A movie to miss
April 29th, 2007 at 11:37 pm by David FarrarWent with friends to see Sunshine tonight. It should have been a good movie, as it has a good plot premise – being a mission to get close to the Sun to send a bomb into it to rekindle the cooling sun.
But it was overall pretty bloody lame. The scifi parts were good, even very good at times. But for some reason they had to have an insane captain of the predecessor mission sneaks his way on board and start killing people like a C grade horror. No character development or anything for the former captain – just that he had decided not to interfere with God’s will to destroy the earth. Okay so he was a Green Party voter (do not interfere with nature) but to also have him disfigured and burnt, made him just a lame villain. I joked during the start of the movie that they’ll probably find killer crocodiles on board the other space ship. Well he was the killer crocodile.
So not one I’d recommend. Go watch Armageddon again instead.
Tags: Reviews
April 30th, 2007 at 7:53 am
“It should have been a good movie, as it has a good plot premise – being a mission to get close to the Sun to send a bomb into it to rekindle the cooling sun.”
That’s a good plot? Sounds a lot like that idiot movie “The Core”
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Actually I saw the movie and thought it was great,
solid acting, well developed story, great directing and plenty of references to other great sci-fi moives.
Not sure why you think the other captain would be a green party voter, he was meant to be a religious nut so more like a Destiny Church voter.
Nice move though David giving away the twist at the end….next you will be telling people there is no Santa.
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 10:54 am
When I saw Sunshine, my reaction was straight out of _A History of Violence_: “How do you fuck that up?”
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Nice move with the spoiler David, thanks for that… Lucky I have seen the move already!
I thought it was great, very good acting (Cliff was surprisingly good in fact), great directing, references to other sci-fi films, nice art direction and all and all a good return to hard Sci-fi.
Much, much better than rubbish like “The Core” or “Armageddon”
I agree with Rocket Boy though, the capt. was clearly a religious nutbag.
Really I think the key message in the film was stated early in the as you get closer to the sun things start to become unquantifiable. While that was referring to the pure physics of the situation (and the effect such a large gravity mass would have on space and time) it was used as a metaphor for things getting more and more out of control and unpredictable as the ship got closer to the sun.
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 11:05 am
Those who thought _Sunshine_ was great are uncritical lusers who would swallow any garbage from Danny Boyle and pronounce it the best thing they’ve ever seen.
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Those who thought _Sunshine_ was great are uncritical lusers who would swallow any garbage from Danny Boyle and pronounce it the best thing they’ve ever seen.
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 11:13 am
“I agree with Rocket Boy though, the capt. was clearly a religious nutbag.”
DPF said he was a Green nutter…you think there’s a difference?
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 11:44 am
“as you get closer to the sun things start to become unquantifiable. While that was referring to the pure physics of the situation (and the effect such a large gravity mass would have on space and time)”
What’s that supposed to mean? I haven’t seen the movie, but if space-time distortion is part of the plot it’s sounding sillier and sillier.
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 11:47 am
From what I’ve seen, people who go in expecting “The Core” come out pleasantly surprised; people (like me, and DPF from the sounds of it) who go in expecting 2001 with a bit of Event Horizon come out disappointed.
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
We thought a movie about the first ship and how they all went mad would have been better.
Plot had more holes that a swiss cheese
“Oh no! fire has burned up all of our plants”
“Surely we have spare seeds somwhere”
“er, never thought of that”
etc etc etc
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
The silliest thing about the fire burning up all our plants was that:
a) The ship had a large volume of air on board which meant that it would have taken bloody ages to breathe through it all.
b) Plants are space-expensive means of recycling carbon. A better system might have been electrolysis of CO2 given that there was plenty of solar energy to be had.
c) Any ship designer would have included backup systems in case the main system got stuffed.
And as for the meaning of things start to become unquantifiable, I always felt that to mean the absolute shite special effects concerning the first captain, which was nothing more than a lame attempt to build suspense and
Vote:intrigue – Sam Neil was far creepier in _Event Horizon_ and you saw him in good detail.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Peter I think the plants were meant as a metaphor for humans looking after our planet, after all it was a man making a stupid mistake that lead to the fire that destroyed the plants, with the plants gone the humans had no chance. Also on the first ship that was sent the plants were still alive in a ‘garden of Eden’ which meant the lunatic captain had food and oxygen so that he could survive.
If you want to pick holes in the movie you have to ask the question ‘why were humans required to pilot a bomb on a collision course with the sun?’
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
“why were humans required to pilot a bomb on a collision course with the sun?”
Good point Rocket Boy, obviously a very silly movie.
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Saw it, & judged it a disturbing waste of time. Not only was there little character development, most of the crew was killed off in drawn-out, agonising, ultimately pointless deaths. If the concept of a malevolent universe could be expressed in the form of a movie, this would be it.
Normally, I’m a fan of sci-fi movies, enjoy some horror movies, and can appreciate a good tragedy (where those undone are undone by their failings). This could have been all of those things … but failed on every count, even down to the sound effects in the vacuum of space.
