Sunshine (2007) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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I feel alive, I feel the love, I feel the love that’s really real.

Danny Boyle’s film Sunshine is an evocative film about a mission to save the Sun and the population of Earth, from dying. It has a diverse and interesting cast and plays with filmic ideas created by filmmakers from Stanley Kubrick to Ridley Scott. Yet character and plot elements dim the overall film from attaining what could be a much brighter product.

First Impressions

The trailer for this film is relatively simple. Every second, a sun dies somewhere in the universe. This time it’s ours. A giant spaceship makes its way towards the Sun as a man explains they need to deliver a payload to the star, or they will all die. Lots of white-hot action follows as the astronauts make their way towards the Sun. It’s a lot to take in Sunshine.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

A team of astronauts is nearing the end of their 16-month trip from the Earth to the Sun to deliver a massive fission bomb that will restart the dying star. Physicist Robert Capa (Cillian Murphy) sends a video note to his family before their ship, Icarus II, has all communication blocked by solar winds. Engineer James Mace (Chris Evans) starts a fight with Capa for using up all messaging time. Psych officer Searle (Cliff Curtis) sits in the observation room watching the sun with more unfiltered sunlight. He claims it’s like bathing in the light. This is the second mission to restart the Sun. Seven years ago Project Icarus attempted the same mission but was lost, and no one knows what happened.

As Icarus II approaches the planet Mercury communications officer Harvey (Troy Garity) detects a faint distress beacon which he claims belongs to Icarus. Mace argues that they should stick to the mission and avoid any potential rescue since nothing is more important than saving the people back on Earth. Searle agrees but points out that Icarus has a second payload that might increase their chances of success. Captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada) sees the logic in that idea, and tasks Capa in figuring out if a detour would be worth it. He thinks it would be.

Trey (Benedict Wong), the navigator, sets the course towards Icarus but fails to update the angle of their sun shield, which damages four panels. He apologizes profusely to the team but is clearly broken by the mistake. Kaneda says two people need to perform an EVA to fix the panels, so Mace volunteers Capa. During the maneuver, light is reflected into the garden which causes a fire and explosion, venting O2 and throwing them off course. They manage to extinguish the fire, but Kaneda is unable to get back inside in time and is incinerated. Searle realizes Trey is a suicide risk and sedates him.

After the fire Corazon (Michelle Yeoh), the botanist, calculates that there is not enough oxygen for seven crew members. They need to decrease their crew by three people. Icarus II detaches its sun-shield and navigates next to Icarus, docking. Mace, Searle, Capa, and Harvey (who is now the Captain) investigate the derelict ship. It is covered in ash and dust, but its garden is verdant and robust after seven years. Unfortunately, the ship has no flight system and will be unable to deliver a payload. A final video message from the ship’s Commander, Pinbacker (Mark Strong), shows him burned, delusional, and unhinged.

An explosive decompression in the airlock separates both ships. Mace puts Capa into the only space suit, while he and Harvey wrap reflective foil around their bodies. Searle agrees to stay and open the airlock door for them. The door opens and they are blown towards Icarus II’s airlock. Harvey veers of course and dies in space, but Mace and Capa return safely. Searle enters Icarus’s observation room and opens the filter fully, flash-frying himself. Upon returning they discover that Trey has already committed suicide, but the computer still says there are five people on board. Capa realizes it must be a survivor from Icarus, which it is–Pinbacker.

Pinbacker kills Corazon, cuts Capa with a scalpel, and raises the computer cores from their cooling chamber bath to cripple the ship from delivering the payload. He then goes after Cassie (Rose Byrne), the pilot. Pinbacker has trapped Capa in the airlock, but using some ingenuity, he manages to blow a hole in the outer door which wrenches the inner door off its hinges. Mace gets most of the computer back into the freezing liquid but becomes trapped and freezes to death. Capa finds Cassie hiding in the payload chamber, where they are attacked by Pinbacker. The payload has been decoupled from the ship and is accelerating towards the Sun. Capa and Cassie evade Pinbacker, and the physicist activates the chain reaction. Space and time get smeared together and Capa stands in front of a frozen Sun. Outside a frozen Sydney Opera House, the gray day is suddenly brightened by a revitalized Sun.

