IT IS 2057. The sun鈥檚 nuclear fires are burning out, threatening to plunge the Earth into a deadly new ice age. To save the human race, a spaceship is dispatched sunward to reignite the star with a nuclear payload 鈥渢he size of Manhattan鈥�. This is the premise of Sunshine, a new film by director Danny Boyle, who has directed such films as Trainspotting and 28 Days Later.
Forget the fact that as the sun burns out, it will actually get hotter. Forget that the sun is powered by the equivalent of 4 billion H-bombs exploding every second, which gives you a feel for what would be needed to replace its heat source if it were failing. Forget that a replacement nuclear power supply would have to be delivered to the core of the sun, not the surface, and even then it would take about 30,000 years for the heat to percolate back out from the centre to the surface of the sun.
Forgetting all of that, is Sunshine good drama? Does the premise provoke a captivating story with believable characters for the cinema-goer to root for in this Herculean struggle to save the world? Despite the effort that has clearly gone into making this film, the answer, sadly, is no.
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Granted, the special effects are excellent. The scenes that show the sun up close 鈥� and the effect it has on the crew of the aptly named Icarus 2 鈥� convey brilliantly the mind-cringing power of our precious star. But having gone to such lengths to place their characters in a race against the odds to save life as we know it, the makers of Sunshine have not managed a well-rounded or complex portrayal of those characters. There is no one to engage with, no one to care about.
Science-fiction films, of course, do not necessarily need good characters. The genre, after all, is the literature of ideas rather than of human relationships. Take 2001: A space odyssey. Without doubt, the characters were lacking in substance, but the film鈥檚 theme of transcendence took centre stage. What, director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke asked, is the next step in the human evolution? The answer, cryptically encapsulated in the shape of the star child floating above Earth, engaged the audience鈥檚 sense of wonder.
Similarly, Steven Spielberg鈥檚 Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the film version of Carl Sagan鈥檚 novel Contact presented situations that fired the audience鈥檚 imagination and conveyed a sense of awe. In Ridley Scott鈥檚 Blade Runner there was the jaw-dropping depiction of a teeming, dystopian future Los Angeles, but the audience engaged with the love affair between Harrison Ford鈥檚 character and an android, a relationship that posed the question: what does it mean to be human?
Sunshine, unfortunately, is redeemed by none of the ingredients of these other films. If it engaged my sense of wonder it was for questions like, why are so many films with significant science content so bad? Why, when it comes to depicting science, is human drama invariably vented through the airlock? Why are people with a technical bent not depicted as real people, with all the fears, jealousies, rivalries, loves and hates of normal human beings?
鈥淲hy are so many films with science content so bad?鈥�
And then there is the science. Why do film-makers need to bend plausible reality to breaking point and beyond for the sake of plot when there are so many real threats facing humanity that are ripe for good drama? Science is pushing the envelope in every direction, questioning our certainties, posing moral dilemmas, illuminating what it is to be human. There is no need to trump up dodgy, nonsensical science. Science is absolutely bursting with stuff that can challenge the heart and mind of the cinema-goer. Is anyone out there in movie-land listening?
