Sunshine

Ok, so I was going to talk about Sunshine but it's difficult to do so without talking about the entirety of sci-fi. It would also be arrogant of me to presume that a task like that wouldn't be biting off more than I could chew. Fortunately, sci-fi is rather neatly categorized and sub-categorized making it slightly easier to deal with.

This paragraph is just to show roughly where Sunshine belongs in the spectrum of Sci-fi. Sci-fi is split between the dystopian future i.e. pick and aspect of society and multiply it by 100 (Children of Men = Infertility x 100.) On the other side you have 'The Mission," this is not actually exclusive to sci-fi so it becomes further divided into sub-categories, in this case "The Ship, The Crew and The Signal."

Sunshine is an incredible, tightly woven story with each of the three aspects lending to the overall effect of the film. The Mission is to save humanity, something that is seen constantly in film but this time we're not fighting against "a villain" but the ever present and all powerful sun, as shown quite nicely by it's dwarfing over the planet mercury. This is where the crew comes in, they are not super-humans but scientists, mere mortals. Danny Boyle cleverly doesn't give us a "main character" who we know can't die, he treats each crew member equally and is thus able to kill them off in any order he wants. The crew are immensely vulnerable and many begin to have a fanatical and religious devotion towards the sun.

The Ship is conveniently called Icarus as a reminder to us and the crew that there is a greater risk of failure than success. It is also the most visual of the three aspects. Ridley Scott's Nostromo created something that humanized the future, created a fetal-like claustrophobia and habilitated the plot. Boyle knows he can't trump Nostromo so settles in making a subtle homage. There are notable differences, predominantly the colour palette. When inside the ship there are very few yellows, oranges and reds I can only assume to add power to the sun. It also correlates with Boyle's attempts at when looking at the sun everything else is dark in comparison, mercury being a little black dot being the prime example.

The Signal is where it all goes wrong, so terribly wrong. Often used as a plot device to drive the story forward, Alien has an Alien sneak on board and havoc ensues, Solaris has man come in contact with some "greater spiritual being", Sunshine decides to combine the two but with only a third of the movie to come up with an explanation. I could spend ages complaining how shit the end was but I'm not going to because it shouldn't ruin the first two thirds. 

So... Sunshine earns it's use of light and dark. Light that will make you religious then die in a burning fire and so dark you become the loneliest person alive then freeze in minus two thousand degree temperatures. As done so effectively in Sci-fi everything is multiplied by a 100, a crew member's mistake results in the extinction of mankind and what other film makers use for dramatic effect becomes a driving force in the plot. The art is in not becoming melodramatic or self-important, Sunshine is tastefully slow paced and romantic relations are not exploited. Sunshine is pitch perfect and thus belongs on my top 10 list despite the ending.