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.