Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2007)

[Lino]

Trailer

[Antoine Doinel]

Here's the quicktime version of the same trailer

I'm really looking forward to this.

[Cinesimilitude]

I'm also looking forward to this, but I'd still rather see a "Beach" sequel.

[Cosmic Bus]

There is additional footage on the official site, opened with some comments from Boyle about the film. I like the style of these clips more than what Fox chose to feature in the official trailer; there appears to be a solid psychological, almost horror-esque vein that has me anticipating this even more than before.

[lord_clyde]

I wonder if the film will present a scientifically sound procedure for reigniting the sun. I'm sure the film will be more about the plot and less about technical accuracies, but it be pretty cool if they could come up with something that could (in theory) work.
On the other hand it would be neat if they never touched on that and the film ends before it gets to that point.

[chaddoli]

From SUNSHINEDNA:

The following was put together by Alex Garland after many discussions with Dr. Brian Cox. It explains, very simply, the background science in ‘Sunshine'.

Q: WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE SUN?
A: A Q Ball is eating the Sun from the inside out.

Q: WHAT'S A Q BALL?
A Q Ball is a super-symmetric nucleus, produced in the early Universe. That is to say, a nucleus made up of super-symmetric particles, formed shortly after the Big Bang.

Q: WHAT ARE SUPER-SYMMETRIC PARTICLES?
They are the super-symmetric counterpart to ordinary matter.

Q: WHAT IS ORDINARY MATTER?
Ordinary matter is what makes us up. Ordinary matter is constructed of atoms. The nucleus of an atom is constructed of protons and neutrons. Protons and neutrons are, in turn, composed of quarks.

Q: WHAT ARE QUARKS?
Quarks are elementary particles. Protons and neutrons are each composed of three quarks. The super-symmetric counterpart of a quark is a squark, and the Q Ball is composed of squarks.

Q: WHY IS THE Q BALL SO DANGEROUS TO THE SUN?
The protons and neutrons of ordinary matter would ‘rather' be squarks. When ordinary matter is placed in close proximity to a Q Ball, the protons and neutrons are disrupted, ripped apart, and turned into squarks.

In other words, a Q Ball turns ordinary matter into itself. And unless it was stopped, this process would eat the Sun from the inside out, until a critical masa had been reached, at which point the Sun would explode.

Q: ARE SUPER-SYMMETRIC PARTICLES AND Q BALLS REAL?
This question should be answered by work that will be undertaken at CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which has its headquarters in Geneva. In 2007, scientists will use the laboratory's vast particle accelerator to search for super-symmetric particles. It is considered very likely that they will find them.

Q: IF Q BALLS EXIST, DO THE REALLY DESTROY STARS?
It is speculated that the origin of gamma-ray bursts may be the cataclysmic destruction of neutron stars by precisely this method. Gamma-rays are the most energetic form of light, and are produced by events such as supernova explosions.

Q: HOW WILL THE ICARUS MISSION STOP THE Q BALL FROM DESTROYING THE SUN?
The Icarus mission carries a Stellar Bomb, which it will detonate in the Sun. The bomb will destroy the Q Ball.

Q: HOW WILL THE STELLAR BOMB DESTROY THE Q BALL?
The bomb creates the same super-heated conditions in which the Q Ball was made. To be specific, Q Balls were formed at a particular time after the Big Bang: 10 to minus 35 seconds. The heat at this moment of the Big Bang was 10 to the power of 32 degrees.

By recreating these conditions, the Q Ball will split up, separating it into squarks. Squarks on their own decay quickly into normal or stable (benign) supersymmetric particles. Put simply, the Stellar Bomb makes the Q Ball fall to bits.

Q: WHAT IS THE STELLAR BOMB MADE OF?
Dark matter and Uranium. In the same way that an atomic bomb uses normal explosives to trigger uranium into a nuclear explosion, the stellar bomb uses uranium to trigger the dark matter.

In the film Sunshine, mankind has been able to construct two of these Stellar Bombs. The fact that the Stellar Bomb uses uranium is the reason that mankind is limited to only two payloads – because Earth does not contain enough uranium to build a third.

Q: WHAT IS DARK MATTER?
We don't know, but we have considerable gravitational evidence that it exists. Simply put, the gravitational effects that we can observe in the Universe require much more matter than we can see. Because we can't see this hidden matter, it has been termed ‘dark'. Dark matter might make up as much as 95% of the Universe.

It is widely speculated what dark matter actually is. Planets, dim stars, neutrinos, exotic particles, and weakly interacting massive particles. But Q Balls are a good candidate.

Q: ARE THERE ANY CAVEATS ABOUT THE SCIENTIFIC BACKGROUND TO THE FILM?
There are, not least because the film assumes that large areas of theoretical physics are correct. In addition, the Sun may not actually be dense enough to stop a Q Ball, but for the purposes of the film, we assume it is. Also, the rate of ‘eating' is proportionate to the density of Sun - so the rate might be very slow.

[lord_clyde]

That all sounds like it makes sense, I'm a little disappointed that they are using a bomb, though.

