Bad Astronomy ALert: Movie "Sunshine"

[Van Rijn]

What several people whose opinions I trust thought was, "My, this movie's bad."

I watched Sunshine a couple weeks ago when it came up in my rental queue. Well, I watched part of it, fell asleep on it, woke up, went back to the point where I had fallen asleep, watched a bit more, almost fell asleep again, and fast forwarded through most of the rest.

I should know better than to watch something like this, but it was supposed to be a science fiction film, and there is part of me that insists on at least being aware of current science fiction films. But this was downright painful.

I preferred Solar Crisis over this, which had a similar theme. Lots of people hated that movie, and there is no doubt that was a "B" movie. In my opinion, this was worse.

[parallaxicality]

Like 01101001 with his 2012 collection, I collect Sunshine threads. Adding this one to the list


http://www.bautforum.com/showthread....light=sunshine
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread....light=sunshine
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread....light=sunshine
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread....light=sunshine
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread....light=sunshine
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread....light=sunshine
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread....light=sunshine
http://www.bautforum.com/small-media...ine-movie.html
http://www.bautforum.com/bad-astrono...-sunshine.html

[ellix]

Some criticisms here are more defective than the scenarios in the film. One objected to the immense solar gravity yet Capa was able to move during the "payload's" descent to the sun. During freefall, no gravity is experienced.

Judging from the film, there was a presumption of artificial gravity technology as well.

For me, an addict, and in the context of thousands of scifi flicks where explosions can be (still) heard in space-- and where the vast majority of the audience thinks that this is normal-- this film is a winner. The props are beyond excellent for the genre.

Alex W does a nice job of putting some things in context for the meticulous.
Nonetheless, I cannot disagree that work is needed to present accurate science. I suppose that we can accept visual hokum in the action films but science fiction should present well thought out drama in a plausible context. With the advent of computerised special effects, this is no longer the daunting challenge that it was.

[TheOncomingStorm]

As I commented on the blog I recently saw Sunshine and did like as well, the only reason I did fall asleep while watching it is because I watched it at work.

[Neverfly]

As I commented on the blog I recently saw Sunshine and did like as well, the only reason I did fall asleep while watching it is because I watched it at work.

<chuckle>
I think you mean 'did not' but I like the typo version better

[Neverfly]

While I'm reading this thread... I may as well comment on the movie.

I only watched Sunshine because I had heard so many bad thhings about it.

The science was pretty awful.

The sudden appearance of the "slasher" bit was more annoying than anything else. idav said that it was supposed to make me think. Maybe I missed something, but while it did make me think, it didn't make me think anything important or revealing, though. I won't touch it for its religious nature.

I agree with Ellix pointing out objections to some of the objections... but also point out that that objector (Antoniseb) also said he was going by synopsis and not by watching the film. It isn't really covered if the spacecraft was in free fall or not, so I think that can be chalked up to viewer decision.

But it wasn't the science in the movie that bothered me so much. I almost expect bad science in sci-fi. I wish it wasn't there, the public could use more education... but it's there anyway.

What bothered me was the psychology.
The astronauts were depicted as almost raving lunatics.
Some of the plot devices designed to keep the tension up between astronauts didn't even make any sense. And surely the captain would have handled that tension and not ignored it.
Many of them are depicted as extremely obsessive. They are also depicted, for the sake of the plot, as extremely mission oriented. Which although I can see where the writer was coming from, it just doesn't line up with actual human behavior, NASA screening or the very likely sanity levels of true astronauts.
These people were all crazy.
Even the on board psychologist ignored tension problems, took all the wrong approaches to a suicidal crewman and had this perverted fascination with self destructing by looking at the sun until his skin peeled.

Over-all, I would consider it "Horribly chosen Astronauts go psycho on Important Mission" more than anything else.
Then...
...after all the insane drama of watching supposed highly trained and sanity screened people trying to kill eachother...
You get this Really warped character thrown into the mix that has somehow
MAGICALLY
survived seven years alone on a defunct ship... (What did he EAT?- everything was shut down when the second crew boarded... Plus this guy was so baked from the Sun that he should have been a toasty pile of goo...) that makes everyone else look like Sigmund Freud. Not only did he sabotage the first mission... For some weird and unexplained reason, he went to extraordinary efforts staying alive and hanging out for seven years? For what? In case another mission just happened to swing by for a visit so he could sabotage them too? That whole part of the movie was just so wildly nonsensical as to make me want to throttle the writer.

