The Future's So Bright

Danny Boyle's latest is about to hit the theaters. Danny Boyle, in case you didn't know, directed such films as Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, Millions, 28 Days Later. He has a pretty good visual style, and perhaps is similar in style and success to Brian DePalma.

Boyle has recently directed the film, Sunshine. I won't spoil the details that much. I will only point out that there have been abysmally few movies in the science fiction genre that can compete with 2001. As slow as the film is, as mediocre as the acting is, the film reaches for profundity while it asks the question "where do we come from" with an answer that doesn't resemble those given in Judeo-Christian-Islamic texts.

Kubrick did something absolutely amazing, so amazing that no one dares copy it. He made a film where the characters were barely that at all. Did you like any of the characters in 2001? Hal becomes the closest thing to either a rooting or hating interest. The rest are bland, bland, bland. But the effect of this is completely unreal when it comes to the final scenes that are surreal, to say the least.

Many directors have made some attempt at 2001. There were some movies about Mars, that didn't fare so well. The Russian film, Solaris, is apparently the closest. The remake by Soderbergh isn't even really a remake, though it does hint on science fiction, and of course, on relationships.

2010 tried to compete, but made an interesting decision. They wanted to have real characters. They couldn't help it. How could they possibly make a film where the characters didn't matter?

So Boyle is likely to do the same in his film, Sunshine, about the Sun which is dying much sooner than expected. This is the second mission that is attempting to reignite the sun. Of course, given how important this mission is, you'd think that there would be spacecrafts sent out all the time to make this possible, rather than some Black Hole story of one craft sent out years ago, and lost, and a second sent out to complete the mission years later.

Instead of the black hole as menacing, it's the sun that's menacing. Obvious lines are spewed out about the fact that if the sun dies, then so do we, the kind of lazy exposition that is supposed to pound the impact to the lowest common denominator audience (us), as if the crew members didn't already realize how important this mission was.

Even so, the reviews have been pretty good, if not amazingly outstanding. We're not wow'ed by special effects like T2 or Matrix. No one seems to claim that it breaks new ground in SF. As profound as some SF writing has been, it can reduce to other genres, typically, space fantasy, space opera, space adventure, and rarely about the heady topics that SF writers address.

So hang on for a week, put on your SPF 1,000,000, and a nice pair of shades, because, baby, the sun's gonna be a bit bright.