# Sunshine (2007) is the best hard sci fi movie I've ever seen (spoilers, long) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 31, 2019, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791 "2019-03-31T00:54:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/61 "2019-04-02T19:29:58Z")
And who–exactly–is claiming that Harry Potter is Hard SF? ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/62 "2019-04-02T19:42:04Z")
No one, I just don’t get how one can dismiss all reality for a fantasy movie but must stick to rigid Hard SF[sup]TM[/sup] rules and bylaws in order enjoy a sci-fi movie. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/63 "2019-04-02T19:54:02Z")
Because a movie that ignores the rules of physics is a fantasy movie and not a science fiction one? There aredifferent rules for suspension of disbelief for different genres. If I was watching a Three Stooges short, seeing a worker grab a fellow worker by the nose with pliers and twist it with no concequences as par for the course–if it was a drama, I’d expect hospitalization, reconstructive surgery, a trial, and prison time to be involved. Going by [this](https://futurism.media/the-scale-of-hardness-in-science-fiction), I would estimate Sunshine (which I have never seen or even remembered existed before reading this thread) to be around a 5. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/64 "2019-04-02T20:05:49Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Because a movie that ignores the rules of physics is a fantasy movie and not a science fiction one? There aredifferent rules for suspension of disbelief for different genres. If I was watching a Three Stooges short, seeing a worker grab a fellow worker by the nose with pliers and twist it with no concequences as par for the course–if it was a drama, I’d expect hospitalization, reconstructive surgery, a trial, and prison time to be involved. I see your point, to a point. I hate the _Home Alone_ movies for much the same reasons. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/65 "2019-04-02T20:24:22Z")
What tiny iota of difference does it make if it’s a “hard” SF movie–none of which appear to exist–or not? Why is anyone arguing about this? You either buy the premise and go along for the ride or you don’t. Jesus, no one tell\*\* Chronos\*\* or **Darren Garrison** about \*Snowpiercer. \* FTR, I liked Sunshine with the standard complaint about the third act. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/66 "2019-04-02T20:57:01Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > Jesus, no one tell\*\* Chronos\*\* or **Darren Garrison** about \*Snowpiercer. > \* For some reason, I had no problems getting distracted by such details with Sunshine but I couldn’t stand Snowpiercer and the love speech partly ruined Interstellar for me. Maybe hard science books or TV shows have more room to elaborate the details than movies. With movies, as long as a part of the setup is plausible if you don’t think about it much, it’s good enough. You got about 100 minutes to tell your story, get going so you can spend more time on the essential part about world-saving heroism. If you had 500 pages, you might well be able to come up with an alternative forlorn journey to save humanity that had more solid scientific foundations but you don’t so this’ll do under these significant constraints. You could make a similar complaint about the storm on Mars in The Martian that was unrealistically strong. Ok. It’s not realistic. Do you want the movie to spend half its running length just on setup like its inciting incident or do you want that time spent on the main action in the second act? ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/67 "2019-04-02T21:12:30Z")
I maybe should’ve titled the thread “the most underrated sci fi movie I’ve seen” I do think it is hard sf, but most of what I had to say about it wasn’t really related to how hard of sf it is. Still, I think people want to seem smart by bashing this movie like it’s “The Core”. I’m not too impressed by dismissal of the premise since I suspect people are willing to buy sci-fi premises that are just as speculative and implausible with current knowledge. I think it’s a failure of imagination not to be able to envision your own idea of how the premise might work. By the way, they may call it a “stellar bomb”, I can’t remember for sure. And it heavily involves fissionable material. But it’s totally clear this is not just a big conventional nuclear bomb. There’s no implosion mechanism. Whatever happens to it, it involves some kind of energy beams or plasma or something as part of whatever it does. Something outside of our current understanding of physics and is a totally new technology. And what it does is speculative even to them. They make a point of simulations breaking down because they don’t fully understand how what they built will interact with the extreme gravity, heat, and speed of falling into the sun. They don’t know if it’s going to work, but it’s the best humanity could come up with. Assuming it must only be a big nuclear bomb is another failure of imagination. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/68 "2019-04-02T23:17:14Z")
