Sunshine - 2007 - Sci-fi thriller
Today NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe which will dive closer to the sun than any other man made object in history.
In celebration of this event I watched Sunshine, a really well cast sci fi thriller. It was pretty darn good. I would highly recommend a watch if you are into this sort of thing, I had entirely missed it somehow. Casting is great, visuals are great, story is good, pacing is excellent. Don't be put off by the age of the movie, I don't think vfx would be any better today.
50 years into the future, the Sun begins to die, and Earth is dying as a result. A team of astronauts is sent to revive the Sun - but the mission fails. Seven years later, a new team is sent to finish the mission as mankind's last hope.
It may not be on US Netflix but it is on Amazon.
I absolutely hate when sci-fi goes from fullblown science hard-on to entirely unbelievable during the last quarter.
Not a bad movie in itself, but I feel kind of tricked. Like the plot writer just gave up on making it believable towards the end.
Yes, the last act of Sunshine totally falls off the horse. Danny Boyle absolutely butchers the frame in every way possible. Such a pity because the film has some wonderful sequences up to that point, and the music is glorious.
That seems to happen a lot. The last Star Trek movie left me seething due to the final battle scene.
I would prefer all Sci Fi to be relatively hard, like Seveneves, or even The Martian was decent. At the same time I love Doctor Who, and Red Dwarf, etc. But when you contradict your own pseudo-science I get mad at the laziness.
After leaving Star Trek Beyond really disappointed with the last scene, which just ruined an otherwise good movie, I saw Simon Pegg, one of the writers say: “It’s Star Trek, no one cares how it works, it’s pew pew and magic.” I nearly punched him in his YouTube face. I still despise him now for being such a moron and not getting the audience. I used to respect that guy too.
But this movie did not leave me that upset, though I understand why it may have let down others. I gave it pseudo-science from go because you can’t restart a star without adding a crap ton more mass, and if it was dying it would turn into a red giant and burn the earth first.
Definitely pseudo, but not so much that it didn't make me expect it to stay reasonable that it IMO didn't. It can definitely be pew-pew magic, but it's more about what you're led to expect, which was not pew-pew magic for me watching this movie.
Great music throughout though, so I'd recommend it to a friend, but also with a tiny disclaimer!
I came here to say the same thing so many others have... Sunshine is a fantastic sci-fi movie with convincing, beautiful effects (done on a surprisingly small budget). A really believable sense of scale and place. Great performances from the cast too! ...And then the third act begins. I can't think of another movie I so thoroughly loved the first two thirds of and hated the last part of so badly. It's a sudden, jarring leap from one genre to another and all of the plausibility and suspense built up to that point are just tossed aside.
I saw this movie in the theater and was blown away. The visuals and music were so strong that I was able to suspend my disbelief through the silly plot diversion in the third act that most people railed about.
It turns out that the "pseudo" science plot was actually pretty far off the mark. this video describes the issues.
Even so, I still think that the film does a great job of conveying an amazing sense of awe about our universe and the science behind it.
Before I even click that link I’m going to assume that it’s related to the fact that the sun will actually expand and fry the earth? Yeah, and it’s a billion years off in the future too. I gave them a pass on that too even though I knew the science from go. I just assumed it was some unknown physics :)
That was mentioned as an aside but one of the points that struck home with me the most was that the fusion reaction in the core takes a million years to have any influence on the surface conditions, so any "problem" that you see is the result of issues that happened and transpired over the last million years.
One of my favorite movies.
Like everyone else I thought the last act was deeply regrettable... but the Mercury fly-by was probably my favorite experience in a movie theater ever, so my memory of the movie is very positive. For that reason I probably wouldn't re-watch it.
I'm glad John Murphy has gotten credit for the soundtrack via the constant re-use of Adagio in D Minor. He did an amazing job, and was a significant part of why the movie was as good as it was.