“If you wake up one morning and it’s a particularly beautiful day, you’ll know we made it.” – Capa

History in the Making

Sunshine will mark the first and only time director Danny Boyle will get discussed on Sci-Fi Saturdays. To date, this is his first and only science-fiction film, being primarily known for his drama films, like Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, and Yesterday. But his credits also include the popular horror film 28 Days Later and its upcoming sequel 28 Years Later. It’s quite obvious from reading that portion of Boyle’s career, he’s a very talented filmmaker. But Sunshine also features the talents of another up-and-coming writer (and eventually director) who also wrote 28 Days Later for Boyle. That person is Alex Garland. Sunshine was his second writing credit (after 28 Days Later, though he wrote the novel The Beach which was adapted by Boyle), but audiences might only recognize his name seven years later when his directorial debut occurred with Ex Machina, a film that will be sure to be reviewed on this series. Garland is also known for the sci-fi/horror film Annihilation, the horror film Men, and the recent dystopian film Civil War. Together they made a film that paid homage to some classic sci-fi movies while mostly keeping the film scientifically plausible. The film has a number of famous actors including a pre-Captain America Chris Evans, a post-Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Michelle Yeoh, Cillian Murphy who hadn’t yet worked with Christopher Nolan, and Hiroyuki Sanada who had yet to appear in Lost. Unfortunately, this diverse cast was unable to make an exceptional film.

Genre-fication

On the surface, Sunshine harkens back to a series of classic science-fiction films. The film opens with an image of the sun, which is revealed to be a reflection of the star from the heat shield from Icarus II, a sleek spaceship that hides behind a massive reflective dome. It’s an image that elicits memories of other long-term space exploration films like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Silent Running. The film contains no alien creatures or overtly futuristic technology, instead relying on the characters and the tension of the story to move things forward. There’s no faster-than-light travel, with the Icarus II taking 16 months to arrive at Mercury. The most futuristic element might be the untethered spacewalk that Kaneda and Capa have to take to fix some of the reflective panels. There’s also a bit of an homage to Alien with the 8 person crew sitting around their table discussing problems, just like the crew of the Nostromo.

The film’s plot plays a bit like the final act of a disaster film; that’s the part where the heroes must do the thing to stop the disaster. I’m thinking about more modern takes on this genre like Armageddon or The Core but without the buildup of the training, or the scenes on Earth that show what the heroes are trying to save. There is a little bit of exposition from Capa as he sends a video message to his family, but very little is known about the situation on Earth, other than it’s a frozen solar winter back home. Only the final moments of the film show the extent of what the astronauts were trying to reverse. By the third act of the film, it switches inexplicably to a horror film, as Pinbacker–still alive after seven years–attacks the crew in a state of madness. This elicits some elements from Solaris or Event Horizon where “space madness” affects crews on longer missions. It was probably at this point where Sunshine lost some of its credibility. It takes a character that has been severely burned after sabotaging his mission seven years prior and allows him to still be alive and thinking rationally enough that he sabotages the airlocks and has the wherewithal to go around killing the crew one by one instead of a more universal attack where he just blows up the ship.

Societal Commentary

Pinbacker’s madness exposed a bigger flaw in the writing of this film. What space agency selected these crews to lead these missions? As commander of Icarus, Pinbacker seems like a character type that should have been weeded out of his training because of psychological evaluations prior to the mission. It’s not that his madness was manifested by seven years of isolation. It’s made pretty clear that he was the person that crippled the original mission and killed the crew. Why did he choose to stay alive? Did he have some idea that a second mission was going to come along, one which he could also sabotage? Some additional questions also arise from Icarus II and its mission. It’s clear that not a lot was known about the end of the original Icarus mission, so potential changes were unable to be addressed in the second mission. Audiences see Trey breaking down and being put on suicide watch after his mistake yielded damaged panels, which also resulted in further ship damage and the death of Captain Kaneda. It’s a tragedy, which he blames himself for. But why was he allowed to make all the calculations for rendezvousing with Icarus without anyone double-checking him? Each character seems to have autonomy over their specialty, which is a terrible use of their skills. Speaking of, Capa is regarded as the most important character. Mace tells Harvey that “Capa’s the only person outside of [the computer] who can operate the payload.” This is after Mace assaults Capa at the beginning of the film, and then “volunteers” the physicist to go on the repair spacewalk that kills Kaneda. So why the change of heart? It echoes poor psychological planning and a redundancy of training if there’s only one person who can do the job. There could be so many reasons that Capa would be unable to operate the actual payload, come time. This is not the group that humanity should want trying to save them. It’s only through sheer luck that anything positive was achieved in the mission.