Yeah, I know of _Snowpiercer_, and I have much the same criticism of it. Sure, OK, you want to make a movie about a highly-stratified post-apocalyptic society, that’s fine. And maybe it even did a good job of that. But why a train? Even if you’re positing that the super power source was built into a locomotive before the apocalypse, why does the train have to keep moving? Why not stay stationary somewhere, so you can build a more conventional town around it, and still use the loco for power? It being set on a train doesn’t add anything. Similarly, if you want to make a movie about a space mission that’s needed to save humanity, there are ways to do that without resorting to stupidity like restarting the Sun. So why choose the stupid option? ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/69 "2019-04-02T23:39:21Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Similarly, if you want to make a movie about a space mission that’s needed to save humanity, there are ways to do that without resorting to stupidity like restarting the Sun. I’m curious about the alternatives you’d like. It’s possible that some better premises were available given the constraints. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/70 "2019-04-03T00:19:37Z")
The trip to the sun wasn’t incidental. The sun being the villain and the hero of all life and something powerful beyond what we think about isn’t an accident. And if it was I just a scientific research mission to mercury then it doesn’t have the same stakes and it’s a completely different film. Ergo, something exotic and unknown to us happening to the sun is really the only way this story can be set up. And it works just fine. There are only a few people who seem motivated to bash it in an almost comic book guy style. It’s like going to a thread about a sci fi movie with FTL and saying FTL isn’t real guys! What a dumb movie! It’s not sophisticated criticism. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t any sophisticated criticism. There’s been a lot in the thread and I appreciate it. If there’s some plausible way to fill in the backstory with your imagination, that’s fine. If the story serves the premise logically and makes sense, that’s fine. I suspect some people wouldn’t apply that same level of scrutiny to something they’re more find of. As far as SF goes it’s not even a big hurdle of a premise compared to other beloved SF stories. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/71 "2019-04-03T00:26:53Z")
I’m sorry, I shouldn’t take such a squabbling tone. I don’t feel like attacks on the movie are personal attacks on me so much as I feel people are being overly critical to something that’s not necessary to appreciate the film, so I feel like they’re missing out on enjoying the good that’s there for misguided reasons. That applies too to the people in the thread who haven’t seen it and may not now because they’ve been convinced it’s stupid when it’s not at all. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/72 "2019-04-03T00:30:11Z")
> [@](#): > > I’m curious about the alternatives you’d like. It’s possible that some better premises were available given the constraints. The old standby is the asteroid/large comet on a collision course with the Earth. Sure, it’s a bit cliched, but cliched is better than nonsensical. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/73 "2019-04-03T01:20:54Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > Maybe hard science books or TV shows have more room to elaborate the details than movies. Yes, that is sort of one of the definitions of “Hard SF.” Chronos and I have been pounding on the “uses realstic and accurate known science” part–some of the 20th century writers were known for doing hours of calculations by hand just to make sure that they got the physics right for even small elements of their story’s plot–you might meet aliens, but you could be damn sure that the alien’s ship would be in an accurate orbit. Science fiction that breaks no physics at all is also called “[Mundane SF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane_science_fiction).” The other definition of Hard SF that you alluded to is fiction where the fine details of the science and technology used are a central focus of the writing and aren’t necessarily plausible technologies as in Mundane SF, but the writer goes into great detail on how it works in the fictional setting of the book. (And is a lot more involved than [teching the tech](https://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/10/13/teching-the-tech/).) That is the version of “Hard Science Fiction” in the writings of people like Iain Banks, Neil Asher, Peter F. Hamilton, Alistar Reynolds, ect. For example, I searched around in a recent reread (_The Soldier_, 17th book in Neil Asher’s Polity universe) to choose a representative passage of Hard SF in the sense of “a hell of a lot of description.”: > [@](#): > > He injected fibres into her body and began making repairs, summoning thicker tendrils with precision instruments and feed pipes for materials. Fortunately her own nanosuite had kept her body more viable for revival than a base-format human body. Though she had been dead for months her condition was that of someone newly dead. Cerebral degradation was minimal and the burns and other damage could be