“Sunshine” Movie Review: The Brightest Stars Still Blind

While maintaining an interesting story with similarly ambitious themes, Danny Boyles Sunshine at times proves the inevitability of human error.

Sunshine’s themes are distilled into a single irony: the name of parallel spaceships sent to save the earth from a dying sun both being named “Icarus.” One can only imagine the scientists giggling at the prophetic use of the name; how could they, these imagined intellectual elites of a near future earth, ever fly too close to the sun? Well, when the earth’s source of light and life begins to dull, sending the planet dangerously close to entering its next ice age, humanity learns they are easily blinded by the light they attempt to control, failing to acknowledge their own insignificance and naivety in the wake of primordial forces.

Sunshine, written by now sci-fi veteran Alex Garland, directed by genre filmmaker Danny Boyle, and loaded with a cast of soon to be stars alongside a few of 21st century cinema’s greatest performers, Sunshine is an interesting text to examine as a piece of Hollywood history, parse at for its ambitious thematic aims, and simply sit back and enjoy for its immersive and engaging thrills made expressive through Boyle’s unique direction. There is a lot to love in this sci-fi mystery, but the ensemble both in front of and behind the camera similarly makes for some of the movie’s weakest moments. Truly a mixed bag, the film’s controversial third act has given yet another reason to go on a kamikaze mission with the Icarus II crew: to see whether the film’s reputation holds any ground.

The film opens boldly with its booming voice over narration and brightly lit sets. Immediately, the viewer is overloaded with the dazzling visuals Boyle perfects and the interesting world Garland pens. We open on Searle, the team’s resident psychologist, isolated in a viewing station. He slowly enters, obsessively and dangerously teasing how much of the sun he can expose himself to without getting burnt to a crisp; the audience is presented with a character as intriguing as the film’s premise as early as its opening scene. Seemingly masochistic in his desire to complete the mission, a man whose job is to read other humans is openly losing his mind to his own inherent weakness of twisted curiosity. It’s a primal aspect of human nature brought out by the mission itself, another irony in the film’s opening minutes as Searle loses his mental stability with every burning layer of skin he’s willing to singe off for exposure to even just an extra .01% increase in light. One wonders from the opening minutes, what is going to cause this mission to fail, the hard science, or the humanity attempting to master it?

This storytelling economy is continued throughout the first half of the film, with the opening minutes especially operating at a break neck pace that effectively settles the viewer into the film’s unique visual language, as well as its cast of characters and thematic payload of ideas. With each of the crew members fitting an archetypal role seen in other ensemble sci-fi mysteries like Alien or The Thing, Sunshine is able to effectively introduce a cast of diverse astronauts who, while at times feel flat for their rigidity to standard procedure and sometimes questionable usage, doubly serve as representatives of humans themselves and all of their faults. Chris Evans as an aggressive Mace is hard to the core and willing to do anything to complete the mission, with his hot headed temper often getting in the way of developing connections with other crew members. Benedict Wong’s Trey is representative of human error when not strangely absent for the majority of the film, Cillian Murphy’s Capa is human’s naivety desperation for control and understanding in the face of existential odds, and Troy Garrity’s Harvey shows the lengths humans will reach for their own survival. While some may disagree with these exact interpretations, even the film points at the unreliability of human nature when Capa and Mace engage in one of multiple fist fights throughout the film, with Michelle Yeoh giving a characteristically dead-pan comical delivery: “there’s an excess of manliness on platform three.”

Sunshine wastes no time; the previous paragraph probably felt like a longer read than the first twenty minutes are to watch. The screenplay by Garland is elegantly effective at communicating a near future believable enough to feel tangible and tense, but fanciful enough to not actually evoke fear of human’s extinction. There is hardly anything that actually goes right for the crew, especially not without an equal and often times greater negative reaction. This keeps the action tight, the atmosphere tense, and the thrills high as these characters break down in unique ways, harkening to thrasher movies where every act break is signified by a uniquely haunting character death. There’s hardly a downbeat in Sunshine, which I sadly felt took away from spotlighting the humanity within the crew. While I understand there are inspirations such as Alien to explain the mundanity clouding the group’s attitude, the film at times aims for unearned emotional beats that, when paired with dated elements like Murphey’s perfectly emo mid-2000s hair, can at times feel more hokey than endearingly effective. Despite this, the film still holds up remarkably well. The special effects are dazzling when not distracting from the on scene action, the score is as iconic as it is partially because it was stolen enough times for its instant evocation of pure heart, and the cinematography is again more inspired than it is blinding. All of these elements, plus the joy of seeing some of Hollywood’s biggest stars before their break, makes Sunshine more than worth while to rewatch.

This is equally true due to some of the film’s more negative aspects. The thematic network is strong and the characters feel easy to watch due to their reliable framework, but at times, the film struggles to make me care about these thematic vessels as legitimate people, or have a consistent take on its themes in a way that aligns with its execution. I believe that this is due to a general pervading incoherence in some of the film’s attempts to communicate with the audience that, again, may require some to come back to the film to simply make sense of its visuals and themes. I’ve hinted at the immersive cinematography and special effects at times distracting from the film’s narrative and effective build up of tension, but there were truly times where the camera felt so distant from the subjects that I could hardly see them in frame. The production design is astounding for its tangibility, but just as confusing and tension killing for its incoherent architecture. Absolutely blinding lens flares are as thematically and aesthetically on point as they are difficult to watch, especially when they’re the best part of this film’s “twist.”

Up until the third act, I could finally see why some argue for the case of this being one of the greatest sci-fi movies from the 2010s. Maybe I could still be convinced on a rewatch or three, but this controversial ending has garnered that reputation for a reason. It begins with an effective setup: Capa is mysteriously told there’s a fifth member on board after half the crew’s deaths is captured in appropriately and expressively cramped framing. The film builds in tension…until there’s around thirty minutes left. While the action set pieces that followed were exciting and tense, once again, there was an equal and opposite reaction. I personally interpreted the film as setting itself up to end on a more meditative note, with its themes primarily focused on humanity’s faults that framed the antagonist as something more conceptual. However, Alex Garland and Danny Boyle had opposing viewpoints for the film’s tone. Garland originally wrote the story as even smaller scale and more focused on having a reflective and contemplative tone, whereas Boyle desired having a more grand, robust film. This leaves Sunshine in a liminal space between thematically heady and earnestly thrilling. It’s a genre film reaching for thematic heights that clash in the third act by distilling the conceptual antagonist of humanity into the literal manifestation of, and this is where it gets controversial, whatever the viewer finds more interesting. Do you believe that the film is speaking about god and belief in spirituality as another facet of humanity that fools us into thinking we are stronger than we really are? Or is the film restricting itself to the confines of a slasher where man is no longer the villain, but just pure insanity? It’s interpretive in the worst way, as with much of the rest of the film, nothing is stated as explicitly as one may be wishing when seeing characters sprinting down halls towards who knows where with an off screen timer counting down the time they have to reach unidentified point A to “who knows where” point B.

However, the film’s ambition is ultimately responsible for both its highs and lows. Attempting such bold and thematically rich visual language, heady themes, interesting characters, and a damn good score in well under two hours is impressive in itself, but made doubly so when realizing the film was made with only a forty million dollar budget. Modern blockbusters are quite literally made with budgets upwards of eight times the same amount with looking and feeling a fraction of effective meaning for all of its faults, Sunshine is ultimately a success that proves although nothing is safe from human error, there is still light on the other side of humanity's inherent unfettered ambition.