Sunshine is a 2007 British science fiction film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland about the crew of a spacecraft on a dangerous mission to the Sun. In 2057, with the Earth in peril from the dying Sun, the crew is sent to reignite the Sun with a massive stellar bomb with a mass 'equivalent to Manhattan Island'. The crew is made up of an ensemble cast consisting of Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh, Cliff Curtis, Troy Garity, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Chipo Chung, and Mark Strong.

The script was based on a scientific back-story that took the characters on a psychological journey. The director cast a group of international actors for the film, and had the actors live together and learn about topics related to their roles, as a form of method acting. To have the actors realistically react to visual effects that would be implemented in post-production, the filmmakers constructed live sets to serve as cues.

Previous science fiction films that Boyle cited as influences included Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the 1972 Tarkovsky's Solaris, and the 1979 science-fiction horror film Alien. Sunshine was released in the United Kingdom on 6 April 2007 and in the United States on 20 July 2007. The film took £3.2 million in the UK over twelve weeks, and in the USA it was placed no. 13 in the box office on the first weekend of its wide release. With a budget of US$40 million,^[2] it ultimately grossed almost US$32 million worldwide.^[3]

Plot[link]

In 2057, the failure of the Earth's Sun threatens life on the planet, compelling humanity to send a spacecraft that carries a stellar bomb payload intended to re-ignite it. The first spacecraft with the payload, the Icarus I, was lost seven years previously for reasons unknown, having failed in its mission. A second spacecraft with a new payload, the Icarus II, is sent to the Sun in a final attempt, as the Earth has been exhausted of the materials necessary to make the bomb.

The design of the Icarus spacecraft, displayed in the opening shots of the movie, incorporates a massive heat shield made of many small positionable mirrors in an umbrella shape at the front of the vessel. This shield protects the relatively fragile main hull of the Icarus craft from the intense radiation and superheated particles of the solar wind, which at such close proximity to the Sun can melt most materials near-instantaneously. The stellar bomb is located just behind the heat shield, with the remainder of the ship, including the engines, living quarters, oxygen garden, computer core, and other structure behind a second, smaller heat shield. This second shield will be used as both protection and a solar sail during the return trip, after the payload is deployed into the Sun taking the larger shield with it.

As the movie opens, the Icarus II is passing into the "dead zone", beyond which the radio communications of the crew back to Earth are lost in the solar wind. Mission Physicist Capa records a last-minute message to send back to his parents on Earth, while psychiatrist Searle views the Sun's filtered light on the ship's solar observation deck, pushing the limits of the computer's safety protocols to view as much light as is allowed.

When the Icarus II passes Mercury on its way to the Sun, communications officer Harvey discovers the distress beacon of Icarus I. Capa is asked by Captain Kaneda to decide whether to change course and approach Icarus I. Capa runs a simulation of the bomb's deployment and detonation, which like all previous runs is inconclusive due to the unpredictable variables inherent in the physics inside a gravity well. After a risk assessment, Capa decides to rendezvous with the stricken vessel in order to acquire its payload, hopefully doubling their chances of success.

In planning the new course, navigator Trey forgets to realign the heat shield to match the new trajectory (systemic design oversight), which results in damage to some of the mirrors on the heat shield, putting the spacecraft and mission at risk. Kaneda and Capa embark on a spacewalk to make repairs while the ship is angled to shelter the damaged portion of the shield, but an unintended automatic override by the ship's computer puts the two men at risk of fatal solar exposure. Capa escapes to shelter behind the shield while Kaneda completes the vital repairs. Unable to reach safety before the shields are completely exposed to full sunlight, he turns back and stares at the Sun as the solar wind consumes him. The incident that caused the override turns out to be a fire in the ship's oxygen garden, started by sunlight reflected from an exposed part of the ship. The fire both totally destroys the garden and dangerously depletes the oxygen levels, making a return trip impossible. Trey blames himself for the losses due to his neglect, and Searle sedates him, assessing him as a suicide risk.

The Icarus II makes rendezvous with the Icarus I, and the lost spacecraft is explored by four men of the crew: Harvey, Capa, Searle, and engineer Mace. While the Icarus I has a functional oxygen garden, the ship's operational computer is found to be sabotaged, rendering delivery of the payload impossible. Mace finds a video left behind by Captain Pinbacker, an extremely religious man, who states the mission was purposely abandoned, thinking it was the "will of God" that humanity should die. The crew of Icarus I is found dead in the solar observation room, having been exposed to unshielded rays of sunlight. During the group's exploration, the airlocks inexplicably decouple, damaging the Icarus I's airlock and stranding the crew members on the derelict spacecraft. In a risky move, Searle stays behind to jettison the three men using the coordinated vacuuming of the airlock to propel them to the airlock of the Icarus II. Harvey is knocked into space and quickly freezes to death in the near-absolute zero temperatures of space, while Searle, trapped on the Icarus I, submits himself to the same fate as the original crew in the observation room, exposing himself to the full light of the Sun.

Five remain on the Icarus II: Capa, Mace, Trey, Cassie, and Corazon. The survivors check the Icarus activity file and discover that someone must have manually decoupled the airlock as there was no hardware failure. While Trey – now the prime suspect for sabotaging the airlock – is elsewhere, the four other crew members discuss that the remaining oxygen reserves would only allow them to reach the Sun to deliver the payload if there were only four people. Everyone except Cassie decides Trey must be killed, but when they go to Trey, they find he has apparently committed suicide.^[A] During a final inspection some nineteen hours before the delivery point, Capa discovers with surprise from the spacecraft's computer that even without Trey the reserves will not last long enough to deploy, because of an unaccounted-for fifth person on the spacecraft. He discovers that Pinbacker is still alive and has made his way into the Icarus II observation room, having sneaked aboard and decoupled the ship from the Icarus I. He is very badly burned because of repeated exposures to the Sun. He slashes Capa with a scalpel and seals him in an airlock.

Pinbacker attempts to sabotage the spacecraft so that it will not complete its mission, removing the Icarus mainframe computer stack from its sub-zero coolant bath, and attacking the other crew members, killing Corazon in the oxygen garden. Mace attempts to undo Pinbacker's sabotage, but is trapped in the coolant reservoir and freezes to death there. Capa, trapped in the airlock, manages to blow the airlock door off, completely decompressing most of Icarus II. He makes his way to the computer core and manually uncouples the bomb from the rest of the spacecraft. Capa then travels to the airlock and jumps the distance to the payload, reaching it just as the boosters ignite. This sends the bomb out of solar orbit and into the Sun's corona, which burns up the remains of Icarus II as Capa enters the payload's airlock. He finds Cassie in the payload section, having been pursued there by Pinbacker. Pinbacker attempts to drop Capa off a precipice within the bomb, but Cassie grabs on to Capa, their combined weight peels the skin off Pinbacker's arm and they fall but the changing gravitational pull of the Sun arrests their fall down the cliff. Capa triggers the bomb in time to re-ignite the Sun. With the sparks of the stellar bomb multiplying, Capa watches the inner surface of the Sun burst through one wall of the payload capsule, as space and time break down, owing to the Sun's immense gravity field. He reaches out and touches it, smiling blissfully.

On Earth, Capa's sister reviews her brother's last message on video while her children build snowmen. Suddenly, the sky brightens, an indication of the mission's success. The final scene reveals that they were building snowmen on the frozen harbour near the Sydney Opera House

Cast[link]

• Cillian Murphy as Robert Capa:

  The physicist who operates the massive star-bomb device. Murphy described the character of Capa as a silent outsider, which was due to the fact that only Capa understood the operation and true scale of the star bomb.^[4] Murphy worked with physicist Brian Cox to learn about advanced physics,^[5] touring the CERN facility and learning to copy physicists' mannerisms.^[6] The actor also studied the thriller The Wages of Fear (1953) with Boyle to gain an understanding of the type of suspense that Boyle wanted to create in the film.^[7] Murphy claims that his involvement in the film caused him to change his views on religion from agnosticism to atheism.^[6][8]

• Chris Evans as Robert Mace:

  The engineer. Evans described his character Mace as one with a military family and background. Mace has a dry and morally uncomplicated personality. Said Evans, "[He] has a very level head which enables him to operate fairly coherently under pressure-filled situations."^[9]

• Rose Byrne as Cassie:

  The space vessel's pilot. Byrne was chosen by the director for her role in Troy (2004).^[10] Byrne described Cassie as the most emotional member of the crew, "[wearing] her heart on her sleeve". Byrne considered Cassie's role among the crew was to possess an even temperament which helps her last the journey.^[9]

• Michelle Yeoh as Corazon:

  The biologist who takes care of the ship's "oxygen garden". Boyle cast Yeoh based on her performance in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997),^[9] and Memoirs of a Geisha (2005).^[11] Yeoh described her character as more spiritual, explaining Corazon's background, as an "Asian influence or that she's always constantly surrounded by organic things – she's very grounded and more down-to-earth."^[12]

• Cliff Curtis as Searle:

  The ship's doctor and psychological officer. He is obsessed with the Sun and how it looks like when staring at it without any type of protection. The role of Searle was originally written to be a "slightly stiff" British character.^[9] Curtis was drawn to the role based on the script and also expressed interest in working with the director.^[13] Boyle was familiar with Curtis from Training Day (2001) and Whale Rider (2002),^[14] and Curtis's audition appealed to Boyle strongly enough to cast the actor as Searle.^[9] Curtis initially foresaw an esoteric approach for his character, but he later pursued a military and scientific approach based on the seriousness of the mission. The actor also compared Searle to the character of Pinbacker, noting their similarities and differences: "[Searle] would sacrifice those beliefs and views, his life, for the greater good, whereas Pinbacker, who's come to a place he believes is right, would sacrifice the world for his beliefs. They're two sides of the same coin."^[13]

• Troy Garity as Harvey:

  The communications officer and second-in-command. He is also the only crew member to be homesick. Garity's previous work was unknown to Boyle, but the director was impressed enough with the actor upon meeting him that he cast Garity. Garity described the character of Harvey as the only crew member who misses his family back home on Earth and attempts to hide the fact.^[9]

• Hiroyuki Sanada as Kaneda:

  The ship's captain. The script originally had an American captain, but scientists and space experts persuaded Boyle to change the nationality to Japanese.^[15] Boyle saw Sanada in The Twilight Samurai (2002), and director Wong Kar-wai recommended the actor to Boyle when the latter sought someone to cast as the Asian captain of the ship.^[16] Sanada's character was originally called Kanada, but he asked Boyle to change the name to Kaneda, a more natural Japanese name. The character was Sanada's second English-language role in cinema, and Sanada learned different forms of English, depending on the circumstances. Sanada's base English language had a British dialect, and when the actor recited official statements as Kaneda, the dialect was official English. In communicating with other characters as Kaneda, Sanada spoke with an American English accent to reflect the fictional situation of the character training with the rest at NASA.^[15]

• Benedict Wong as Trey:

  The navigator. Boyle saw Wong in Dirty Pretty Things (2002). Wong's character, Trey, was a child prodigy who created a computer virus that brought down one-sixth of the world's computers. As a result, Trey is recruited into the space program so his genius could be applied more beneficially.^[9]

• Chipo Chung as the voice of Icarus:

  The on-board computer of the spacecraft Icarus II possesses a "natural-language" communication interface, allowing the crew to ask questions, give orders, and receive status updates and warnings verbally, as if they were talking to a human. Indeed, the ship itself is a major character in the movie. This was Chung's first named film role.^[17]

• Mark Strong as Pinbacker:

  The insane captain of Icarus I, the first ship that was sent to reignite the Sun. Pinbacker was inspired by the character of Sergeant Pinback from Dark Star.^[18] The character's disfiguring burns were influenced by the injuries suffered by F1 driver Niki Lauda.^[19] Boyle described the character of Pinbacker as a representation of fundamentalism.^[20] The director also described the potentially unrealistic presence of Pinbacker as an example of something that breaks the pattern of realism, similar to his scene in Trainspotting (1996) in which Ewan McGregor's character dives into a toilet.^[21]

Production[link]

In March 2005, following the completion of Millions (2004),^[22] director Danny Boyle was briefly attached to direct 3000 Degrees, a Warner Bros. project about the 1999 Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse fire in Massachusetts, but due to opposition from surviving victims and firefighters, the project did not enter production. At the same time, Boyle received a script from screenwriter Alex Garland, who had paired with Boyle for The Beach (2000) and 28 Days Later (2002). Producer Andrew Macdonald, working with Boyle and Garland, pitched the script to 20th Century Fox, who were reluctant to finance the film based on its similarities to the 2002 remake Solaris, which performed dismally for the studio. The project was instead financed by Fox's specialized film unit Fox Searchlight Pictures. Since the preliminary budget at US$40 million was too demanding for Fox Searchlight, Macdonald sought outside financing from British lottery funds, U.K. rebates, and outside investor Ingenious Film Partners.^[19] With financing in place, Boyle entered pre-production work for Sunshine, for which he planned to commence production by the following July.^[22] Since Boyle had previously worked with Fox Searchlight on 28 Days Later, the existing relationship permitted the director with freedom in production, working in a small studio.^[23]

Boyle and Garland worked on the script for a year, spent a second year preparing for production, filmed for three months, and spent a third full year editing and completing visual effects for Sunshine.^[14] After completion of filming for Sunshine, Boyle said that he would not revisit the science fiction genre, citing production as a spiritually exhausting experience.^[18] The director said making the film had conquered his fear of the difficulty encountered in producing a science fiction film, and that he would move on from the genre.^[24]

Writing[link]

Screenwriter Alex Garland was inspired to write Sunshine based on scientific ideas about the heat death of the universe,^[26] specifically "an article projecting the future of mankind from a physics-based, atheist perspective", according to Garland.^[18] The article was from an American scientific periodical, and Garland had wondered about what would result from the Sun's death.^[25] Garland brought the script to director Danny Boyle, who enthusiastically took up the project due to his long-time desire to direct a science fiction film in space.^[27] Boyle and Garland worked on the script for a year, creating 35 drafts in their experimenting.^[16]

The director (Danny Boyle) also considered the story of Sunshine as a counterintuitive approach for the contemporary issue of global warming, with the death of the Sun being a threat.^[27] Originally, Sunshine was scripted to begin with a voiceover talking about how parents tell their children not to look into the Sun, but once told, the children would be compelled to look. Boyle described the Sun as a godly personality in the film, creating a psychological dimension for the astronauts due to its scale and power.^[28] The director also described the film's villain as based on light, explaining: "That's quite a challenge because the way you generate fear in cinema is darkness." The director also sought to have the characters experience a psychological journey in which each person is worn mentally, physically, and existentially and is experiencing doubt in their faiths.^[29] To capture the dangers of the voyage that the crew members went through, the director cited Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything as influential in "articulating the universe's power".^[30]

The story was also written in part to reflect the brilliance and "necessary arrogance" of real-life science when the world's scientists are presented with the crisis that threatens Earth.^[31] The time period of the story, 50 years in the future, was chosen to enable the level of technology to advance to the ability to travel to the Sun, but to simultaneously keep a feel of familiarity for the audience. Scientific advisers, futurists, and people who developed products for the future were consulted to shape an idea of the future.^[27]

