Sunshine

Sunshine

From director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland (28 Days Later), we've the story of a dying sun and the last attempt to breath new life into it, which as it happens, also manages to breath a little new life into the Sci-Fi genre.

Science Fiction as a genre is pretty thin on the ground in the cinematic world, sad to say, yet in literary form there are many writers who are doing exceptional things and bringing novel concepts to the page. Recently, Ridley Scott has claimed Science Fiction films are as dead as westerns, and he could very well be right when you consider that a lot of films in the genre recently might only have a Sci-Fi setting and be a conventional story in all other regards, added no science whatsoever to the fiction. Not that I didn't like films such as Serenity, on the contrary it was one of the most enjoyable space romps in recent memory, but when we consider more intellectual films like 2001: A Space Odyssey there's hardly anything to compare it with.

Ironically though, the premise of the film would have more in common with a Michael Bay disaster movie. In fact, it's very easy to imagine how the film would be, with the stalwart team who are going to save mankind being assembled, the long goodbyes and many Hollywood scenes of sentimentality. Probably with Ben Affleck being involved.

In the hands of Boyle and Garland though, the concept is presented so vastly different from big budget American Sci-Fi films that it's a breath of air so fresh it's almost staggering. I spoke of science concepts earlier, and while there's certainly a lot of that in the film, it brings up philosophical elements equally so. I'm not saying it brings anything new to the table, but it's certainly a film that made me think quite a bit during and after, and on that level I consider the film a success. It's a tense, compelling experience, and fairly unique in the sense that I've not seen characters using physics to overcome obstacles that present themselves. I won't say much, but there's a scene where one character opens a locked door in a way that made me think "Wow, I've never seen that in a film before, I wouldn't have thought of doing that!"

It's actual science being introduced into the fiction context, not just a setting for a story!

There are quite a few criticism of the film I've read that it introduces a 'Slasher' element later on, and that it's detrimental to the film as a whole, but I would disagree entirely and say to consider what that element of the story represents. Overall, it's not mind-blowing, not as good as Boyle and Garland's 28 Days Later, but for bringing a true Science Fiction into the fold, it's singularly successful.