God I love this movie. Must be seen on the big screen, however.

Agreed, this movie did not get the fanfare it deserved, most people I know have never heard of it.

I did not see it, but a pack of my friends did. They pretty much uniformly hated it. They did have this to say for it, though: It accurately shows you what the loneliness of emptiness of space is like... because you are the only one in the theater.

Like I said, no one heard of it. I hope your friends didn't go see it expecting an Armageddon remake..

This movie lost money and got exactly the fanfare it deserved. I read about it when it was in production and immediately realized that there was nobody associated with the movie that had any concept of what science fiction should be. The sun is going out and a space ship is sent to reignite it with a giant atomic bomb?? Seriously?? As if the sun is a big ball of propane that can be lit with a Zippo lighter. And its not the first attempt. The first ship goes missing because the captain is highly religious but mentally unstable. Kind of like NASA putting Charles Manson in charge of the first manned mission to Mars. Just watching this clip confirms my opinion of this movie. In 35 seconds they watch Mercury transit half the face of the Sun, something that should have taken 20 days. Somebody's doing about 80% of the speed of light, is it them or is it Mercury?

the first time i saw this movie i didn't know what to make of it. but with each subsequent viewing, i like it more and more.

@ nanrod - there's a lot more to it than just a mission to restart the sun. and i never got the impression that the first captain was "highly religious" or "mentally unstable" until AFTER they reached their destination. i'll have to watch it again, maybe i missed that.

did you consider that both the ship and Mercury were moving so, maybe the transit pace shown is accurate? and who the hell cares anyway?!?! it's a freakin' movie! suspend your disbelief a little bit!

@ Nanrod,

As the poster above said, I think you are over-simplifying it and assuming a lot. The "bomb" they are bringing to the sun isn't just an atomic bomb, it is billed as something much more powerful and not necessarily explosive, but pushing the borders of the physical universe. The captain of the first ship goes nuts not because of a previously known instability, but because of a strange sickness which seems to affect people exposed to too much of the sun's radiation as they get closer. The psychiatrist they bring on the second mission starts to show signs of the same instability, though he seems to cope with it better because of his professional training.

Is the premise pure science fiction? Yes. Was it a great movie in the spirit of 2001, Alien (the first one), and Solaris? Absolutely. If people went expecting Star Wars, or Star Trek, or something else shiny, happy, and easy to digest, they were definitely going to be disappointed.

Leveling criticism against a movie which you clearly haven't seen really isn't fair nor useful.

For me, Sunshine was criminally overlooked by most people. Granted, a lot of people have issues with the last third of the film, but I think it's a sci-fi masterpiece. I can easily overlook little bits of bad science in sci-fi films. If sci-fi films stuck to real-world physics, some classics would be reduced to some very boring movies indeed.

I see Sunshine as a beautiful piece of cinema, and its cinematic scenes like this that emerge me even more. It's breathtaking to watch on the big screen.

I liked this movie apart from the last part, where it goes all slasher/horror, which is at odds with the rest of it, I think.

In related news, Event Horizon is the most awesomest spacy scifi slasher horror movie ever made! (Apart from alien.)

I absolutely love this film. It's beautiful and terrifying (the space stuff is scary, being so cold and alone. When Pinbacker goes nuts, that part's not scary it's just kind of frustrating).

I wish it didn't go all Event Horizon in the third act, but still. People who want to denigrate it for the sci-fi conceit are idiots. Yes it seems a bit preposterous knowing that even the entire mass of the earth splashing into the sun would be exactly like tossing a bit of charcoal into a nuclear reactor core. But I think there is just enough said and shown in the movie to support the notion that they're using technology far beyond what we know.

And for the record, I also love Event Horizon for what it is. Every film is different and so long as the film is true to itself I will let it stand on its own merits.

Great scene, awful movie.

I'm not sure how many people know this in general, but if you go to imdb and look under the trivia section for this movie you can read the entire theory the dieing sun and how they're using a bomb to restart it plotline was based on. It's pretty cool actually.

It was an interesting move by the director to not make even the slightest hint of any of it in the movie.

I've never heard of this movie before. I'll be checking it out now, though.

It's called the "transit" of Mercury. Just being a stickler.

>> ^Drax:
I'm not sure how many people know this in general, but if you go to imdb and look under the trivia section for this movie you can read the entire theory the dieing sun and how they're using a bomb to restart it plotline was based on. It's pretty cool actually.
It was an interesting move by the director to not make even the slightest hint of any of it in the movie.


Brian Cox was a scientific consultant in the movie, and he mentions that in the director's commentary, but how many people actually watch a movie with commentaries on? I don't, but I do sometimes re-watch a scene with the commentary. There was a scene I wanted to know something about, so I put on the commentary and re-watched that scene. It was so interesting, the next thing I know, I'd watched from that scene to the end of the movie with the commentary on, so I restarted the movie with commentary on and re-watched it back to that scene.

There were several scenes where they had to be unscientific to meet the expectations of the audience and for cinematic effect.

For the record... SE7EN, The Game, Fight Club and Die Hard are all movies I've watched all the way through with commentary on. Yes.. I consider Die Hard one of the best movies ever made : p especially at the time.

...and David Fincher is a badass.

I'm usually very lenient with my opinions of movies, I'll watch anything that flickers and usually like it. But I carry a single caveat with that, if the movie is amazing yet then goes spinning off to orbit planet "WTF?", then it most certainly loses any and all points for the awesome part. My reasoning is that if I can see that they've gone right off the rails, then the professional "filmmakers" should have seen it too.

With "Sunshine" it has all the traits of a gripping psychological thriller about how confinement and loneliness can effect the passengers of a spacecraft. Yet just when it is building to a unbelievably tense climax, it turns left and races head long toward the Ron Paul Nebula and crashes into the heart of the bat-shit crazy red super giant star. The entire plot line of the religious lunacy of Capt. Pinpacker should have been excluded entirely.

>> ^direpickle:
I did not see it, but a pack of my friends did. They pretty much uniformly hated it. They did have this to say for it, though: It accurately shows you what the loneliness of emptiness of space is like... because you are the only one in the theater.


Ok, that was pretty funny!

It didn't get the fanfare it deserved because I'm sure, like myself, people signed up for a sci fi flick and were treated to a slasher... IIINNN SSSPPPPAAACCCEEEEEEEE.

Great music, though.