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Honestly DPF, that’s your idea of a good plot? Its stupid before you even begin to think about the practicalities like ‘how could humanity possibly use some kind of solid bomb to reignite a fusion reaction happening 750,000km deep within an object that has a corona with a temperature 1 million degrees, (about 997,000 degrees hotter than the boiling point of lead)’ and ‘why would such an impossible bomb need to be pilotted?’.. I love sci-fi but what I saw of the plot on the promo was what stopped me going to see the thing
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Anyone seen Pathfinder…? Any good?
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
“If you want to pick holes in the movie you have to ask the question ‘why were humans required to pilot a bomb on a collision course with the sun?’”
Perhaps the quest should be “would you trust a computer (which is programmed by humans) to perform such an important mission without Human supervision?” Remembering that contact with the ship from earth is cut off once it gets close enough to the sun and the lag would be huge anyway…
Also the mission was not intended to be a “collision course” rather the intent as mentioned in the film was to get in close, drop the bomb and then get the hell out back to earth.
“DPF said he was a Green nutter…you think there’s a difference?”
I think the point behind the other capt. was to show a human unable to cope with the enormity of the task in front of him (and the enormity of the sun itself), snapping and grabbing hold of something else huge (the concept of God) in order to justify his actions.
You could only call him a “green nutter” if you are referring to a person who believe that climate change is natures way of punishing humanity (nature being the god in this case) and therefore doing nothing, and even actively trying to prevent others from doing anything about it.
“a) The ship had a large volume of air on board which meant that it would have taken bloody ages to breathe through it all.”
Perhaps you missed the bit with all the air leaking out of the ship about the same time the fire started? Or when they actively fed as much air as possible into the fire to burn it out?
“c) Any ship designer would have included backup systems in case the main system got stuffed.”
Unless of course you had a limited time and very limited resources in which to build your ships, because say the world is freezing.
“”Surely we have spare seeds somwhere”
Of course a solar winter on earth might make seeds and the plants that produce them a very rare commodity…
“but failed on every count, even down to the sound effects in the vacuum of space”
Ah always a good chestnut. These are there for the audience only, if there were people in the film reacting to the sounds you have a point, but they weren’t so its just artistic license to add sounds. You know what doesn’t happen in real life either? Slow motion effects, or fades or dissolves or a bazillion other movie techniques
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Hmmm.
Cast of movie have to work in a team to acheive a goal despite intra-group rivalry, random disturbances and villians with a warped sense of rationality getting in the way. Sounds too original for me. Maybe I’ll go and see the Lord of the Rings instead. Or perhaps watch that Docudrama about the Fourth Labour Government again.
Really Dave, Rocketships travelling to the sun? There are better movies on at the moment.
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
I’m always willing to suspend disbelief for a good movie, but this one was asking too much.
I can easily deal with the “we need to fire a giant nuke into the sun” bit, but I’m not buying the “it’s a suicide mission, lets send the captain and the only guy who knows how to set the bomb off”
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Durandal -
This is all in good fun… but when airports already require planes to land on automatic pilot in bad weather because its more reliable than humans, why would you trust humans (who have a distressing tendency to want to live and can get all homicidal on you) over computers (which are precise, don’t need stuff like air and food, and aren’t worried about dying) to carry out a suicide mission when the future of the world is at stake?
That’s always the biggest fall down in these movies – ‘why are they sending people?’ – I guess because a movie starring a computer is boring. Unless its 2001.
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Durandal
Remembering that contact with the ship from earth is cut off once it gets close enough to the sun and the lag would be huge anyway…
If you are going to fanwank then take the time to make a decent argument and not the gobshite you have just sprouted here. If the Sun was dying then the it wouldn’t be active enough to disrupt communications? As for lag, an eight minute lag is easily surmountable by a constant channel of communication. Send a message into the channel and wait twenty minutes for a response. Even better you can have your ship systems transmitting constantly all the time so that earth will inform you if something’s up.
Even now, we are handling lags of much longer than eight minutes in directing our trans-Jovian space probes. So why couldn’t the ship being remote controlled from earth?
Perhaps you missed the bit with all the air leaking out of the ship about the same time the fire started? Or when they actively fed as much air as possible into the fire to burn it out?
And this is supposed to be scientifically impressive in what way? Even with all the air leaking out, the large volume inside the ship is still breathable at standard pressure at the end of the movie.
As for feeding air into the fire to burn it out, I must have missed our firefighters switching from water hoses to oxygen hoses. As any fule kno fire requires oxygen and the simplest way of getting rid of a fire in a spaceship is to space it. Even Battlestar Galactica did this properly the second time round.
Unless of course you had a limited time and very limited resources in which to build your ships, because say the world is freezing.
Except that the ship design and construction and would have taken several years to get off the ground. So why during that several years somebody forgot to figure out the obvious is beyond me.
Vote:May 1st, 2007 at 9:20 pm
“Watch Armageddon instead” ? This movie must truly stink…
Vote: