THE LAND OF UNLIKENESS

**Spoiler alert: I reveal key plot points in this commentary. If you wish to see Sunshine without having any surprises spoiled, please skip my piece for now.

I saw Sunshine not as an avid sci-fi fan, but as an avid moviegoer trying to find something to watch that would fit my schedule one evening. Catching Sunshine was something of a happy accident and a sad surprise. It’s one of the better science fiction films I’ve seen in the past few years, even if its conclusion fails maddeningly to live up to the promise of its beginning. The film has a lot energy, develops characters fairly well, poses interesting ethical dilemmas, and offers spectacular visuals that do not merely function to overcome narrative shortcomings. Here’s the story: some time in the future, our planet has plunged into a solar winter because the sun is dying. One space mission, Icarus I, has been sent before the film begins to drop a nuclear bomb into the sun, effectively recharging the star by adding more fuel to its nuclear furnace with a small big bang (I don’t know if this is scientifically possible, but it sounds neat). When Icarus I goes missing, the fate of humankind hinges on the follow-up voyage of the Icarus II and its crew.
Things get dicey on the Icarus II shortly after they receive a distress signal of mysterious origin, which they realize could only be coming from Icarus I. Out of radio contact with Earth and unsure whether anyone could still be alive on the first ship, the Icarus II captain decides to change course and investigate. Several crew members board the first ship, only to discover a dark and frightening fuselage blanketed in dust. The Icarus I members have clearly perished.
What could have happened to them, given that their ship is intact and their oxygen-producing greenhouse thriving? Here’s the big spoiler: it becomes clear through a garbled video message left by the captain of Icarus I that he sabotaged the mission and persuaded everyone on board to go up to the observation deck without using any radiation filters, thereby allowing the sun to burn them to death. (Sun worshippers, take note.) Here’s where the movie stumbles into its third act and reaches for a simplistic twist in order to unwind the plot and explain this mass suicide by sun exposure: as the Icarus I captain’s static-filled recording puts it, the death of the sun must be God’s will and it is not the place of human beings to defy God. Besides, they were all meant to return to dust anyway. So it seems the camera’s slow slide over the ghost ship’s dust-covered corridors and controls isn’t merely a creepy visual: it also highlights the literal meaning of the biblical phrase.
Following this development, Sunshine focuses less and less on the interesting interpersonal and power negotiations aboard Icarus II, made necessary by the change in course and related difficulties. Another spoiler: the biggest difficulty turns out to be the miraculous survival of the captain of Icarus I. The main conflict that emerges for the film’s conclusion pits this renegade, homicidal maniac fueled by religious conviction against a crew that wishes to save humanity. It’s wayward religion vs. secular humanism.
This is disappointing. The film that so effectively keeps us in suspense and delves into clashes of personality and ideology under stressful conditions gives way to a simple, tried, and less than true battle between good and evil. The surviving Icarus II crew members who have strong attachments to family and friends on Earth—good people who believe in humankind and wish to save it—must fight a nearly superhuman enemy who makes vague pronouncements about God and wishes for nothing more than humankind’s extinction.
In the context of a film that takes psychological and philosophical realities seriously and seems intent on probing these realities at the outset, the Icarus I captain makes a less than plausible villain. However, perhaps the filmmakers banked on the general plausibility of a character who would do evil in the name of an unspecified religion. Perhaps it’s an old narrative trick by now to exaggerate the divide between secular humanists and believers. And perhaps this purportedly fixed opposition is enjoying a resurgence, given the intractability of people with a range of opinions intent on persuading the public of their private claim to the truth. Whatever the case, Sunshine does not flesh out its portrait of a zealot or subject him to any scrutiny, but seems instead to tack this character and ending on to an otherwise rich movie. I couldn’t help wondering what other endings the filmmakers could have supplied to illuminate the eschatological questions the story raises in a more satisfying, less unequivocal, and ultimately more real way.

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