MYST #4: Sunshine

The sun is without a doubt the most important form of energy that makes life on Earth possible. Scientifically, it's the reason plants grow, animals flourish, and literally make the earth move. It's the closest star to us averaging about 93 million miles from Earth and is also about 1.3 millions times larger than Earth. It gives off solar rays that has provided light and heat for our planet for millions of years. It's the center of our solar system and just a speck in a dust cloud of other stars in our galaxy. It's Earth's life source and unfortunately it doesn't last forever. In the eventual future (but luckily not in our lifetime), the sun will die and Earth will cease to exist. But will mankind be advanced enough by then to do something about it? Is preventing the sun's demise even reasonable? If you watch Sunshine, the movie will take you on a sci-fi adventure that will make the impossible possible.

The trailer is the clip above. Sunshine is a 2007 sci-fi film about the sun slowly dying threatening the extinction of all life on Earth. The movie was directed by Danny Boyle (127 Hours and 28 Days Later) and follows a small crew of scientists that risk their lives to save the sun and the human race. In the near future, Robert Capa, played by Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins and Inception), is part of the space crew of scientists in an umbrella-shaped ship called Icarus II whose sole mission is to reignite the sun through a nuclear fusion reaction from the ship. After a failed mission of Icarus I with the same purpose, the crew of Icarus II must face dangerous obstacles and challenges that may compromise the mission and destroy the ship. As humanity's last hope, the team risks everything in their power to make sure that the sun stays alive.

Icarus II

This movie was a combination of thriller, adventure, and science-fiction. It keeps you on the edge of your seat like any suspenseful movie should, it provides a decent storyline for the adventurous aspect, and it's special effects are remarkable and cool to keep the sci-fi fans out there happy. This is definitely one of Danny Boyle's least remembered movies but his credibility is still prominent in this film. He's really good at making the conflict the characters face very intense. You can tell that conflict is a major focus of Boyle's works. This is exemplified in his previous movies like Slumdog Millionaire where the main character went through conflict against corruption and poverty in his life, and also in 127 Hours when the main character had to make a life or death decision in the hole he was trapped in. In Sunshine,conflict seems like a never ending theme because after one problem the crew has to fix gets solved, another one immediately follows. And these aren't easy problems either. Danny Boyle plays around with the psychological aspect of the characters by presenting conflicts ranging form physical dilemmas to controversially moral issues. 

Robert Capa

The cast of this movie actually consists of several familiar actors. One of the stars here is Cillian Murphy. Cillian Murphy is a very good actor in my opinion and plays his role rather well. I feel like he specializes in the roles where he needs be sophisticated, serious, and emotional only when necessary. In the movie, he plays Robert Capa, a physicist in the crew in charge of igniting the bomb. As that character, Murphy needed to show a side of intelligence and ingenuity which isn't the first time he's done this. In Batman Begins, you can see his role as a dark yet genius character playing the enemy Scarecrow. Another famous actor in this movie is Chris Evans (Fantastic Four and The Avengers). Compared to his previous roles in Fantastic Four or even in his newer movies like Captain America, he is not an actor I can get really see to play in such a dramatic and intense movie. In the Fantastic Four series, he is suppose to be the comic relief which shows his humorous side, but in Sunshine he is suppose to be this tough assertive engineer. It was kind of hard to take him seriously, but in actuality, he did pretty decent in his role to keep that serious mood.

The cinematic elements making up this movie consisted of all kinds of shots. The calm and relaxing scenes just used basic still long shots to establish the setting of the ship and close ups for the character dialogue and facial expressions. In contrast, the intense edge-of-your-seat scenes used shaky camera angles and quick discontinuity editing to disorient the audience in confusion. The use of lighting was not as demonstrated because it was all in a confined ship so everything was lit up like it would be in a spacecraft. But for some of the most memorable shots, the movie used silhouettes of the characters in front of the sun to show it in awe and its relative beauty and power over the characters. When the movie would show the scenes of the ship itself it focused a lot on extreme long shots to establish the ship relative to the sun. This element was vital to show how minuscule the people were to take on such an enormous task. The contrasting sizes demonstrates how insignificant the characters and the ship seemed and really plays into the idea of helplessness into the audiences' minds. Can the crew really pull this off? Or is it just a hopeless journey?

A very powerful scene of the movie I'd like to focus on is the scene were Capa has to actually fly through space. Without trying to spoil too much of the movie, I'll try to explain it as best as I can. By this point in the movie, the ship Icarus II is close enough to the sun that the payload, or the nuclear bomb that will reignite the sun, can detach from the rest of the ship and head straight for the sun to do its thing. However, through a series of prior complications in the ship, Capa ended up trapped on the ship only to soon be destroyed by the sun's solar rays due to the removal of the mirrored shield. Knowing that staying any longer will get him killed, Capa must do the unthinkable by suiting up and literally take a leap of faith across to the payload before it launches so he can manually ignite the bomb. Throughout this scene many cinematic aspects are shown. First the music in the background is a symphonic piece that emphasizes the suspense of the scene and its dramatic importance to the plot. The scene uses quick shot changes showing Capa, the clock counting down, and the ship itself. It mostly switches shots between Capa's face in his suit, and shots outside his suit to show his most complicated struggles just to escape and his utter desperate expressions on his face. With reference to the clock countdown, the scene gradually builds up suspense until the climax where he actually jumps across to the payload. On a literary analysis, this scene signifies a major importance to not only the plot so Capa can save the world, but also his character development. Previously throughout the movie, it was shown that Capa had a demonstrated fear throughout the mission of the sun whether it was failing the mission or dying in the solar abyss. But this scene shows that he had to overcome his biggest fear (again a conflict of man vs self that Boyle emphasizes) and prioritize the mission over anything else. 

Click Here to watch this pretty awesome memorable scene.

Capa's Leap of Faith

I thoroughly enjoyed Sunshine. It was intense, entertaining, cool, and in some ways inspiring. This is the kind of movie that had a lot more meaning into than it looks. There was much symbolism and ideological philosophies used in the story and character development was very vital. The story's use of a kind of "what would you do in that situation?" theme is constantly portrayed making the audience cringe over the many conflicts the characters in the movie had to go through. However, the one thing that kind of bothered me was the whole realism of the movie. For example, how does the ship have it's own gravity for the crew members to easily walk? Or how can the mirror shields possibly withstand the solar rays? Maybe the fact that it's a sci-fi movie is enough reason for me to just accept the logic of those questions, but still I don't remember any explanations. Also I had some problems with the intro of the movie. I felt that Boyle could have probably put in a more explanatory introduction to the journey rather than just start straight to it after Capa's whole inner monologue. However overall, this was definitely one the better modern sci-fi movies I've seen but not something worth seeing twice. I'm going to give this movie a 7/10.