To shape the science of the film, Boyle and Garland hired scientist advisers, including NASA employees and astrophysicists.^[31] One physicist, Brian Cox of University of Manchester, was hired to advise the cast and crew after the director had seen Cox on the science TV series Horizon.^[32] The physicist gave regular lectures to the film's cast members about solar physics. Cox also advised the filmmakers to scale down the nuclear device in the film from the mass of the Moon to the size of Manhattan. In the film's backstory, a Q-ball enters the Earth's Sun and begins to eat it away. According to Cox, the Sun would not be dense enough in real life to stop a Q-ball, but filmmakers took creative licence in writing the backstory.^[26]

Boyle originally included romantic subplots,^[33] including a sex scene planned between the characters Capa (Murphy) and Cassie (Byrne) in the ship's oxygen garden.^[34] However, the director considered the attempt for relationships in space too "embarrassing" and excluded the subplots.^[33] Boyle further distanced the characters from possible relationships by ensuring that the cast members wore little to no make-up to avoid any romantic overtures.^[35] The director also avoided including humor in the script with the exception of a few gags, believing that humor was a difficult fit for the story.^[21] "You get intensity of experience in space movies but not joy. So there's not much room for comedy or sex – everything is waiting to destroy you", explained Boyle.^[36]

Casting[link]

Director Danny Boyle chose to have an ensemble cast for Sunshine to encourage a more democratic process, similar to the ensemble cast in Alien. Boyle also chose to have the cast be international in order to reflect the mission's purpose "on behalf of all mankind".^[31] The space crew in the film also consisted of American/Asian nationality because of the filmmakers' belief that the American and Chinese space programs would be the most developed and economically empowered 50 years in the future.^[37] The director had also received advice that there would be advanced space programs with India and Brazil, but the advice was overlooked to avoid creating a cast that was too disparate.^[38] According to producer Andrew Macdonald, the actors were required to speak with American accents to target the U.S. audience as much as international audiences due to the budget level of the project.^[39]

To prepare the international actors for the film, Boyle had the cast undergo method acting.^[35] At the beginning of the film, the characters had been together for sixteen months, so Boyle desired to capture a sense of togetherness among the actors by assigning them to live together. He also enrolled the cast members in space training and scuba diving, as well as watching films together,^[27] such as The Right Stuff (1983) and the documentary For All Mankind (1989).^[40] Boyle also took the cast on a tour of a nuclear submarine to comprehend claustrophobic living conditions. He also had the cast experience weightlessness in the zero G environment of an acrobatic plane.^[27]

Cast members operated a Boeing 747 flight simulator and were introduced to futurologist Richard Seymour.^[41] The book Moondust by Andrew Smith, a collection of accounts of the men who had walked on the Moon, was required reading for cast members.^[42] The book had been assigned by Boyle because it described the lasting psychological changes experienced by that particular group of astronauts. The director sought to manifest the effect by showing the Sun's awesome, radiant power influencing the psyches of the ship's crew.^[43]

Filming[link]

Filming for Sunshine took place at 3 Mills Studios in east London. An elaborate set was constructed, containing eight stages, 17 sets, and detailed models. The filmmakers employed three film units.^[39] Filming began on 23 August 2005,^[44] lasting for 15 weeks, with August and September being difficult months due to the heat and the cast's requirement to wear spacesuits for their roles.^[6] Cinematographer Alwin H. Kuchler chose to film in anamorphic format to capture a physical sense of the light. "We shot certain sequences in a very dark environment, which you get used to, so when the Sun plays a role, we wanted the audience to have a physical reaction to it", Kuchler said.^[45] Due to filming with the actors taking place on a stage, director Danny Boyle constructed live effects so the actors could realistically respond to computer-generated effects that were later implemented.^[46]

