Movie Thoughts: Sunshine
Aug. 4th, 2007 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerI decided to go to the movies today, and took in Sunshine, a science fiction movie from director Danny Boyle, who also made Trainspotting and 28 Days Later. The plot of the movie proclaims that in the near future, the sun is going out and a crew of eight astronauts have been sent to reignite it with an A-bomb the size of Manhattan. (That does, though, make me wonder a little about whether movies these days can at best obliquely reference nightmares of global warming by invoking global freezing...) On approach, they detect the previous spaceship sent to accomplish their mission still stranded in place, and decide to salvage its bomb to increase their chances of success. Unfortunately, a collection of escalating mishaps put them in ever-increasing trouble...
All in all, I found the movie interesting, with good special effects providing a distinctive look... and yet, beyond a turn towards "slasher movie in space" approaching the climax, not as gruesomely vivid to me as it could have been but still a certain dimunition of impact somehow, from a science fiction persective I did find myself questioning things. I can dial my "suspension of disbelief" up quite a ways, but it seems that when a science fiction movie wants to be taken seriously, I hold it to a higher standard. It seemed to me that the movie was more interested in appearing scientific than in being scientific; when dealing with a spaceship visibly modeled on "real world" space stations, I found myself smiling just a little at the "artificial gravity" that no doubt helped hold the budget down. When that gets mixed in with the grander imposition of speedy interstellar travel, I dial my suspension of disbelief up and don't blink twice at it. Still, as I said, when you're taking in the visuals of a vast mirrored sunshade, the scientific critique recedes a bit and the imagery takes over.
All in all, I found the movie interesting, with good special effects providing a distinctive look... and yet, beyond a turn towards "slasher movie in space" approaching the climax, not as gruesomely vivid to me as it could have been but still a certain dimunition of impact somehow, from a science fiction persective I did find myself questioning things. I can dial my "suspension of disbelief" up quite a ways, but it seems that when a science fiction movie wants to be taken seriously, I hold it to a higher standard. It seemed to me that the movie was more interested in appearing scientific than in being scientific; when dealing with a spaceship visibly modeled on "real world" space stations, I found myself smiling just a little at the "artificial gravity" that no doubt helped hold the budget down. When that gets mixed in with the grander imposition of speedy interstellar travel, I dial my suspension of disbelief up and don't blink twice at it. Still, as I said, when you're taking in the visuals of a vast mirrored sunshade, the scientific critique recedes a bit and the imagery takes over.