If you think the science was bad, the psychology was ten times worse. It made no sense and was tied together with soggy spaghetti.

I could be entertained by the movie as long as I switched my brain off completely and zoned out... Dribble a bit of saliva off my slackened jaw and and fumble feebly for the remote but give up 2 seconds into the effort.

[TheOncomingStorm]

<chuckle>
I think you mean 'did not' but I like the typo version better

you are right but I have fallen at sleep at work before.

[Fiery Phoenix]

I own the movie and have seen it twice already. But I have to say, it's not really as bad as some people are making it out to be, yet it's not a "great" movie. The first 30 minutes or so are indeed great, though. But that's about it. The science is horrible, the cast, in my opinion, was pretty badly chosen, and there were a bunch of unanswered questions.

Anyway, it remains a decent movie, nonetheless. I know a few people who 'loved' it with a passion myself.

[Neverfly]

I own the movie and have seen it twice already. But I have to say, it's not really as bad as some people are making it out to be, yet it's not a "great" movie. The first 30 minutes or so are indeed great, though. But that's about it. The science is horrible, the cast, in my opinion, was pretty badly chosen, and there were a bunch of unanswered questions.

Anyway, it remains a decent movie, nonetheless. I know a few people who 'loved' it with a passion myself.

I enjoyed some parts of it.
But I remember, they were in a dining area and eating (why space movies have done this since Alien is beyond me) and I remember watching a sauce or ketchup bottle set down on the table. Gravity pulled the sauce down into the bottle.
It's funny how they have the budget to make a guy freeze in space instantaneously (which is wrong and bad science anyway) but they don't have the budget to make space food look like stupid space food.

Then the Ultimate baddie being in forever jerky-blur annoyed me to no end.

The visuals were enjoyable (Aside from toasty slasher guy), the suspense was good, but like I said in my first post on it- I would have to switch my brain totally off to actually be able to ENJOY the movie.

[Ronald Brak]

They were running out of oxygen. How is that possible? The ship was so humungously large they could have just shut the door and there would be enough oxygen for a three year journey.

[mtiedje]

I find all of the "comic book guy" rants about this movie amusing. Maybe the science is not correct in a lot of this movie, but the effort was there to create an environment that mimics reality while still being able to create the movie. If all sci-fi movies followed reality to a tee, then we would have no sci fi movies. I thought this film was really good. The guy at the end turned me off the first time I watched it because it was so implausible, but if you listen to the commentary, the director wanted to make a metaphorical reference to science versus nature and I can allow for some artistic freedom. The movie is much better than people are making it sound and that's too bad because we should appluad and ecourage movies like these to be made instead of being nitpicky about every detail. Don't turn people off to what is a very good movie!

[mfumbesi]

I hired this movie last week, I was hoping that you were wrong.
Good grief what a boring movie.
As others have stated, there is a scene where they "jump" out of Icarus I to Icarus II wrapped in foil and padding material, good grief that was stupid.
Radiation or heat should have sorted then out when they opened the doors.
Don't get me started on the "Slasher" character, he has superhuman powers.
He disables/kills the mainframe and the mainframe computer complains and says something along the line of, "who are you, you are killing me". Good flying mosquito one would assume you build in some form of protection on the most valuable components of the ship.
Finally the "hero" has this nerdy thing going on, its incredibly irritating, I wanted to harm him.
Terrible movie.

[Neverfly]

Finally the "hero" has this nerdy thing going on, its incredibly irritating, I wanted to harm him.

This line alone was enough to send me off my chair laughing.

[Tucson_Tim]

Except for the wasted special effects, I thought it was a horrible movie. I'm sure glad I didn't see it at the theater. You'd think they could pick a crew for such an important mission (most important mission!) that liked each other and could get along. Isn't battling the deadly radiation and heat of the Sun enough? Why do you need a mad slasher?

The bad science has already been discussed . . .

[V_Zhd]

I saw the film two days ago, and it was basically what I expected from the description. I have seen worse science and thought it had some enjoyable moments. Things like artificial gravity and an over-designed ship always annoy me, but I get over it. I agree that the crew didn't act realistically at all. Which brings me to a point that bothered me: why send a crew to the sun to drop the nuke in the first place? It would have been much more straightforward for an unmanned mission...