To increase the feeling of claustrophobia in Sunshine, Boyle refused to cut back to scenes on Earth, a traditional technique in most films about the planet in jeopardy. The director also maintained an atmosphere of confinement in Sunshine by avoiding filming the primary ship, Icarus II, from the outside. There are only a few outside shots of the ship.^[41] He also attempted to avoid filming star field backgrounds, keeping the ship's exterior pitch black, but he was ultimately compelled to show stars outside the spacecraft to help convey a sense of the ship's movement.^[29]

A scene in a snow-covered park with three stone monoliths was a homage to a similar scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The scene was filmed at a May Day memorial in Stockholm, Sweden.^[47] The Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia, was chosen by Boyle out of six monuments that he considered universally recognisable. The Opera House, according to the director, possessed a "heat-thing" quality that decided it as his choice for a final establishing shot on Earth.

The snowy territory of the final scene was shot in Stockholm, Sweden, and a composite shot was created combining Stockholm's background and the Sydney Opera House.^[27] A slightly different ending was shot after the original but was not chosen as the director felt that it did not fit the film. The alternate ending became available on the DVD of Sunshine.^[38]

Design[link]

The presspack says that the claustrophobic environment in the film was inspired by Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot (1981).^[39] Boyle also cited inevitable visual influences from science fiction films in space by Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris in 1972), Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968), and Ridley Scott (Alien in 1979).^[48] Influences from other science fiction films also included Paul W. S. Anderson's Event Horizon (1997), John Carpenter's Dark Star (1974), and Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running (1971).^[18]

Filmmakers consulted NASA in designing the scientific aspects of the film. Technical specifications for the ship were provided in order to make it more realistic. An oxygen garden was also recommended to provide oxygen for the ship and to enable the crew to grow their own food rather than rely completely on pre-packaged sustenance.^[43] Boyle met with a department within NASA that was focused on the psychology of deep-space travel, and they advised the director that regular Earth routines like preparing one's own food, enjoying its consumption and cleaning up afterwards are activities crucial to an astronaut's sanity.^[49]

The gold-leaf shielding in Sunshine was influenced by NASA satellite designs for deflecting heat and other forms of radiant energy. Director Danny Boyle designed the gold-colored space suits along these lines despite persistent encouragement to model them after the NASA template. The helmets were designed to have cameras mounted in them. This further enhanced a sense of claustrophobia useful to the actors in delivering more heartfelt performances.^[27] The helmets were also limited to a horizontal slit for visibility instead of a full-face visor as further consideration toward protecting the characters from the ambient radiation of outer space.^[29] According to Boyle, the funnel shape of the helmet was influenced by the character Kenny from South Park.^[27]

Boyle included "Icarus" in the name of the ship to continue a theme of bleakness, opining that no American would give their craft such an ill-fated name. According to the director, "They'd call it Spirit of Hope or Ship of Destiny. They'd call it something optimistic... in America they would sacrifice all plausibility, because there would be hope."^[50] The ship's exterior was designed to look like an oil tanker.^[19] The ship's interior was influenced by the design of a nuclear submarine that filmmakers had visited in Scotland, though the space was larger due to NASA's advice that smaller quarters would adversely affect the crewmembers' sanity.^[14] The corpses of burn victims in the film were modeled on the Pompeii victims from the Mount Vesuvius eruption.^[19]

Visual effects[link]

Cinematographer Alwin H. Kuchler provided an idea to render the interior of the ship in the colours of grey, blue, and green, with no reference to orange, red, or yellow. Scenes were intended to be shot inside the ship at long intervals, and when the shot changed to the outside, yellow-starved audiences would be "penetrated" by sunlight.^[16] The visual effects of the sunlight were based on photographs from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory project.^[51] Boyle also sought to pursue inexpensive methods in filming sequences involving actors and visual effects. In a scene where Cillian Murphy's character dreams of falling into the sun, the actor was placed in a gantry around which 20 assistants rotated an assembly of bright lights.

