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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Sunshine

11:57 / 10.03.07

So the new Danny Boyle film Sunshine is coming out soon, and some webloggers, including myself, were given an early screening. Normally I don't do these things because they sort of creep me out and I think they're an attempt to buy good word of mouth publicity, but I'll be honest—I really wanted to see the film and so I shut up and went along with it.

It's a bit of a mess, to be honest. It's well directed, it's quite exciting in places, there are a couple of interesting shocks, but really it's just a hybrid of all other space films you've ever seen in one big movie. There are bits of Event Horizon, 2001, Solaris, Lost in Space (not kidding), Mission to Mars, Apollo 11 and about a dozen other things, smooshed together with odds and sods that you'd recognise from Stargate SG1, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica and given a slightly shinier coat of paint. Oh and a little bit of Cube. Most of the characters are flat and unconvincing too. Or at least, no less cyphers than most generic adventure SF.

Having said that it's sort of entertaining enough and looks very pretty.

It just made me sort of sad, I suppose, that all contemporary sci-fi could really have been written in the 1950s or even earlier. Nothing's really changed substantially since HG Wells even though our technology is now completely different. It's so ... weird ... to me that it's all so formulaic.

Has anyone else seen or heard anything about the film? What did you think? And is it really lamentable how low contemporary science fiction has sunk?

Essential Dazzler

12:16 / 10.03.07

I saw the Trailer before Hot Fuzz it looked completely unremarkable and seemed, at first glance, to swipe heavily from Armageddon, which is a bad thing.

However it was wonderful to hear the excerpt from Clint Mansell's Requiem For a Dream score that they'd borrowed, over a cinema sound system

12:16 / 10.03.07

I read about the premise and it struck me as it could be very interesting, interesting enough to chech out the wikipedia article on the film to find more details - I tend not to visit official movie sites because they are often image/animation and clip heavy and not particularly easy to navigate - they re wanting to sell you into a narrative where I'm just wanting to find out some fairly specific information (in this case, the main plot) as quickly and easily as possible.

One thing that I read on the wiki article that piqued my interest: it was filmed at Three Mills studios in the east end of London, a place I regularly passed when i lived in that neck of the woods.

One thing I read on the wiki that actively turned me off: he producers required the actors to speak with an American accent in order to target the U.S. audience strongly.

16:52 / 10.03.07

I liked the trailer - accents notwithstanding - and want to see this if it comes out where I am.

However, having read this thread I think I will dial down my expectations a little - but still, y'know, go to see it.

23:44 / 10.03.07

I mean if you're nerdy like so many of us on Barbelith are there's enough here to keep you amused but you'll come out of it somehow disappointed I fear.

23:49 / 10.03.07

Hmmm, sounds interesting. Based on your allusions, Tom (most of which I haven't seen, I'm notorious for not watching many great films, despite my love of sci-fi), it sounds like a fun flick. If it contains element of all these (supposedly good) films, while still being quite entertaining in and of itself, it may be worth a download (no cinema in my area - that'll learn 'em). Danny Boyle movies are always entertaining, at least for the direction if nothing else.

Happy Dave Has Left

13:39 / 16.10.07

My partner and I bought this for a tenner in Tesco on a whim, and I must say, we both rather enjoyed it. In common with 28 Days Later, it's a good film that could have been a great one if it had stuck to its guns and not gone both cliched and a bit nuts in the final act, but overall I thought it was very tense, well-acted and beautiful. The multi-national crew, the beauty of the Oxygen Garden, the interesting exploration of the inevitable tensions and mistakes of a group of people in extreme circumstances, far from home - we were riveted. Clearly it borrows from a lot of other films, as Tom said in his first post, but I think that's really unavoidable given the subject - this is a semi-realistic look at a deep-space mission, so of course the interior of the craft has shades of Alien and 2001. I think it's most notable for what it wasn't. Unlike 28 Days Later, it didn't abandon a bittersweet ending for a cheesy rescue -

SPOILERS

They crash their ship into the sun and they all die, some of them quite horribly.

END SPOILERS

We loved it.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:00 / 16.10.07

I really enjoyed it, but yeah, it does go off the rails a bit towards the end. Though my favourite steal from another SF movie was "Pinbacker"... I loves me some Dark Star.

16:49 / 16.10.07

I really liked this movie. It's not particularly great, but it's this little big movie.

SPOILERS

I found the plot with the dude that went crazy (and its possible interpretations) thematically in line with the film, but the scenes themselves felt awkwardly out of tone for me, even if incredibly well made, filled with dramatic action and suspense. They were still good scenes (and a crazy space suicidal killer sun worshipper version of HAL is a neat concept, without mentioning its possible places in many threads of the movie), but something in their direction or writing felt off from what I was expecting for the film's final act while watching the film.

But I don't know. I might see it again and have a new total different opinion. But it was damn good and fun. Cosmically Kirby 2001 Apples of the Sun, big and symbolic dumb action Armageddon fun.