Tuesday, April 10, 2007
The Sunshine: out of Danny Boyle's arse
Glen Byrne deliberately limits himself to 800 words on the awfulness of "Sunshine", in an effort to avoid wasting the entire day describing in minute detail the enormity of it's failure as a motion picture.
First off, let's dispel any illusions: this is not a science fiction film. Witness: the utter lack of techno-babble explanation as to why the "sun is dying", an event in reality scheduled for 4 billion years hence; how, or who invented the device meant to reignite the sun. There is one dubious reference to the fact that "all of Earth's fissile material has been mined" to produce the bomb, attempting to reinforce some sort of ticking clock element - utter nonsense since the creation of hydrogen bombs relies on fissile material only to kick off the fusion reaction; the complete lack of reference as to how there appears to be full gravity on the space craft; the pathetic lack of technical competence from the crew; Cillian Murphy's "physicist" who's expertise can be summed up as the ability to operate a video transmission device and turn a couple of keys on the bomb payload that's meant to reignite the sun. Ironically the video device turns out to be the source of a bitter, rancorous, physically violent tiff between Murphy and Evans. That this is about as substantial a relationship that is developed in the entire film should tell you the intellectual depths we are plumbing here. Finally the idea that you can descend into the heart of the sun in a thin case of metal, anywhere outside the realms ”inner journey" science fiction is the ultimate insult.
To be clear: it’s obviously not a crime for a film to have a science fiction back drop, but not be a sci-fi film. Tarkofsky got away with it in his psycological drama 'Solaris', Douglas Trumbull with his proto-ecological tale in 'Silent Running'; Ridley Scott made a superb horror flick called 'Alien', which just happened to be set in space; and Dan O'Bannon et al made a great low budget comedy, 'Dark Star' (itself a sort of pre-cursor to Alien), which also happened to be science fiction based. All of these films used a science fiction backdrop as the basis for well thought out pieces of cinema. 'Sunshine', what ever it was trying to achieve, ends up falling somewhere between a remake of the execrable 'Event Horizon' and the PG plod fest that was 'Mission to Mars'.
While the acting is competent (but no great shakes) and the special effects have reasonably high production values, this film has nothing better than that to recommend it. The plot is banal, riddled with holes and so derivative of other work as to make you wonder whether there are plagiarism laws for cinema. A director with the creative flair of Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) should know better. The introduction of a lunatic, somewhat sun-burnt, supernatural Freddy Kruger like character (the captain of a former mission to save the sun), who sabotages and slashes at will, via the "let's go visit the previous failed mission for kicks" device (the equivalent of descending into the darkened cellar with a flash light running low on batteries), was the laugh-out-loud-and-not-in-a-good-way point for me.
Even the half-hearted attempt to introduce some sort of meta-physical crazed fascination with the sun and light falls flat, since it isn’t explored and the introduction of the slasher element overtakes this part of the plot anyway.
Then there was clearly an irritating element of re-editing and blurring of the creature to make the film acceptable for a 15-cert, since there is never a clear view of the crispy cretin, which one would expect, at the very least, as a reward for sitting through this rubbish. This kind of last minute editing and the massive marketing campaign (including lots of “making of Sunshine" promos) shows the distributors are rightly worried they wont make their money back.
The ultimate resolution of the film, if you could call it that, becomes entirely predictable from the earliest moment, as Cillian Murphy explains in a video message to his "sis" that it will take 8 minutes for the change in the sun to be noticeable on earth. When all of these idiots eventually get burnt up in the heart of the sun in a mystical fiery explosion of twinkly lights, it's no less than they deserve.
Frankly I'd rather watch Armageddon. I mean the film with Bruce Willis, but even the ultimate destruction of the planet would have been preferable to this utter twattery.
First off, let's dispel any illusions: this is not a science fiction film. Witness: the utter lack of techno-babble explanation as to why the "sun is dying", an event in reality scheduled for 4 billion years hence; how, or who invented the device meant to reignite the sun. There is one dubious reference to the fact that "all of Earth's fissile material has been mined" to produce the bomb, attempting to reinforce some sort of ticking clock element - utter nonsense since the creation of hydrogen bombs relies on fissile material only to kick off the fusion reaction; the complete lack of reference as to how there appears to be full gravity on the space craft; the pathetic lack of technical competence from the crew; Cillian Murphy's "physicist" who's expertise can be summed up as the ability to operate a video transmission device and turn a couple of keys on the bomb payload that's meant to reignite the sun. Ironically the video device turns out to be the source of a bitter, rancorous, physically violent tiff between Murphy and Evans. That this is about as substantial a relationship that is developed in the entire film should tell you the intellectual depths we are plumbing here. Finally the idea that you can descend into the heart of the sun in a thin case of metal, anywhere outside the realms ”inner journey" science fiction is the ultimate insult.
To be clear: it’s obviously not a crime for a film to have a science fiction back drop, but not be a sci-fi film. Tarkofsky got away with it in his psycological drama 'Solaris', Douglas Trumbull with his proto-ecological tale in 'Silent Running'; Ridley Scott made a superb horror flick called 'Alien', which just happened to be set in space; and Dan O'Bannon et al made a great low budget comedy, 'Dark Star' (itself a sort of pre-cursor to Alien), which also happened to be science fiction based. All of these films used a science fiction backdrop as the basis for well thought out pieces of cinema. 'Sunshine', what ever it was trying to achieve, ends up falling somewhere between a remake of the execrable 'Event Horizon' and the PG plod fest that was 'Mission to Mars'.
While the acting is competent (but no great shakes) and the special effects have reasonably high production values, this film has nothing better than that to recommend it. The plot is banal, riddled with holes and so derivative of other work as to make you wonder whether there are plagiarism laws for cinema. A director with the creative flair of Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) should know better. The introduction of a lunatic, somewhat sun-burnt, supernatural Freddy Kruger like character (the captain of a former mission to save the sun), who sabotages and slashes at will, via the "let's go visit the previous failed mission for kicks" device (the equivalent of descending into the darkened cellar with a flash light running low on batteries), was the laugh-out-loud-and-not-in-a-good-way point for me.
Even the half-hearted attempt to introduce some sort of meta-physical crazed fascination with the sun and light falls flat, since it isn’t explored and the introduction of the slasher element overtakes this part of the plot anyway.
Then there was clearly an irritating element of re-editing and blurring of the creature to make the film acceptable for a 15-cert, since there is never a clear view of the crispy cretin, which one would expect, at the very least, as a reward for sitting through this rubbish. This kind of last minute editing and the massive marketing campaign (including lots of “making of Sunshine" promos) shows the distributors are rightly worried they wont make their money back.
The ultimate resolution of the film, if you could call it that, becomes entirely predictable from the earliest moment, as Cillian Murphy explains in a video message to his "sis" that it will take 8 minutes for the change in the sun to be noticeable on earth. When all of these idiots eventually get burnt up in the heart of the sun in a mystical fiery explosion of twinkly lights, it's no less than they deserve.
Frankly I'd rather watch Armageddon. I mean the film with Bruce Willis, but even the ultimate destruction of the planet would have been preferable to this utter twattery.
# posted by Flann O'Brien @ 3:36 PM 