[Tucson_Tim]

I have seen worse science and thought it had some enjoyable moments.

Yes, you're right. I want to soften my previous remark (horrible) by saying that I have seen much worse. I guess I just expected much more.

[Paul Beardsley]

Yes, you're right. I want to soften my previous remark (horrible) by saying that I have seen much worse. I guess I just expected much more.

But I think you were led to expect much more. That's why I come down harder on Sunshine than on the typical action-adventure romp.

[EDG]

No, it's a movie that's supposed to make you think. It's as much about psychology as it is astronomy. It's as much about people as it is about space.

I'm not sure how to go in to it further without spoilers but it's honestly frustrating that the overall theme of this movie has been lost on everyone that seems to have watched it. This movie is very good.

I agree. I really liked this film (well, apart from the random mad slasher bits, that did seem a little tacked on).

The funny thing is that I'm really into stellar evolution etc, and I still don't really care at all that it "gets the science wrong". It was a story about a crew sent on a suicide mission to help save the earth, and it was about them, not the science. And I enjoyed watching it.

In fact the only thing that really made me raise an eyebrow was the very last few seconds, where you see the sun brighten from Earth. Except the brightness of the snowy field scene didn't just uniformly increase as one would expect it to, it brightened from one side to another (like the sun had come out from behind a cloud).

[eburacum45]

The science adviser on this film was Brian Cox; an ex-popstar and now a physicist and media star. If he is right, then the mysterious and hypothetical particles called Q-Balls are the reason for the odd effects in the Sun in this movie. I have heard that Q-Balls would have some very odd effects;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-ball
but I am afraid I don't understand one word of that wiki page.

It might be the case that the science is not entirely bananas in this film; I haven't seen it, and the storyline itself might be nonsense even if the science s redeemable.

[Van Rijn]

I took the basic premise of the movie (sun's going a bit dim) as a given, and didn't worry too much about the science behind that. On the technical side, the bigger issue for me was all the unlikely stuff that happened to the ship, and when the ship docked with the other ship.

Aside from the technical issues, the story just didn't make much sense to me. If there was supposed to be a big psychological point in there some place, it went over my head and it left me not caring about the characters at all. I just wanted the movie to be over, and reached a point where I started fast forwarding through it (good thing I saw it on DVD).

[Neverfly]

I took the basic premise of the movie (sun's going a bit dim) as a given, and didn't worry too much about the science behind that. On the technical side, the bigger issue for me was all the unlikely stuff that happened to the ship, and when the ship docked with the other ship.

Aside from the technical issues, the story just didn't make much sense to me. If there was supposed to be a big psychological point in there some place, it went over my head and it left me not caring about the characters at all. I just wanted the movie to be over, and reached a point where I started fast forwarding through it (good thing I saw it on DVD).

I agree. Maybe the story would have worked in an entirely different setting- like ordinary folks stranded on an island or something...

Or the movie "Sphere" with Dustin Hoffman. I enjoyed that movie in spite of some bad science and goofiness. That one has some interesting psychology. Mostly because it amuses me to see a Psychiatrist acting crazy.

[Paul Beardsley]

I took the basic premise of the movie (sun's going a bit dim) as a given, and didn't worry too much about the science behind that. On the technical side, the bigger issue for me was all the unlikely stuff that happened to the ship, and when the ship docked with the other ship.

My feelings exactly. The problem with the sun was simply something to get the film started, and as such it was entirely acceptable. It was the other stuff that stopped the film from being serious SF.

Aside from the technical issues, the story just didn't make much sense to me. If there was supposed to be a big psychological point in there some place, it went over my head and it left me not caring about the characters at all.

On IMDB, some folk make a big thing about it being "about the people". Well I tend to like people movies, but as far as I was concerned, this wasn't one. Looking back, none of them stick in my mind as individuals (except for the poser who kept exposing himself to the sunlight), and when the slasher joined them, it was one more faceless cipher among a group of 'em.

I just wanted the movie to be over, and reached a point where I started fast forwarding through it (good thing I saw it on DVD).

Lucky you - I paid to see it at the cinema.

[adpinc]

I just saw this movie since it came out on cable. I was excited by the premise, given my engineering background and enjoyment of all things physics.

Holy cow this was bad!!

I agree that some suspension of disbelief is required for most sci-fi films, but the writer doesn't event attempt to explain why the sun was dying.

