Sunshine is actually a pretty good movie for the first hour, a slowly paced (U.S. Solaris slow, not original Russian Solaris sloooowwwwww) film that thoughtfully lays out the tensions in a sun-bound spaceship among the crew.
The first problem with Sunshine is the decision that makes the whole movie happen. The fact is, no competent captain would a) let a subordinate make the decision (he would ask his opinion, but make the decision himself) and b) risk a carefully calculated mission to try something extremely risky that might not be necessary and could destroy all chances of success.
This would never happen. The only spaceship captain who would do something this moronic would be Zap Brannigan from Futurama. So even though the movie continued to be absorbing, that really kept nagging at me.
The second major problem is the hackneyed, unconvincing plot twist, which is bad both in script and in execution. First off, it's kind of ridiculously that this crazy guy, seriously burned, survived and was then able to sneak from one ship to another. But even if you accept that, it is bizarre to see what has basically been a low-key drama about committed people dealing with a difficult, life-or-death situation become a horror movie with a creepy Freddie Kruger-type guy killing everyone.
To make it worse, Boyle chooses the really bizarre tactic of making the bad guy hard to see. First he is seen on a corrupted video, which at least is possible, but once he's on the ship, his image is always blurred. Why? It's as though he is supposed to be a ghost or a figment of the crew's imagination, but nothing in the movie besides the blurring out of the bad guy would support that theory. So they just are trying to do what Alien did and show less to scare you more. Only it doesn't work, it just seems weird and annoying.
This isn't the only place in which the direction makes things unclear, but this is probably the main place where it's done on purpose.
There are effective scenes in the movie. In fact, most of the first hour is pretty effective. And some suspense is generated in the poorly conceived latter part of the film. The cast is rather generic but decent.
The film gets its conflict from a bad decision by the crew. The film fails because of bad decisions behind the camera.
The first problem with Sunshine is the decision that makes the whole movie happen. The fact is, no competent captain would a) let a subordinate make the decision (he would ask his opinion, but make the decision himself) and b) risk a carefully calculated mission to try something extremely risky that might not be necessary and could destroy all chances of success.
This would never happen. The only spaceship captain who would do something this moronic would be Zap Brannigan from Futurama. So even though the movie continued to be absorbing, that really kept nagging at me.
The second major problem is the hackneyed, unconvincing plot twist, which is bad both in script and in execution. First off, it's kind of ridiculously that this crazy guy, seriously burned, survived and was then able to sneak from one ship to another. But even if you accept that, it is bizarre to see what has basically been a low-key drama about committed people dealing with a difficult, life-or-death situation become a horror movie with a creepy Freddie Kruger-type guy killing everyone.
To make it worse, Boyle chooses the really bizarre tactic of making the bad guy hard to see. First he is seen on a corrupted video, which at least is possible, but once he's on the ship, his image is always blurred. Why? It's as though he is supposed to be a ghost or a figment of the crew's imagination, but nothing in the movie besides the blurring out of the bad guy would support that theory. So they just are trying to do what Alien did and show less to scare you more. Only it doesn't work, it just seems weird and annoying.
This isn't the only place in which the direction makes things unclear, but this is probably the main place where it's done on purpose.
There are effective scenes in the movie. In fact, most of the first hour is pretty effective. And some suspense is generated in the poorly conceived latter part of the film. The cast is rather generic but decent.
The film gets its conflict from a bad decision by the crew. The film fails because of bad decisions behind the camera.