More Comments on Sunshine

I read Wikipedia's entry on Sunshine where they explained the plot details.

When you watch a film, you don't realize the energy that goes into making it. Danny Boyle wanted people to live together, read books about the space mission, visit scientists, try to understand the science behind the story, and so forth.

(Spoilers ahoy!)

There's a summary in Wikipedia of the story, and from it, I realized I somewhat missed part of the story. The captain of the Icarus apparently acted like some religious leader, like some Jim Jones, and convinced the crew, somehow, to commit mass suicide. He somehow survived, though his skin was mangled, presumably by the sun, in some fashion, as he came to believe that the Earth did not deserve to survive.

But Danny Boyle makes an odd directorial decision. This captain is always shown as some blurry effect, as if he's dead or has evolved into some higher being, and that seems to fall outside what the film has set up as credible. Forget whether the science actually makes much sense. It's trying to give the plausibility of making sense.

Perhaps if the captain was filmed as is, or with only slight disfiguration, rather than this blurry effect, you might, just might, buy what was going on.

But since there wasn't a great deal of time spent on his character, he is added for what appears to be no good reason, when the film is doing a pretty decent job without his character essentially trying to kill everyone.

One idea does work out well, which is the fascination with sunlight. Two characters really get into it (the doctor, and the captain), and it is some kind of attempt to explain what is going on with the other captain. It's too bad that the execution of the idea just doesn't work out.

You have to feel frustrated for such movies that are on the verge of being really good, but end up not being that way.