Sunshine Review
by Aleksandar Micovic
I started a book reviews section not too long ago. So I figured, why not have a section where I can post movie reviews as well? Of course, since I plan on only writing reviews after I’ve seen the movies, I won’t have too many reviews to start with. If you want a lot of high-quality reviews, I suggest you check out my friend’s blog, which you can find here. My reviews tend to be more about plot and little rants in between. Tyler’s aren’t.
Sunshine movie poster.
Let me say some nice things first. I love the gotta-save-humanity-before-time-runs-out theme. And this was exactly what Sunshine was about. Sunshine’s description even reminded me a lot about The Core. The only difference is that The Core was a wonderful movie. In The Core the hot spinning metal that surrounds the Earth’s core was slowing down, making the Earth’s magnetism weaker. All you physicists should know that spinning hot metal creates magnetism. As the magnetism became weaker, the atmosphere started giving away, little by little. Eventually, with no atmosphere the Earth would be scorched by the Sun’s radiation. To make a long story short, they dug a hole into the Earth and made the hot metal start spinning again. Not plausible, but certainly a very entertaining movie.
In Sunshine, there is a similar scenario. The sun is dying. And again, all you scientists should know that if the sun dies, we do too. First the sun shrinks to a very small size (a dwarf star), then it expands into a red giant, possibly engulfing the Earth. And if the Earth doesn’t become engulfed by the sun, it’ll certainly be burned to a crisp by it. The difference between The Core and Sunshine is that Sunshine’s story will happen. Yes, you heard right. The sun will die one day, and with it we will too. However, this is billions of years from now. All Sunshine did was fast-forward this doom-scenario to our time (maybe 2050, or something like that, I didn’t hear).
Humanity is doomed. A group of astronauts and scientists are sent aboard a ship called Icarus 2 to “restart” the sun. “Restarting” the sun consists of dropping a nuke with the mass of Manhatten into the sun. Apparently, the resulting explosion will give birth to a new star within the sun, thus saving humanity from extinction. Interesting, I must say. But again, not very plausible.
In any case, one by one, things start to go to hell on board. They lose their captain early on, and it just goes downhill from there. Oh, I didn’t tell you about Icarus 1. Apparently, the first attempt to restart the sun failed. The ship that made the first attempt was Icarus 1. Well, guess what? Icarus 2 finds Icarus 1! To make a long story short, they find the crew onboard the Icarus 1 dead. After 7 years, they would be. Everything makes sense so far. Then this is where the movie loses me. The captain aboard the Icarus 1 isn’t actually dead, but instead is some super-human zombie. The point is, he is still alive. And he sabotages Icarus 2’s voyage to deliver the nuke into the sun. Or at least, he tries to. Again, to make a long story short, the crew (actually one guy now, since everyone is dead) manages to successfuly restart the sun by sacrificing himself. Icarus 2 is no more. But! Humanity is saved thanks to his courages efforts. The nuke has restarted the sun, w00t! We get to live!
*sigh* I really didn’t like this movie. A lot of it didn’t make sense. Most of it, like my good friend Scott pointed out, was more artistic than anything. What really made me mad (the whole movie actually made me mad, but thats besides the point) was how the nuke exploded. It stopped right in front of the guy. Then Kappa (I think that was the guy’s name) stuck out his hand in front of the nuke. I get what they’re trying to do with this scene. It’s pretty powerful, but it makes no damn sense! When something explodes (especially a nuke), it EXPLODES! It doesn’t just magically stop half way because a human being is in front of it! Argh!
All in all, save yourself an hour and change, by NOT watching this movie. It really isn’t worth it. If you’re a sci-fi fan, you’ll be sorely disappointed. If you’re – no wait – if you’re a human being capable of rational thought, you’ll be sorely disappointed by this movie. I was kind of hoping that they wouldn’t succeed in “restarting” the sun so I can die along with the rest of humanity, and not see the rest of Sunshine. I’m not kidding folks, it was that bad. I wish I could forget I ever saw this movie, so I can have my streak back.
Comments
You’re crazy! This movie was AWESOME!
You’re crazy.
lets see if we have everything to save humanity…crew that deviates from important mission…check, captain who can’t make descions…check, angry second in command that starts fist fights…check, psych officer obsessed with staring at the sun…check, pilot who makes course changes by hand instead of computer and is suicidal…check, bomb expert who has no clue if bomb even works…check, giant window that incinerates crew if you open it…check, crew develops super human powers for no reason (touching the sun, swimming in liquid nitrogen, not being burned alive by full exposure to sun)…check, being very concerned through whole movie about not enough oxygen to make it, then making it anyway with no explanation…check, I think we have everything…no wait lets throw in a sun zombie to make sure… omg what a piece of crap. I think the bomb consisted of a billion copies of this script.
you know what… this actually does sound like something the government would put together… my bad.
Dude I know this message is kinda late (3 years late) but yeah I see some of your points…the captain of Icarus 1 would have been dead… but for when the bomb exploded you missed something a little back in the movie. The computer on the ship that talks to them (like Hal-9000) told him that when they reach impact…that it was unknown as what was going to happen…and I kept that in my head all the way til the end. The end to me was beautiful. He finally found out what was going to happen. Some odd fusion happened and some unxplained shit went off but if you remember it didn’t stopped in front of him it kind of looked that way but it more of surrounded him. It made me have a tear in my eye when it showed the end where you could see the sun getting brighter. I liked it.
ok so in the beginning of the film cappa explains how the immense gravity of the sun and the magnitude of the bomb would distort time and space (physics)…this is what is happening here..also this scene is very symbolic in the fact that a mere mortal is able to come in contact with something so powerful and infinite…almost like hes touching god, so hes at peace with dying because its so beautiful and awesome you can see it in his face…