Just watched Sunshine. Sigh... [spoilers]

Cafe Society
1

This started out being one of the most promising sci-fi movies I’ve seen in a long time. Sure, the science, even to me, seemed a bit sketchy. Why are those massive bomb areas kept oxygenated, considering the problems with oxygen supply? Can people really survive half a minute of outer space without a suit? Why was the mainframe computer in such a flimsy set-up, considering the fact that you need two human codes to override the AI’s automatic safety maneuver? Etc., etc.

But that stuff didn’t really matter, because they did achieve suspension of disbelief. The atmosphere was taut and slightly unsettling, and it really captured the delicate balance between success and ruin. The characters seemed fairly believable, and there didn’t seem much unnecessary melodrama, besides the Mace/Capa thing. But at least they were believably cognizant of how stupid they were; I’m glad there wasn’t anything more over-the-top. After all, these astronauts would receive the most psychological screening in perhaps the history of mankind. Trey’s breakdown seemed a bit forced, but considering the stakes involved, I can see it. And of course, the star of the movie, Sol herself, was rendered perfectly, a mix of awesome beauty and sheer terror.

Which is why I was so incredibly annoyed when Sunshine suddenly became a third-rate horror movie. What. The. Fuck. The characters even made a joke when they were exploring the Icarus I about being worried that the alien would pick them off one by one. And then it pretty much happens.

In a movie that seemed to be going out of its way to present itself as fairly reasonable and quasi-scientific, we’re suddenly supposed to believe that this man, who’d suffered EXTREME radiation burns 6.5 years ago, managed to survive all this time, by himself, in orbit near Mercury? And his psychological condition makes this doubly absurd. If he’d completed “God’s” task of making sure that humanity is left to its fate, why would he try so hard to survive? Wouldn’t he try to meet God after successfully serving Him? How could he possibly imagine that another ship would come, AND that he’d have the opportunity to screw that one up, too? And how could all that psychological screening have missed this uber-psychopath?

But what’s worse, not only is his existence incredibly stupid, he also suddenly becomes Super-Intelligent Movie Monster, even though he’s had zero contact with an intelligent creature in 6.5 years! He’s somehow super strong (shouldn’t he be like a leukemia patient at best by now?), he can outwit people who HAVE had recent practice interacting with intelligent creatures, and he’s somehow stealthy as a ninja. All the while, we get treated to a series of quick cuts and blurred shots of him preying on our hapless crew while spouting incoherent babble about God’s will.

It’s two different movies, with the second actively trying to sabotage the first, and pretty much succeeding. What a disappointment!

2

Yeah, I liked it about up to the point that you liked it then stopped liking it.
I didn’t so much have a problem with the idea of the character, more on the delivery. I believed his religious obsession. The radiation damage I had interpreted as having come gradually over the years rather than that he had survived all this time from “EXTREME radiation burns 6.5 years ago”.

I accepted that he chose to survive for two reasons: I believe he did anticipate a second mission that it would be his duty to sabotage; I believe that in his religious madness he wanted to be the last man standing with God at the End of Time- his goal was to live to meet God.

As I believe he anticipated a second mission, I could believe that he had played out every scenario and planned very well how to take the other mission down. I could accept a certain “mad genius” aspect to his character and the religious zealotry adds a certain force of will to “get the job done”.
But the delivery . . .
Yeah, it suddenly transformed from a thoughtful interesting science fiction movie into a “BOO!” monster movie. The monster movie delivery really destroyed all the great aspects of the movie leading up to that point.

3

Yeah, and the orbital mechanics don’t make much sense, either. :wink: It’s like a movie that started out being directed by Stanley Kubrick and ended up in the hands of Uwe Boll.

Stranger

4

I wouldn’t go that far. It started out 2001 and ended up Event Horizon.

I mean I understand why. You need a protagonist more threatening than an ever escalating cascade of mechanical troubles.

You can’t overthink the science too much. I mean Trey forgets to realign the shields? Why wouldn’t the ship automatically take care of that? It certainly is capable of taking over when it’s convienient to advancing the plot.

