Sunshine (Review and Spoilers)

[Shroom Man 777]

I just watched it with my mom. Sunshine, you know, that movie where they try to avert Armageddon by flying into The Core of the Sun, but when they reached the Event Horizon, bad horrible things start happening.

To be honest, when I first saw the trailer, I thought it was going to be utter crap - the bastard child of Armageddon (which was cool) and The Core (which was not cool), with a dash of Event Horizon added in for good measure. Whereas I love Armageddon and Event Horizon, just doing something so blatantly unoriginal as merging them together was...well, rather off-putting.

But when Admiral Valdemar said something about how reviewers in the UK gave it decent scores, and how it was done by the same guy who did 28DL, I decided to give it a chance.

Turns out, the movie was pretty great!

We're treated to fucking visual spectacles, very realistic effects and all that. The science is believable, I guess. And the plot is really great - there isn't too much focus on all the shiznaz, like some crappy kid actor who hacks the internet, some stupid broad who pilots a crashing Shuttle, some bullshit unobtanium, drilling into the Earth's core with bullshit lasers, whatever.

From the way I see it, the plot focuses more on human interactions and how people develop things like space-dementia after prolonged periods of isolated space travel - particularly when subjected to the rigorous pressure of Saving the World.

Gasp. The story focuses on the human psyche so it's not sci-fi but is in fact space drama! Yeah-fucking-right.

It's not gung-ho like Armageddon (which was good) or The Core (which sucked). Despite appearing as a generic save-the-world movie, it's markedly different. Shit man, we see how in their great mission to save humanity, they're confronted with conundrums where the logically correct options are also the inhuman choices. We see real-life human beings, not some cardboard cutouts or whatnot. Each actor delivers an awesome performance, especially that creepy guy from Red Eye (Scarecrow from Batman) with the weirdo eyes.

Moreover, we've also got some of the best special effects ever. Just looking at those spacescapes, the visuals of the sun and the spaceship, holy motherfucking crap. Interspaced with some of the best music ever, woah! I swear I heard that melodramatic awesome music from somewhere else.

Anyway, one of the more interesting parts was how the villain, a crazed homicidal survivor from a previous mission to blow up the sun, was...well, utterly unsane and god-nuts! I guess the previous expedition also ran into some problems (no shit) and were confronted with rather difficult choices (kill crewmembers to preserve air). Maybe the crazy guy, who wanted to make sure no one got to re-ignite the sun, upon seeing just how inhuman they've become in their mission to save humanity, went nuttier and decided we just weren't worth saving if we had to degenerate into that - unworthy of god, bla bla bla. And sun-crazy, since god is in the sun.

I think this movie is...well, if Event Horizon is the science-fiction equivalent of a descent to hell, the end of Sunshine is the sci-fi equivalent of reaching heaven. But maybe that's just because the visuals and the music were that damned awesome.

I'm glad how they didn't wank out the tech. And how their spacesuits didn't have giant visors to show their faces. And how their suits were also covered in gold, which NASA uses to cover their visors so astronauts don't go radiation-blind.

Seriously, this movie is great! Does anyone know where the melodramatic music comes from?

[Xon]

Gasp. The story focuses on the human psyche so it's not sci-fi but is in fact space drama! Yeah-fucking-right.

Sci-fi, as defined by Asimov, is all about the human psyche (for an individual or group) and how it handles technologies and situations which are radically different from what our evolutionary background is geared towards.

So this sounds like real sci-fi rather than the action movies with technobabble tossed in.

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, people are nitpicky. I mean, sci-fi as defined by the dictionary, can also just have scientific advancements play a role in the background or the setting. Besides, folks say Star Wars ain't sci-fi, but I can easily say that it's about humans (and aliens) and how they handle a certain technological terror weapon radically different from what's existed ever.