Sunshine (2 out of 4 stars)

As a permanent winter settles upon the Earth, a spaceship is sent on a desperate mission to drop a nuclear device into the sick sun and "re-ignite" it. To name the ship "Icarus I" seems like asking for trouble in two ways, considering the fate of the original Icarus and the use of a numeral that ominously leaves room for a sequel.

So opens Roger Ebert's review of Danny Boyle's 2007 science fiction movie, Sunshine. Leave it to Ebert to notice such a small detail like the fact that the original ship was named Icarus I and not just Icarus (sans roman numeral).

The movie was a bit of a letdown. The first half was really riveting. But when trouble happens in space, it gets pretty ridiculous and even I found it hard to suspend my disbelief. Let alone my wife! It would've worked much better as a straight, sophisticated scifi story, but throwing in the madman really just made it way too outlandish. First of all, I found myself questioning the cost-benefit conclusion. For that reason alone, I hated the movie because that's like making me lose my religion! Seriously, I need to work it out. At what probability is it rational to leave the mission to intercept another ship and get their bomb, even though doing so has risks itself and you have no certainty the ship is functional. After all, it's been orbiting the sun for 8 years, with a crew of 8 people and resources to only take care of them for 3 (but theoretically could take care of one person much longer). I guess I had a hard time believing that with so much at stake, that any answer would've made sense. Shouldn't you be astronomically risk averse when all of mankind is going to die if the sun's not ignited? The second thing, obviously, was the lack of the boogieman who shows up roughly 2/3 of the way through. Won't give anything away, but that whole thing bothered me.

What was really great about the movie was the imaginative technology and the space station. It was somehow portrayed as not so distant into the future as you might think. Everything seemed to have a kind of utilitarian purpose - like the magnetic lamps that attached to the outside surface to illuminate the workers as they worked. They rested on the surface, and then floated up like balloons. There were many things like that in the movie that were aesthetically interesting. Or when they attempted some pretty daring things - like wrapping themselves in cellophane and blowing the airlock to be rocketed from one ship to another in -200 degree temperatures outside the space station! That was unbelievable, and reminded me somewhat of The Abyss in parts. Actually, the movie reminded me too much of The Abyss. I though this movie was more handsome than The Abyss, but it more coherent. The boogiemen just seemed to me to serve no purpose except to force some events to go really bad. Was it an action movie or this weird, opera? I couldn't tell, b/c it tried to be both and was never either one perfectly.

So I gave it 2 out of 4, which is below the 3 out of 4 stars Ebert gave it. He also summarized in his own words what I liked and disliked about the movie. He notes that technically, the Sun isn't dying so much as it is infected with a particle called a "Q-ball" which is some kind of left-over thing from the Big Bang which is working like a virus on the sun (that's my own interpretation, as it gets pretty hairy pretty quickly). Here's what Ebert says, though:

What about the Q-ball? It's a "non-topological soliton," Wikipedia explains, before grumbling in a related article, "it is not easy to define precisely what a soliton is." Don't you love this stuff? Isn't it better than a lot of analysis of the psychological interactions among the crew?

Exactly. What's great in the movie is the scifi. What sucks is the philosophical stuff and the really artificial plot twist. I especially hated the Captain who likes to sit and stare at the sun in this one room with the filter set really low, nearly blinding him, after which he talks about how we're all one with the darkness and stupid crap like that. I don't care how long you're in outer space - you do not start reverting to 10th grade English lit. discussions about the meaning of life.

One thing I did like about the movie, though, was the shots of the Sun. Whether it was the Sun viewed from the Observation deck, or the Sun viewed from some perspective of another craft, it was genuinely terrifying to watch. You could feel how vulnerable the astronauts were, for one. If they were to ever get within direct range of the Sun, for instance, perhaps because they weren't shielded by the ship's shields, they'd be incinerated instantly. This, again, was part of the very cool aesthetic of the film that I enjoyed. But, what I think I am negatively responding to was the sense that they made a movie about an aesthetic, and used a thriller plot-device to make it into a three-part film.