Whatever the payload was, at least it was big. I mean it’s hard to imagine that we could do anything to affect the sun, but at least it wasn’t your standard Armegeddon-style suitcase nuke capable of splitting Texas.

But who am I? Carl Segan? What do I care?

Unfortunately I had to watch it on my parents crappy TV and I don’t get Cinemax. I’d like to see it again in 50" of glorious HDTV.

5

Oh, it’s a gorgeous movie, I’ll credit. But not only is the science pretty bent, it is also baldly used to artificially drive the plot; a single technological conceit–for instance, some scienmagical device to “restart the Sun” I can accept, especially if they don’t try to explain it with technobabble–but a series of events predicated on the science working or not based on the needs of the plot makes it just a second rate Star Trek: Voyager knockoff, and the whole philosophical madman turn was improbable to the extreme. There was a good movie to be made here, but Boyle and company failed to make it all the way to the end.

Stranger

6

One of the best movies of the year, despite the stoopid ending. Imagine if they’d come up with a better ending . . . .

7

I haven’t seen Sunshine, but what you say here is the same way I felt about 28 Days Later. Very effective in its setup and in creating a mood, but with a ridiculous third act that broke my suspension of disbelief. Maybe Danny Boyle’s a good director who needs to work with a better script.

8

Apparently they did hire physicists from NASA and CERN as technical advisors.
As I said, I’m not an astrophysicist. I don’t care how they plan to jump-start the sun or why it’s going out. But the sudden plot shift to a crazed madman killing the crew was kind of lame.

It’s kind of like 28 Days Later. Everything was fine until they ran into Eccleston and his platoon of Royal Army goons. It’s kind of like Boyle creates this tense, visually exciting environment the characters spend the first half of the movie just trying to survive in, but then he needs to introduce some new assholes to bring the story to a conclusion.

9

Yep, started as a decent sci-fi movie, ended up as a bad horror movie.

I’m a physics Ph.D. student, and I saw it with one of my friends from school, so we got a laugh at the line (paraphrasing) “There’s only one person on board qualified to make this decision . . . our physicist.” No one else in the theater got why we were cracking up, though.

10

And apparently they didn’t have any faith in the Freddy Kruger make-up. They had to blur it out in post production. It would be okay if the blurriness MEANT something story-wise, but all it did was make me feel like I had something in my eye.

I’ve tried to block out most of it but I vaguely remember some annoying metaphysical clap-trap with the the last survivor at the very end of the film that nailed the coffin shut on this for me.

The seeds of a good sci-fi movie, totally ruined. Which, to me, makes it a worse movie than something that was meant to be shitty from the beginning.

11

I just watched it tonight, and yup, you guys nailed it. The first 2/3 are great, what with its quasi (but of course, still no where near) 2001 take on sci-fi. But then it drops a 5,000lb anvil of stupidity on the flick with an antagonist that made no sense what-so-ever. Argggghhhh.

12

I didn’t understand how the reviews painted it as so different to and so much better than Event Horizon, and yet it was actually almost a carbon copy of Event Horizon.

13

{quote=Windwalker]
In a movie that seemed to be going out of its way to present itself as fairly reasonable and quasi-scientific, we’re suddenly supposed to believe that this man, who’d suffered EXTREME radiation burns 6.5 years ago, managed to survive all this time, by himself, in orbit near Mercury? And his psychological condition makes this doubly absurd. If he’d completed “God’s” task of making sure that humanity is left to its fate, why would he try so hard to survive? Wouldn’t he try to meet God after successfully serving Him? How could he possibly imagine that another ship would come, AND that he’d have the opportunity to screw that one up, too? And how could all that psychological screening have missed this uber-psychopath?
[/quote]

What I think you are expected to believe is that something went wrong and Pinbacker snapped (kind of like Trey). Maybe the entire crew decided to immolate themselves when they realized they were stranded (as Harvey did as soon as the Icarus II was safely away) but somehow Pinbacker survived his burns. He then spent the next 6.5 years in isolation living off of whatever supplies were on board, getting crazier and crazier. In any event, I suppose it’s believeable if unlikely, however, I’d rather he wasn’t in the story at all.

