I saw this movie today at the AMC Theatre at Eisenhower, solely on the basis of this thread. Granted, there were only about 10 other people in the smallest screening room they’ve got, but I’m glad I saw this movie. As promised in the earlier reviews, this is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, not just sci-fi. The acting was top-notch, and the cinematography was excellent as well. I’ve seen quite a few movies based on nothing more than their mention in this forum and I’m glad I did. I loved Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and now Sunshine.
You people have spoiled me from being satisfied with Larry the Cable Guy movies!!!
Damn fine movie. The best space fiction movie in many many years. It’s been a good summer for film, I think.
It seemed more like homage than rip-off, IMO. There were similar nods to earlier zombie movies in 28 Days Later.
I saw it.
I mostly liked it.
It did a great job establishing the mood that there’s a giant swirling ball of hot gas right outside the ship. The images of the sun were excellent. I liked the idea that people start developing this crazy spiritual relationship with the Sun.
I guess I just thought there was too much action. I could have done with a slightly shorter movie and cut out some of the slashing and chasing and running through whooshing doors. Maybe I didn’t like that so much because a lot of it seemed recycled (as someone said earlier).
I also didn’t like some of the directorial touches. . .like when a guy gets bathed in light there’s a giant whooshing sound, and the camera makes it look like he’s being buffeted by wind. But, maybe that’s part of what set the intensity level. . .who knows.
[spoiler]
I really didn’t like how they replayed his Sunny Day speech at the end. It’s not like we weren’t focussed on it when he gave it. He’s saying “this is my last transmission to Earth.” and then he stares into the camera and gives the speech.
I thought it would have been more effective just to let the sun get brighter, and we’re left with the memory of his speech. [/spoiler]
But, mostly good. My wife HATED it. Wanted to walk out. She never bought into the “mood” of it, which is important. Clearly, it’s not for everyone.
But, in the “genre” of scientists stranded in a claustrophobic environment, it’s an excellent example.
Well, I saw this last night. It was ok until it turned into Friday the 13th in space. Sorry, I’m not getting the love here. Actually, didn’t Friday the 13th do one in space? That one was probably better.
I saw this movie a few weeks ago, after long anticipation.
Chris Evans really impressed me. The best actor in the film, IMHO. Cillian Murphy was good, but good in the wide-blue-eyed hangdog way I’ve seen him play many times before.
I’ve been reading the film as a retelling of the Prometheus story. Is my film-school addled brain working on overtime?
I saw it and I thought it just about sucked. It was pretty cool up until the third act, and then I felt betrayed. I thought the concept sort of worked in 28 days later (however, the third act had enough material to be its own 2 hour movie), but in this case, it would have been as one poster said, a restatement of “Event Horizon.” I wouldn’t call this spiritual sci-fi, not at all like The Fountain or Children of Men. I would call this horror sci-fi, like Alien, just no alien. I thought they did a good job of leading up to the third act, because after seeing what the Captain and the Doctor went through, what the first Captain went through seemed entirely plausible. However, if you’re skin is falling off, you cannot have enough muscle strength to throw the Scarecrow around like that. What did he eat? How did he exercise? Even with artificial gravity, don’t tell me he was always so strong. Also, if they can invent artificial grav, can’t they travel a bit faster to the Sun? 18 months? They should have been there in like 2 days. Also, they were able to mine all that material for the bomb when the Earth Australia is a winter wonderland? Children of Men was hands down the best movie mentioned in this thread, and I thought that had problems, too. I saw the Simpsons movie the same day (right before), and I thought that was a better movie, even though it’s not a same comparison.
My favorite part was when they were all gathered together to watch the transition of mercury. They sat there part awed and part in reverence. Touches like that made this movie more than an action space thriller. There was another level to it for sure. It certainly wasn’t as important or meaningful a movie like 2001, but what it did do for the first time in science fiction films is offer the scale, immensity and vastness of space relative to us… and made it a character that the crew had to contend with individually and on a whole.
I also like the resignation the characters had about their own deaths. They knew it was most likely a suicide mission, and were freely able to do what was necessary to save the mission without much hesitation or resistance. Except for one, that is.
Above all, the visual effects painted the sun in a way most people have never seen. Besides the fact we were looking at the sun in the xray, it was an amazing job and made the movie that much more worthwhile.
Concerning the end:
Melanoma Man was too heavy handed in my taste. I did like the twist that he was still alive, and didn’t see it coming until Icarus II told Capa that there was a 5th person. But how he was handled as a character and even visually was extremely annoying and unnecessary. Alas, the movie would’ve been a 10 in my book, had this character not been written and shot the way it was.
Well said. I think you have pinpointed what I liked so much about this film. The scale of it lent the film a sense of wonder. Definitely a movie that needs to be seen on the big screen to be properly appreciated.
Saw it, enjoyed it even though it was a bit 2001-y for my tastes (long, drawn out shots of the ship cruising through space, spinning slowly to dramatic music, etc.). It was quite visually stunning - the part with the one girl sobbing outside the oxygen garden as it was consumed by flames blew me away. And Cillian Murphy is just disarmingly beautiful…if Danny Boyle directed a film of him sitting in a white room, reading aloud from a book for two hours I would so totally be there.
However, the end hath lost me.
The crazy captain was just completely unnecessary, and felt tacked on. My husband pointed out that the problem with it for him was, there was about 30 seconds between us finding out there was an additional person aboard the ship, and finding out explicitly who that person was and what their intentions were: “Hi, I’m crazy captain whatshisname and I’m here to take you all to Heaven!!!” If they were going for scary, it would have been much more effective for them not to be able to find the 5th person, and folks just turning up dead here and there…but then it becomes a cheesy, cliched horror film, as others have said. So why did we need him in the first place? The crew was already doomed, and they ended up delivering their payload in the end anyway, couldn’t we just have left it at that?