[colinr0380]

That all sounds like it makes sense, I'm a little disappointed that they are using a bomb, though.

It does put it into the Armageddon and The Core territory, but that Q&A session was interesting. I think I'll give the film the benefit of the doubt for now!

Q: WHY IS THE Q BALL SO DANGEROUS TO THE SUN?
The protons and neutrons of ordinary matter would ‘rather' be squarks. When ordinary matter is placed in close proximity to a Q Ball, the protons and neutrons are disrupted, ripped apart, and turned into squarks.

This would seem to suggest that we will be seeing a number of people being 'squarked' in the film!

Q: HOW WILL THE STELLAR BOMB DESTROY THE Q BALL?
The bomb creates the same super-heated conditions in which the Q Ball was made. To be specific, Q Balls were formed at a particular time after the Big Bang: 10 to minus 35 seconds. The heat at this moment of the Big Bang was 10 to the power of 32 degrees.

By recreating these conditions, the Q Ball will split up, separating it into squarks. Squarks on their own decay quickly into normal or stable (benign) supersymmetric particles. Put simply, the Stellar Bomb makes the Q Ball fall to bits.

Does anyone else get the feeling that a scientist character will make a similar speech during the film, only to get get shouted at by a crew member: "Hey! Slow down, brainiac!"

Is there talk of a Beach sequel SncDthMky? I loved Alex Garland's book, and so I just couldn't enjoy the film at all! For me it felt like they were not able to really get to grips with what was going on in the main character's head (apart from the silly computer game sequence). I never got the sense of a communal paradise that the main character's actions destroyed that I got from the book, just a group of backpackers having fights in a beautiful location who would have destroyed themselves anyway if he hadn't turned up (I did fall in love with Virginie Ledoyen though!)

[John Cope]

Is there talk of a Beach sequel SncDthMky? I loved Alex Garland's book, and so I just couldn't enjoy the film at all! For me it felt like they were not able to really get to grips with what was going on in the main character's head (apart from the silly computer game sequence). I never got the sense of a communal paradise that the main character's actions destroyed that I got from the book, just a group of backpackers having fights in a beautiful location who would have destroyed themselves anyway if he hadn't turned up (I did fall in love with Virginie Ledoyen though!)

I loved the book as well and had a hard time with the movie at first but I have to heartily recommend listening to Boyle's commentary. It's one of the most revelatory I've ever heard in the sense that it completely clarifies his intentions and the movie afterward emerges as a startling and deep consideration of its themes. The ending of the book, for instance, is altered and seemingly softened but the deleted scenes indicate how poorly the original conception would have worked here. This is a very different approach to the material and Boyle's superficial gloss acts as a necessary subversion. However, this does bring up the obvious question as to whether it should take the director's comments to salvage his work. If it seems wan without then maybe it just isn't effective in the traditional sense.

[Cinesimilitude]

The Beach was a movie that I saw in a very influential time. I was 14, I loved movies, I didn't love school, and It just took me to this place that was magical. It was what initially inspired me to see the world (although I've yet to leave North America, but it also inspired me to seek out foreign films to see more of what was out there) so it holds a special place in my heart, cinematically. If there was a Beach sequel (unfortuately its all speculation on my part) I'd love to see a new cast with the Daffy character replaced by an aged, crazy dicaprio, who then tells new unsuspecting travelers of this "paradise".

sorry for the OT'ness

[colinr0380]

This is a very different approach to the material and Boyle's superficial gloss acts as a necessary subversion. However, this does bring up the obvious question as to whether it should take the director's comments to salvage his work. If it seems wan without then maybe it just isn't effective in the traditional sense.

I'll have to do that. It has been a long time since I watched my DVD of the film! I've found that is one of the best things about DVD, enhancing appreciation of a film that I might otherwise not think too highly about!

I did search out a copy of the film of The Tesseract by Oxide Pang, and that was OK, not great. Again, it felt to me like it only skimmed the surface of the book, and I think it is because Garland's books are deceptively filmic. Reading The Beach I felt like I could imagine the film of it so clearly (and I think a lot of reviews mentioned how 'filmic' the novel felt, often with a tone suggesting that this devalued the novel in some way!). This might have been another barrier for me to have to overcome when I was confronted by DiCaprio as the lead of the film! (I've done a bit of DiCaprio bashing over the last week, but I do actually like his acting!). But when I was remembering back to the way The Beach and The Tesseract were written they do seem like very difficult novels to adapt since the character's wild actions are made to seem logical somehow by our being privy to their thought processes over anything external. Especially with whatever external events there are being co-opted for the most part into the character's fantasies (the childish games with the drug runners, and even the way the community is set up is sort of 'playing at paradise' for most with Tilda Swinton's character paying the price for taking it too seriously, and assuming that everyone else is similarly committed)

Still, at least they collaborated on 28 Days Later..., which I liked much more than The Beach, and I think benefited from the screenplay being original rather than adapted from a novel. Hopefully Sunshine will be as good, if not better, than that - I'm getting rather desperate for some 'serious' science-fiction, or at least an exciting sci-fi actioner (though I did like The Core a bit more than I did Armageddon!)