I think what’s most unbelievable for me is that you would have an observation deck that didn’t have any radiation shielding so that someone could accidently microwave themselves.

14

I agree that the film would have worked better as just a science mission that encounters problems like Apollo 13. But I liked it well enough with the killer in space theme. Definitely it was gorgeously filmed with beautiful sets, and the soundtrack was wonderful - too bad legal complications prevented a soundtrack from being published. I thought the acting was fine, and some of the concepts were interesting - making the physicist decide what to do rather than voting, for example. I thought the idea of reigniting the sun with a bomb seemed kind of silly, but then I read that the sun wasn’t dying out per se - it had captured a “Q-ball” which is some kind of space-time deformation that interferes with fusion, and the bomb was just trying to break up or dislodge the Q-ball. The explanation was cut from the film, but it was suggested by an astrophysicist who consulted for the film.

15

If you watch the alternate version of the DVD, they explain what happened. Plus, you get to watch the original version as storyboard artwork with the director narrating, it was pretty cool, but there was a logic flaw.

[spoiler]The way the film was originally written, when the little kid’s dad becomes infected, Jim can’t bear to kill him. They drag him back to a lab and find on of the original scientists responsible for the Rage in hiding. From a slit in a door, he tells Jim that only a full blood transfusion will save the guy. And wouldn’t ya know it! Jim’s a match. So they bleed the dad almost dry, pump in Jim’s blood, and the guy is cured ad Jim succumbs to the Rage… (the storyboard version made it all seem cooler than this)

Of course, they’d already established that only ONE DROP of blood is required to infect someone, so it was utterly implossible to think that a “total blood transfusion” would be believable. So they created teh solider storyline.[/spoiler]

I was disappointed with SUnshine too, for all the reason’s mentioned above. Although I’d read reviews to that effect, so I know going in that the first 2/3 would be good and the last was a “Oh, noes! There’s something/someone else on board with us!”

16

It seems pointless to start a new thread about this since someone else has already said just about everything I could say.

My wife and I have had this movie DVRed for months…MONTHS…eagerly awaiting the perfect night to sit and watch (after missing it in the theater, much to our disappointment). Tonight was our date night, and we were trying to figure out what to do when my wife brilliantly recalled that Sunshine was waiting for us. Oh. My. God.

So much promise! It looked like it was going to be so good! I just…I don’t know. It’s all been covered above, but…the level of disappointment. I don’t have the words. Why? Why would someone trash a decent sci-fi plot with something so stupid? All we could do was look at each other and say, “Seriously?” When it finally ended, we each let loose with our own special string of expletives directed at every single name listed in the film’s credits.

I will never get those two hours back. I hate this film and everyone associated with it.

17

Even with the crazy third act, I still love this movie. I think if they hadn’t made the guy from the other ship super strong, it would have better perfect. Just have him slink around the ship, sabotaging systems and using up oxygen. The movie is really about the psychological breakdown of a group of people in extreme isolation, on a last ditch effort to save the world. Like the psychologist, who if he had continued on the same path, would have ended up just like the other captain.

And I love the “falling into the sun” ending. Really, the visuals and the music (which seems to be used for a lot of trailers now) are just perfect.

18

Didn’t Danny Boyle also direct “Slumdog Millionaire”? Hopefully he’s conquered his 3rd act problems.
Sure would like to see Cillian Murphy in another new movie. sigh.

19

It’s much better on second viewing, especially if you have a 5.1 audio setup. Quite a likeable movie even with the 3rd act. Worst thing for me was thinking that these people were the last, final, absolutely the one and only chance for the entire planet and in no time they were bickering like kids. I even liked the sugary ending with the Sidney Opera House. As another poster said, if you’re in the right mood to suspend your disbelief and buy into the movie you can get a lot of entertainment out of it even if the plot is a bit silly. First time I watched it, it was to see what all the critics were raving about and I was dissapointed. Second time I watched it, it was for me and I enjoyed it much better.