Still worth seeing, for sure.
Saw it last night, and since I knew it had a 3rd act “problem”, I was relieved to find that, as disappointing a direction as it was, it did little to undermine the huge impression the first 2/3 had–and there’s still plenty that happens near the end that I liked, too. I thought it did a particularly good job of demonstrating how razor thin margins of error are out in space and the various forms of death and self-sacrifice were handled exceedingly well. I thought the entire cast handled things very well, though I’ll admit to having a bit of a crush on Rose Byrne, now.
Very impressive (and, sadly, not long for this earth, theatrically-speaking, I suspect).
I had problems suspending my disbelief from the moment the movie began.
I don’t have a problem with the sun dying.
I don’t have a problem with using a bomb to restart it.
I have a problem with a manned mission to restart it.
Why? There’s absolutely no reason for people to be on the ship. We can launch probes accurately enough to hit asteroids, it shouldn’t be that hard to launch one to hit the frickin’ sun.
Also, while you won’t explode in the vacuum of space, you won’t freeze either. Since it’s a vacuum, you’re not in contact with anything else, so heat can’t be transferred by convection or conduction. That leaves radiation, which is a slow process.
I figured it was a manned mission because while we can launch probes into outer space for missions, if something goes wrong on an unmanned probe, it can be much harder to fix.
If we launch a probe to hit an asteroid or explore Mars or do something like that, then it’s a huge disappointment and waste of money if it fails, but it’s not the end of the world. But if the mission to restart the sun failed, it could very well be the end of the world.
If there were more bombs they could try to use, or if they had longer time to work with, then they could have used an unmanned mission. But they basically said in the movie that the bombs on the Icarus 1 and 2 were the only potential bombs. And since the Earth was already in a global winter, it doesn’t seem like people had much longer (relatively) to survive on Earth.
I saw it tonight, liked it quite a bit. Definitely not flawless, but I don’t have anything to add to what’s already been said about them. If you think you might be into, by all means go.
I just wanted to add that in surfing about Michelle Yeow just now, it seems she was offered the role of Seraph in the Matrix movies. Not that I have anything against the actor who did take the part, but damn, we might have missed something fine there.
You would get very cold in space.
From the Straight Dope
Here is an article in Slate Magazine that explains what would happen if you were in space without a spacesuit. Apparently, Sunshine was pretty accurate other than the frostbite. While heat would leave your body, it wouldn’t do it fast enough to cause frostbite.
Saw this yesterday (back to back with the new Bourne). Liked it quite a bit. I’d also heard about the third-act monkeywrench so I prepared myself in advance. As I said to my moviegoing companion: “I’m going to watch the movie I’m watching, not the movie I’m expecting to watch.”
With that in mind, there were enough touches during the first two thirds of the movie that prepared the ground for the late development. There was lots of attention to tactile reality, to the physical sense of self in this otherwise airless and hostile environment, that an immediate physical challenge in the form of the mad captain made sense. There was a linear development of theme that I thought made sense.
I did, however, find Boyle’s presentation of the mad captain to be unnecessarily over the top. It felt like either he didn’t trust the audience to get what was going on, so he punched the volume way up, or he wasn’t entirely in tune with Garland’s ideas, so he went a different direction. Not sure what happened.
In general, though, in terms of a movie about very smart people facing the overwhelming reality of their utter insignificance in a casually hostile universe, and finding strength and meaning only when they turn to one another, I thought Sunshine succeeded where The Fountain fell flat.
I can’t say I would recommend the movie unreservedly; the third act doesn’t quite work, as described, and the first act is choppy and arrhythmic as it gallops through its exposition, but once it settles down it’s very strong, and ultimately more of it works than doesn’t. Well worth seeing.
I liked this up until Freddie Kruger showed up. But due to copyright problems they couldn’t actually let us see Freddie Kruger, so every time he was on-screen they had to obscure him with some visual effect, which I understand the legal reason for, but it looked like the kind of photography you see on the typical YouTube video. Shit.
Also, I had no idea where anybody was in relation to anybody or anything else during the hectic final minutes. Plus the last image we see in space is Cillian Murphy reaching out to touch the surface of the sun which is magically a few inches in front of him and yet causing him no ill effect whatsoever.
It’s like the last reel was replaced with bloopers, or the cast just fucking around or something, instead the the actual ending of the movie. Which was right out of 2010 anyway.
Biggest disappointment and waste of time in ages for me. I shoulda’ trusted RottenTomatoes.
Saw it a few days ago and liked it quite a bit.
The very very end was telegraphed but that’s fine, that is how I wanted it to end. I really liked Cillian Murphy. He gets better in everything I see (before this was “The wind that shakes the barely” and he was very good in it as well. I don’t think I"M going out on a limb when I say he has q
Saw it a few days ago and liked it quite a bit.
The very very end was telegraphed but that’s fine, that is how I wanted it to end. I really liked Cillian Murphy. He gets better in everything I see (before this was “The wind that shakes the barely” and he was very good in it as well). I don’t think I"M going out on a limb when I say he has quite a future ahead of him.
I thought the music was phenomenal. Easily my favorite aspect of the movie. As soon as I get back to my computer with iTunes, I’m downloading it. Awesome soundtrack, I just loved it.
I didn’t have a huge problem with the third act. I was prepared for something slightly supernatural and I thought they set up a freddy kruger type situation quite well at the beginning.
I’m a huge Danny Boyle fan, have been for quite some time.
You can’t view it literally.
I just read at as the incarnation of his final thoughts. I thought it was one of the nicest touches in the movie.