I mean, anyone who knows even a little about astronomy knows that the sun will go red giant as it consumes its fuel. So even if the writer said, "we discovered an anomoly causing our sun to begin cooling down pre-maturely, blah, blah." Nada. Nothing. All I kept asking myself was, "when are they going to explain this whole thing???"

One point that has never been mentioned by anyone - this really should have been a one-way trip. They may have had fantasies about returning to earth, but anyone who knows anything about ESCAPE VELOCITY would know that it would be IMPOSSIBLE to escape the sun's gravity to return to earth. If they had to get that close to the sun to launch "the payload" they would have never been able to leave.

The problem with simply suspending disbelief, as was suggested to enjoy this movie, is that unless the writer explains through dialog how the physics as we understand it can be altered, the viewer must assume that the laws of physics still exist.

I may be on a rant here, but I absolutely hate it when people say, "that was a great movie - the special effects were awesome" but the plot is total garbage. I say that PLOT above all else, is critical.

And one more thing - did anyone think that Capa was in a dream sequence when he jumped out of the spacecraft onto the payload, and then suddenly reappear inside the ship to go and fight the bad guy? Or did he somehow get back to the ship? Did I miss something?

[3rdrate]

Adpinc, you did miss something - he was not back in the ship, but actually riding the bomb into the sun, to detonate it manually.

This thread sort of kills me. I LOVE the BA reviews, but I read them with a grain of salt. I can't get over how annoyed people are in this thread over bad science in films, to the point where it makes a film unwatchable. Look, you couldn't make this movie with "good" science, period, because at best, everything would be totally theoretical and countless arguments would still ensue. How does this work, how does that work? Yes, I'm one of the many who notices right away when sound occurs in space films, and I used to point it out to people. Then I started to wonder - "Hey...Do I really care that there's sound in space? Or do I just want people to know that I know there's no sound in space? And who cares anyway?"

It's also incredible to me that some of this stuff annoys you, because there's SO many Hollywood tropes that are impossible, yet you accept them because you don't know better. Case in point - the classic scene where the villain goes to shoot the bad guy...then CLICK! Gun doesn't fire - he's out of bullets. Right. Except that when a gun is out of bullets, it locks back, making it VERY obvious that it requires a reload. Maybe you knew that and are annoyed by it every time you see it. Maybe you didn't know that, and NOW will be annoyed by it. Try not to be. Try not to be annoyed by any of your favorite medieval films, or westerns, where the archetypes are as far from reality as possible. Seriously - it's one thing to speculate on the future and get it wrong. It's another to completely make up the past with ZERO research. We COULD get it right. We just don't want to.

The closest I've ever seen "actual science" used in a film is the wonderful movie Primer, which made it unintelligible to even experts in the field. And honestly, that's the best way to do it, I suppose. Because at the end of the day, the filmmaker isn't writing a thesis on time travel, he's making a movie that hopefully explores something a lot deeper than pop science. Someone complained about plot, but let's be clear - science is setting, not plot.

[Gillianren]

If you think we only get annoyed over scientific errors, you might want to check out "Movie Cliches That Get on My Nerves," over in Small Media at Large. Or read the pretty scathing review I wrote of The Other Boleyn Girl. The idea that there can't be good science in movies is silly and wrong.

[J Riff]

Just about every sciFi flik ever made, this one was indeed vaguely annoying on the whole. It could have been...wOO we're off ! To the Sun ! Not the boring Moon or Mars..this is the big time, so let's..turn into a stupid waste of celluloid.
But there were some excellent shots of the Sun.

[djellison]

Well- four of us watched this a few weeks ago. Any and all scientific inaccuracies pale into significance compared to the one massive overbearing problem :

It was crap.

We were all wetting ourselves at how bad it was by the end. Just a dreadful movie. Not as bad as, say, Cloverfield or SW Ep 1. But very nearly as bad.

[polit]

uhhhhhhhhh - I was _trying_ to watch this movie. Until they all decided to wrap themselves in foil and jump across the vacuum to get to the other ship.

[chrlzs]

uhhhhhhhhh - I was _trying_ to watch this movie. Until they all decided to wrap themselves in foil and jump across the vacuum to get to the other ship.

Dave Bowman didn't need no steenkin foil..

Haven't seen the movie - I take it they had to go further than Dave did?

[HenrikOlsen]

Not having seen the movie, I'm guessing it's to protect against too much sunlight, not to keep air in.