What a great cast, too: Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh and Hiroyuki Sanada! Not too sure about the guy from the Fantastic Four film though.

EDIT: If a film can have that much of an affect on you, SncDthMnky, that shows it worked well, and that is really all that matters!

[Antoine Doinel]

New trailer.

[solaris72]

I hope the movie's better than the poster.

[lord_clyde]

I hope the movie's better than the poster.

Ack! I don't know why, but the poster gives me the feeling I'm looking at a magazine ad for the latest Sci Fi channel original series.

[Cosmic Bus]

The UK poster is much better (tagline included).

[Barmy]

^That is a much better poster.

[Kirkinson]

IF THE SUN DIES, SO DO WE

Just in case you didn't know.

[colinr0380]

I've seen two very good reviews for Sunshine today from Sight and Sound (April 2007, page 81, by Henry K. Miller) and SFX (April 2007, page 89, by Steve O'Brien) magazines. This quote from Sight and Sound excited me:

In Danny Boyle's Sunshine we do not see people gathering in bars to watch newscasts from Paris or London and cheering on the heroic astronauts of Icarus II on their mission to revive the sun......By eliminating the disaster-movie convention of giving doomsday an on-screen audience, as in the generically similar Armageddon and The Day After Tomorrow, Sunshine removes the sickly screen-traversing sense of camaraderie in the face of catastrophe that - along with the spectacle of cities being destroyed - forms part of those films' appeal. Yet Boyle's overturning of genre expectations is no nose-thumbing idosyncracy: Sunshine's exclusion of the summer blockbusters' surrogate audience intensifies its grip on its actual audience.

Without stinting on the popcorn thrills, Alex Garland's script consistently pits the viewers' desire to see the crew of Icarus II survive against the crew's own determination to complete their mission....

It then uses frightening words like Kubrickian to describe the film - and uses them admiringly, not in a 'doesn't live up to...' manner!

SFX is equally full of praise:

...Portions of Alien, Silent Running and 2001: A Space Odyssey are all there - well, if you are going to nick, nick from the best!...

....Of the cast, Cillian Murphy breathes pretty-eyed life into what could have been the dullest role as the Icarus II's resident astrophysicist. Chris Evans however (who, after Murphy, probably has the most to do), seems too jockish and hot-headed for the most important mission ever undertaken.

What Sunshine is good at is creating a sense of awe......The film is good at slipping in what in other hands could be dry nuggets of scientific fact in with the wonder. More than most SF movies, Sunshine proudly peacocks its science. In some ways this is a clever device, wrongfooting you as to the film's eventual destination....

For the majority of its refreshingly brief running time, Sunshine plays pretty realistically. For one moment - after they discover the Icarus I, a previous mission that went missing seven years before - it even looks like it might be turning into a zero-gravity reheat of And Then There Were None. But, as they approach the sun, the film takes a metaphysical left turn and suddenly we're in the realm of pure spectacle cinema. You can also see a bit of Boyle's favourite film, Apocalypse Now, in there too...

Sunshine can justifiably rub shoulders with the movies it cribs from.

I especially like SFX's usual scoring system of dividing a pie chart up into what you could expect to find from the film!:

Alien - 25%
Event Horizon - 20%
2001 - 20%
Agatha Christie - 15%
Fire - 10%
Brilliant Deaths - 10%

[Nothing]

well I wouldn't believe a word that is published in Sight & Sound thesedays.

[pianocrash]

This is just confusing, especially the comments section (SPOILER ALERT...I think).

[Mestes]

well I wouldn't believe a word that is published in Sight & Sound thesedays.

OK, I'll bite. Why shouldn't I believe Sight&Sound? And why "thesedays" in particular? Has a secret conspiracy of libel taken hold of the writers and editors there? This sounds intriguing, and I am embarrassed to admit I never suspected.

[Commander Shears]

I was genuinely disappointed to discover that this is a serious and apparently intelligent picture. As soon as I heard the concept I was excited about quite possibly the dumbest movie of all time only to have my hopes dashed. All I could picture was Bruce Willis running on the sun, and igniting it with a grenade; the group going up at night so it wouldn't be as hot; lines like 'if you can't take the heat, get off the sun', 'here comes the sun, little darling', and 'I got my SPF Three Fifty Seven right here' as he holds up a gun; a tag line of 'the sun ain't yellow, it's chicken'; and a soundtrack of 'Walking on the Sun', 'Walking on Sunshine', 'Light My Fire', 'You Are my Sunshine', etc. Alas.

[lord_clyde]

Aw, don't be so down! If the movie is a hit then Bruckheimer and co. will get on it right away!

[The Invunche]

a tag line of 'the sun ain't yellow, it's chicken';

That made me laugh.

[Cinesimilitude]

I wouldnt be surprised if the soundtrack contained atleast one song with a title that contains the word "sun" or "sunshine", not including the theme music.