The sub-genre of science fiction films involving a team of humans trying to avert a global catastrophe by setting off a huge nuclear device in just the right place is not a particularly impressive one. Armageddon. Independence Day. The Core. What do all these films have in common, aside from the nuclear business?

No. They’re not palindromes. Idiot! They all suck. Sunshine, therefore, can’t really be said to take its place alongside these films, as it kind of rocks.

Rarely does a film set on a spaceship feel this real. This is partly due to the obligatory beautiful computer imagery, but more to do with the characters. Cillian Murphy’s Capa is a surprisingly believable science nerd — weedy and distant, but oddly compelling. Rose Byrne proves once again how wonderful she is — as is necessary in a film like this, she’s got that indefinable ‘please don’t kill her, I know everyone is most likely doomed but please don’t kill her‘ factor in spades. The film is quite comfortable exploring the sanity and foibles of its characters, too, and the time spent with all of the crew and how they maintain their sanity under pressure is perhaps the key to its realism.

But even more important than Sunshine‘s reality is its freakiness, courtesy of Danny Boyle. The bizarre, yet convincing mechanics of the aforementioned nuclear device. The unsettling techniques used as the crew explore unknown territory.¹ Re-using the idea of quantum uncertainty when the ultimate threat to the mission becomes apparent. Sunshine feels a lot cleverer as a result.

The film has been compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it does have some of that film’s peculiar calm, yet subtly terrifying mood. It’s also been compared to Alien, which is also fair — once again a bunch of humans are trapped in impossible circumstances, and display just how crap they are, deep down. And it can also be compared to those movies I mentioned above; it may be cleverer, but it occasionally stoops to the old formula a shade too much, and late in the piece suffers a little from that old chestnut — repeating past dialogue in voiceover to make a point that would only have been missed otherwise by Mr Gumby.

In the end though, it’s just nice change to have some science fiction horror with a little thought and feeling put into it. With any luck, Sunshine represents popular cinema making science fiction spectaculars respectable again.

1. I’m being deliberately vague here. Awkwardly, yes, but it’s for your own good. ↩

This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007. It concerns such pressing issues as film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.