Garland’s script explores the modern gulf between science and religion. Capa, the physicist, who is in charge of creating an explosion to jumpstart the Sun, represents science. He is a member of a crew that uses advanced technology to take themselves 92 million miles from their home planet to the nearest star in order to deliver an explosive payload to save their species. His entire trip is made thanks to science. They create oxygen on board their ship. They figure out how to travel the vast distances and protect themselves from the cold of space, and the heat of the Sun. Their faith is the physics of the universe. Meanwhile, Pinbacker in his madness represents religion. He claims, in his lunacy, that science is foolish, and that God has somehow picked him to take “all of us”, aka humanity, to Heaven. By creating an insane person touting the word of God, the film presents a very clear distinction about the filmmaker’s feelings towards religion. Science is a rational series of steps toward the salvation of mankind, while religion is something that messes with people’s minds, causing them to behave irrationally. Maybe the reason Pinbacker survived was due to his belief in God. Perhaps there really was a divine intervention that didn’t want the mission to succeed. Either way, Capa survives the numerous assaults and trials throughout the film in order to successfully deliver the payload and save Earth.

The Science in The Fiction

As mentioned above, of the eight people on the Icarus II crew, none of them seem to have been cross-trained in other disciplines. Several of the characters even have little to do, at least in the small slice of the mission that is presented. Harvey, the communications officer, is called out by Mace as being “a comms officer on a ship that has no communication,” implying that his necessity has ceased. Cassie is another character that doesn’t do anything in the film, other than be a distraction to Capa and a character that is put into jeopardy by Pinbacker’s attacks–also distracting Capa. From an operations standpoint, having one person for each specialty creates extra people onboard for a mission where the fewer the people, the better.

Sunshine does try to adhere to real science where necessary. Capa tells his family that they will know if the mission succeeded eight minutes after they deliver the payload because it takes light eight minutes (actually eight minutes and twenty seconds) to reach Earth from the Sun. Having a greenhouse on board that creates its own oxygen is also a smart move for an extended mission of this kind. They recycle their water and use solar power as necessary. What’s unclear is how they create their gravity. There are several rotating structures off the axis of the needle-shaped ship. These appear to be communication arrays, as one of them rotates into the sun during their EVA mission, frying these necessary elements for the return trip. It doesn’t appear that the central ship has anything like a centripetal rotation to give them the necessary gravity for the Earth-like gravity seen in the film.

The Final Frontier

With the naming of the original mission to save the Sun being called Icarus, is it any wonder that it failed? Sunshine is populated with characters that appear to be ignorant of the historical significance of anything. According to Greek mythology, Icarus was the son of Daedalus (the designer of the labyrinth in Crete). In order for Daedelus to escape his imprisonment on the island of Crete, he fashioned wings from feathers and beeswax. He warned his son not to fly too close to the Sun, lest the wax in the wings melts. Icarus chose not to listen to his father after becoming enamored with flight that he flew too high, melting the wax, and plunging into the sea, dying. What a great idea to name a mission to fly “too close to the sun” after an ill-fated boy who died because he failed to listen to his father. It’s beyond ironic.

With the hindsight of watching this film in 2024, it’s interesting to see Cillian Murphy play a character that is very similar to his recent role as Robert Oppenheimer. Both are physicists concerned with making a bomb for reasons that will hopefully benefit the human race. The character of Capa also is able to reach beyond the theoretical barrier and see the explosion of his bomb in a way similar to how Opennheimer imagines the physics of his device. An interesting, yet unintended connection. Overall Sunshine does not shine as bright as it could. While the performances by such a diverse and interesting cast are engaging, it ends up creating more questions than it answers.

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