. Unfortunately, the first attempt was a disaster. It lost contact with Earth en route to its destination and no one knows what happened to it. Somehow, humanity found a way to send a second expedition into space with the last of the earth’s resources capable of saving them all. The mission aboard the Icarus II is going as it should until they pick up the distress beacon of the first Icarus, and a decision has to be made. Do they ignore the signal and continue on as planned, or divert with the possibility of getting a second warhead and thus a second chance in case the first bomb fails to do what it needs to do?

If you think they stay the course and everything works out okay as it should without any issues, then I’m not sure what you’re expecting from movies, in particular horror films. If that were the case, Sunshine would be a very short and boring film without any drama. Obviously, the decision to divert is chosen and everything goes to hell because of this decision and because mistakes are made that have disastrous consequences. It’s incredibly predictable, but that isn’t much of a mark against it. Alien is a predictable movie, but it manages to be a horror classic because it does a lot of other things right. Like Alien, Sunshine justifies its predictability and the circumstances that follow through its use of characters and drama.

Leading up to this pivotal moment in the movie where the wrong decision is made, we spend a decent amount of time with the characters getting to know some of their personalities and understanding why some personalities might clash with one another. The physicist who designed the bomb, Robert Capa (Cillian Murphy), is a quiet and passive type who thinks about his problems logically and is ultimately the one who decides to divert course. Meanwhile, the ship’s engineer Mace (Chis Evans), is a hotheaded individual who vehemently speaks against changing the plan. In some ways, Mace acts as a voice of reason and the vessel for the concerns of the audience. These two are the main characters of the film with whom we spend the most amount of time, but there are other characters who stand out as more than your typical archetype, like Searle (Cliff Curtis). He is a somewhat eccentric medic who develops an unhealthy obsession with the sun. Early on, it seems like Searle’s story would take a certain turn but then make the film far less predictable. The same is true for the character Trey (Benedict Wong), whose role in the disastrous outcomes of the film weighs heavily in a convincing way. There are certainly some more forgettable crew members, but it’s not like Alien didn’t have disposable characters.

I realize I’m making a lot of comparisons to Alien, but there’s a particular point I want to get across about the similarities between the two and why they work as movies with a minor tangential argument I’ve been wanting to make for a while. Do you recall the characters in Prometheus and Alien Covenant? If not, let me summarize. The characters in both movies were tasked with extremely important missions and were people you would expect to be intelligent. You’d think they’d be the best and brightest people humanity could offer for such paramount tasks. Yet, they’re all boring idiots who do really stupid things that no one would do if they had two brain cells. Both movies tried to create a compelling protagonist with a strong personality and unique quality, similar to Ripley of Alien but attempted to do so by just making their female protagonist somewhat unlike the rest of the team (in other words, not a complete moron… most of the time). What made Ripley a powerful character in Alien was not just her skeptical attitude and rightful caution to match that of the audience. It was the other characters around her being reasonable human beings who all were making their own logical conclusions based on the information given to them. Having one smart person on a ship of idiots is not going to make that character compelling; the other characters need to be compelling too, which is one of many reasons why those two movies suck.

Sunshine, on the other hand, is fantastic because it’s willing to spend time with the characters to help you get to know them. When things go sour for them, we have sympathy for their struggles because the characters are established and they’re written to be more than just typical clichés. There are one or two characters who don’t make a lasting impact like the rest, but the group is made up of people who seem like they belong on that ship, at the very least. They don’t seem like idiots. They just seem like smart people who are capable of making mistakes, and, unfortunately for them, the consequences happen to be disastrous. When things get bad for the Icarus II, the team has to think quickly about how to fix the problem and that often includes cutting some hard losses. With each loss, the team becomes more resolute in their mission and we feel for them as they inch closer to their goal in desperation.

I won’t go so far as to say that Sunshine is a spiritual successor to Alien, but it definitely has a lot of the same positive qualities that make it a film worth seeing. In some ways, it seems like the director, Danny Boyle, wanted to make his own Alien and took the parts of the film that worked and tried to repurpose them for his story. The pacing is similarly slow, allowing you to soak in all the atmosphere and emptiness of space. The art style, music, and way the film is shot all make it a feast for the eyes, similar to a Ridley Scott film. We see every corner of the Icarus through clever camera angles on the miniature and different sources of light. It’s an extremely colorful movie with dynamic lighting and great effects. The music suits the loneliness of space and adds an introspective feeling to the film as we watch it drift toward the sun. All the qualities of its presentation almost make you forget that it’s a horror film.

There are little hints early on of a somewhat cosmic horror scenario to make you uneasy, but it’s mostly a character drama until the final act, and I think that’s to Sunshine’s benefit. When the horror finally hits the fan, Sunshine’s tone and pace shift significantly. While that sort of sudden change in a movie in the later acts might negatively impact the experience in other films, I still think it works out here because it’s not like it comes out of nowhere. The early hints set the film up and make sure you know to expect it. As everything intensifies, the loneliness of space adds to the unsettling atmosphere and it all culminates in a dramatic and colorful finale.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

It’s been a long time coming, but I can finally say on DagonDogs.com that Sunshine is a good movie worth watching if you haven’t already seen it. It manages to tell a predictable story that doesn’t lose its edge thanks to the believable characters, clever cinematography and direction, and ethereal music score. It’s a film that has gotten better each time I have watched it.

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