Sunshine

Watching Sci-Fi movies about outer space brings to one’s awareness the conventions of Hollywood Space.  Ships make sounds as they travel even though we know that sound transmission is impossible in the vacuum of space.  All ships seem to generate full gravity fields.  And the outer hulls are always fully lit although I can’t believe that actual space ships would so waste limited resources.  Just who could possibly run into them?  Given the speeds involved evasive maneuvers must be taken long before an obstacle gets within visual range.  Only young, handsome people become astronauts—if we exclude Space Cowboys.  And given the closed nature of the venue Space movies involve small casts and a single set.  The money goes for special effects. 

 

There is Science Fiction writing that is possible as soon as the time and money is spent on research, there is writing that will become possible once the technology is developed but is centuries or even millennia in the future, and there is Sci-Fi that just plain disobeys the laws of physics.  The present movie is of the third genre.  Our sun has sufficient nuclear fuel to last up to 5 billion years.  At that point it will swell to become a red dwarf encompassing the orbit of our earth.  Reigniting it is outside the realm of possibility.  If you make that jump of suspension of disbelief this movie is still a rather clunky entry as there are many other holes in its science. 

 

Somehow there is too much going on within the scope of this movie and not enough time spent developing any one storyline.  For one thing we don’t get to know the crew well enough to care about what happens to them.  These dissatisfactions build over time and leave us feeling uneasy.  We get little sense of how the various bits and pieces that get thrown at us fit together as a cohesive whole.  As a result of this our willingness to suspend disbelief gets continually shattered by the glaring holes which science cannot support.  At times the special effects look clunky at best. 

 

The actors may give reasonably good individual performances but for a cast limited to eight by circumstance there is no sense of ensemble.  The lack of a cohesive storyline often leaves them and us without a sense of their motivation for the things they do.  I would rate this movie a tolerable time waster only.  Had Future Shop not offered it at $12.99 I would not have picked it up.  It is certainly not worth the $35.00 Amazon wants for it.