Our film this week is one that you're probably familiar with, at least tangentially, even if you're not aware of it, but we'll get to that. Sunshine is a more recent sci-fi film that, while not necessarily adding anything terribly significant to the genre, is a pretty fun film to watch. It's not very well known, and since I think that's a shame, let's take a look at this sci-fi underdog.
Sunshine works off the premise that in our near future the sun is dying. Scientists the world over had toiled for years looking for a way to reignite the sun and get it back to full strength, while in the meantime, the Earth has started to slip back into an ice age. That's about as much background as we get, at least for the people of Earth. The bulk of the film takes place on board the space ship Icarus II, named after the Greek character who flew too close to the sun. Get it? So the plan is, a crew of 8 highly trained astronauts will traverse the vacuum of space until they reach a certain distance away from Sol, and then they will launch a ginormous nuke into the star, detonate the nuke, and that will get the sun doing what it's supposed to be doing again.
Like any film, there needs to be some tension, and some conflict. We get a bunch of that just due to the clashing personalities of various crew members, but a hiccup is experienced when Icarus II detects a distress signal from Icarus I, the first iteration of the mission, which this current crew was sent to replace. There's some heated debate about what to do as intercepting the ship would use precious fuel, but intercepting the ship would also mean potentially having a backup comically gargantuan nuke. Ultimately, it's decided that the Icarus II will investigate and use the nuke on the Icarus I as a backup should theirs fail. However, in changing trajectory, the navigator forgets to program the solar shield for the change and as a result, small parts of the shield are damaged. That doesn't sound too bad, but consider that the surface of the sun burns at around 5770 K. That's nearly 10,000° F. It's a huge gamble that the ship will hold together under those conditions.
The crew attempt a repair and turn the affected portion of their shielding away from the sun in order to do so. However, in so doing, they inadvertently incinerate their botanical garden and their source of oxygen as well as their backup supply of oxygen. It's amazing how much of the tension in this film hinges on the ineptitude of the crew. At any rate, the navigational computer knows what it's doing, and it automatically starts resetting the shield while two crewmen, including the captain, are still out making repairs. The captain tells the other crewman to get back to safety, while captain makes the final repairs, and captain manages to do so just before being incinerated himself.
Icarus II finally reaches Icarus I, and four of the crew, including the newly appointed captain, go over to the derelict ship to investigate. They find that the crew of the ship have been incinerated in a forward observation area which they were using without any sort of shielding. The captain's logs are recovered and it's learned that the Icarus I's computer mainframe had been sabotaged, making delivery of the nuke impossible. Bummer... The captain's logs also devolve into ramblings over time, but the gist is that he's decided to scrub the mission as he saw no way to complete it. As this is going on, the Icarus I is rocked by shudders and we see that the lifeline between the two ships has been explosively decoupled. One crewman on Icarus I suggests that someone stay behind and use the depressurization of the airlock on Icarus I to launch the other three crewmen to the Icarus II. This is ultimately done, but there's only one actual spacesuit so one crewman gets the spacesuit and the other two are wrapped in insulation from Icarus I's outer structure. Unfortunately, one of the poorly protected crewmen misses Icarus II's airlock and freezes to death.
For those keeping count, difficult as I've made that with this summary, we started with 8 crew members, and we're now down to 5. However, the engineer has calculated that if they're all going to be conscious when Icarus II reaches their destination, they need to be four because they only have enough oxygen to sustain four people until then. There's another tense debate, and it's decided that there will be a sacrificial killing. There's vote and the sacrificial lamb is chosen, but when the leader goes to kill the person, they've already committed suicide. There's another issue though. When it's discovered that the sacrifice killed himself, it seems odd that the computer would still register five life signs aboard the ship.
The leader heads out to search for this mysterious life form. When the leader guy finds the mystery person, it's revealed that the stowaway is the former captain of Icarus I, only he's super disfigured. Icarus I captain locks leader guy in an airlock and then proceeds to the Icarus II computer mainframe, which he raises out of its coolant bath causing the thing to begin melting down, literally, which causes the computer to start shutting down. One of our remaining Icarus II crew are killed in the process of this happening. We're down to three. The engineer attempts to lower the computer back into the coolant bath, but in the process, gets his leg caught on it, which automatically aborts the process. The engineer starts to freeze to death from exposure to the coolant so he calls the guy trapped in the airlock and says to escape the airlock, and decouple the nuke from the ship so that it can be manually piloted and detonated. And then there were two.
The airlock guy manages to escape the airlock and jettison the nuke from the rest of the ship. He also finds the other remaining Icarus II crew member. The two of them move to detonate the nuke, but get ambushed on the way by the Icarus I captain. The captain explains some mumbo jumbo about God telling him to take humanity to heaven, or something, and then the plot relieves us of the captain. The airlock guy gets to the detonation device, but is unsure as to whether everything will operate properly under the current extreme conditions. However, he's relieved when the nuke begins the detonation process as planned. Finally, we cut to Earth, where we see the intensity of the sun grow, and then roll credits.
Now I'm not saying that this is a great movie, or even that it could be considered good. It is a fun watch though, and for what it's trying to do, it does it pretty well. It's not entirely a sci-fi film. It's more along the lines of Alien where it's a horror/thriller set within a sci-fi setting. As a result, there are some gaping holes in the scientific plausibility of everything upon which the film is premised. For one, we know that our sun still has billions of years left in it before it starts to die. For two, I'm reasonably sure that detonating a nuke at the surface of the sun isn't going to do squat to get the sun doing fusion again. That's a problem at the core of the star to do with the amount of helium that remains. Please correct me if you understand such things better than I. And lastly, as I said before, so much of what happens in this film hinges on gross negligence on behalf of the crew. But in context of a horror movie, most of this is forgivable because in horror films, it's all about creating tension and general sense of dread, and to that end, this movie does its thing really well. Also, included in the cast are Cillian Murphy, who is a personal favorite of mine, and Chris Evans, Rose Byrne of X-Men reboots fame, and Michelle Yeoh so there's definitely a little bit of star power behind this lower budget flick.
Our scope is really small. It's mostly just the Icarus II. There are plenty of creepy twists to keep you guessing along the way, and there's plenty of atmospheric elements to leave you feeling that general sense of dread. The actors do a fantastic job bringing the characters to life, and the characters are well defined; well defined stereotypes perhaps, but still well defined. The film doesn't stray into weird plot twists that lack proper setup at all. Even the big twist about the Icarus I captain's fate is actually foreshadowed earlier in the film. Also, the music is phenomenal! You've probably heard it here, here, here, and here. They tried to hide it in that last one, but it's pretty recognizable once you know what you're listening for. In fact, this one track from Sunshine, aptly titled "Sunshine (Adagio in D Minor)", has been used in a ton of marketing campaigns:
It's a good song so I'm not complaining. At any rate, the whole film is a really fun ride, and as long as you're not expecting a heady dive into the meaning of existence, it will probably live up to your expectations. It's got thrills, chills, and tension, and I think it's a movie worth watching at least once! Check it out and stay tuned to next week to see what we're cooking up!
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