handled by the nanosuite once her body was up and running again. Angel injected tubules to convey oxygen and nutrients inside her, adding a powerful anticoagulant and other substances to counter the micro-damage throughout. He injected carbon fibres to restart her heart and then, once that was beating, inserted an array of fibres into her brain to spread neural meshes and make connections. Getting her autonomous nervous system running was delicate work, and further tubules were required to add neurochem and remove stubborn blood clots. To speed the process Angel performed some surgery, steadily removing dead matter that was too damaged to revive and spraying in collagen scaffolds. He peeled away burned skin and replaced it with a synthetic used by war-time autodocs. He cell-welded bone breaks. Her burned-out eyes he replaced with synthetic ones which, at the last moment, he tuned to be completely black like his own. Writing like this can be considered both “Hard Science Fiction” (by one of the definitions) _and_ Space Opera. Both of those (the “no handwavium” one and the “extreme details” one) set a high bar for a movie or TV show to be Hard SF. (BTW, I looked at [the](http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/cillian-murphy-as-robert-capa-in-sunshine/articles/96280/title/sunshine-transcript) [script](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=sunshine-2007) for Sunshine–the details of the bomb such as it being made out of uranium and dark mater aren’t in the movie and–just like the q-ball cause–are only things that Cox has talked about post facto.) ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/74 "2019-04-03T04:21:10Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Yeah, I know of _Snowpiercer_, and I have much the same criticism of it. Sure, OK, you want to make a movie about a highly-stratified post-apocalyptic society, that’s fine. And maybe it even did a good job of that. But why a train? Even if you’re positing that the super power source was built into a locomotive before the apocalypse, why does the train have to keep moving? Why not stay stationary somewhere, so you can build a more conventional town around it, and still use the loco for power? It being set on a train doesn’t add anything. > > Similarly, if you want to make a movie about a space mission that’s needed to save humanity, there are ways to do that without resorting to stupidity like restarting the Sun. So why choose the stupid option? Good God, this is dumb. Please stop commenting on movies. **Darren Garrison** as well. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/75 "2019-04-03T23:46:04Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Are we mocking Brian Cox because we know physics better than him now? Possibly yes. I’m not going to be definite or specific about the matter, but I suspect someone who is possibly the world’s leading expert on the detection of q-balls is someone I tutored on the theory involved ahead of their Ph.D. viva. I was personally able to buy into the broad premises of the film while still thinking that the last third or so was utterly crap. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2019, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/76 "2019-04-07T09:02:35Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > I note OP also started a thread that’s an ode to Predator,a movie where you also have a close-knit team of competent, cooperative best of the best. You know, at first I brushed it off but they’re are some similarities. Highly functional team of close knit experts, as you say. No one has to act stupid to drive the plot. They take reasonable actions to face an overwhelming threat. There’s no interpersonal drama. The stakes are not artificially elevated. We aren’t given a flashback story to show how this team learned to work together and give us a more personal connection to the characters. We just see them in action and it’s obvious why they work together so well and have their shit together. And it’s also underrated. I think a lot of people like Predator as kind of a guilty pleasure action movie but it’s a legitimately great movie. Fortunately the worst part passes early. The attack on the rebel camp is just way too over the top. They had a slick lead up to that scene that was understated and badass, with the team breaching the perimeter. But once the explosions start it’s just way over the top for the tone of the movie. I’ve read that that scene was shot with a different director and different crew for whatever reason and it really shows. Other than that, legitimately one of the greatest action movies of all time. Top 5 easily. Tight script. On location shooting and fairly minimalistic special effects made it age really well for a movie that could’ve screamed cheesy 80s action movie - like Commando for instance - in lesser hands. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2019, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791/77 "2019-04-07T13:23:40Z")
> [@ZonexandScout](#): > > Seeing the movie in a theater is an absolute must. Where can I see a 2007 movie in a theater? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunshine-2007-is-the-best-hard-sci-fi-movie-ive-ever-seen-spoilers-long/831791.md?page=3)