In another scene in which a character dies from solar exposure among the ashes from cremated bodies, massive wind turbines propelled biodegradable dust at the actor in the director's attempt to have the computer-generated effects follow the actor instead of vice versa.^[36] Boyle commented on his approach to using effects, "There is part of our brain where we admire the effect, but we put it in a side compartment of our experience because you know there's no way an actor can live through that, or be there in that moment."^[2] During the post-production process, Boyle hired one visual effects company, London's Moving Picture Company, to work on the film's 750 visual effects. The assignment of a single company was contrary to the industry trend of hiring multiple vendors to work on a film's effects. Boyle chose one company for ease of quality control, though the decision resulted in a prolonged post-production process.^[19]

Score[link]

When the film was mostly complete, director Danny Boyle provided the footage to the band Underworld, who improvised a score.^[35] Karl Hyde of Underworld was influenced by the music of avant garde composer György Ligeti which had been used in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Lux Aeterna by Ligeti particularly influenced Hyde.^[18] When Underworld finished recording the band sent its work to composer John Murphy, who completed the score, resulting in a hybrid between Underworld and Murphy.^[35] The band I Am Kloot also contributed to the score with the track "Avenue of Hope".^[52]

Despite high praise for the score from fans of the film a soundtrack was significantly delayed. This was partly due to "disputes" between the lawyers of Underworld and Fox Searchlight.^[53] Although not available close to the film's debut, the soundtrack was finally released on iTunes USA on 25 November 2008.

Release[link]

Box office performance[link]

Sunshine was originally slated for a theatrical release in October 2006, but the release was later changed to March 2007. The film was finally set to debut in April 2007.^[54] Sunshine made its world premiere at Fantasy Filmfest in Bochum, Germany, on 23 March 2007.^[55] The film was released commercially in the home country of the United Kingdom on 6 April 2007, taking £1,021,063 in 407 cinemas for its opening weekend.^[56]

The film also opened the same weekend in seven other markets, performing most strongly in Hong Kong (US$267,000), Taiwan (US$442,000) and Singapore (US$198,000).^[57] On the weekend of 13 April 2007, Sunshine opened in 22 more markets, garnering US$5.3 million for the weekend. Its French debut was the strongest with US$1.2 million in 380 theatres, but the film only had average performance in New Zealand (US$120,149 from 36 theatres), Switzerland (US$60,285 from 11 theatres) and Finland (US$42,745 from 15 theatres).^[58]

The following weekend of 20 April 2007, the film expanded to 44 markets, garnering US$5.9 million for a total of US$18.6 million thus far, considered a disappointing amount. Sunshine had poor debuts in Spain (US$1 million), Germany (US$638,549), and Italy (US$453,000).^[59] By the end of April, Sunshine had opened to most markets, with the notable exception of the United States, for which a release date had yet to be established at the time.^[57] The film's theatrical run in the UK lasted twelve weeks, totaling £3,175,911.^[60]

The film was originally slated to be released in the United States in September 2007, but the release date was moved earlier to July 2007.^[61] Sunshine was released in the United States and Canada at select locations in Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and Toronto on 20 July 2007.^[62] Sunshine opened in 10 cinemas in the United States and took US$242,964 over the opening weekend.^[3]

The film was released everywhere else in the two countries the following weekend of 27 July 2007.^[62] In the film's first wide release weekend in the United States and Canada, Sunshine took US$1,262,996 in 461 theatres, ranking no. 13 at the weekend box office.^[63] In its theatrical run, the film took US$3,675,753 in the United States and Canada and US$28,342,050 in other territories for a worldwide total of US$32,017,803;^[3] the film's budget reportedly was US$40 million.^[2]

Critical reception[link]

The film currently holds a 75% positive rating out of 162 reviews at the movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 6.8/10. On another aggregator, Metacritic, Sunshine received an average score of 64 out of 100 based on 34 reviews.^[64]

Critically, the film was moderately well received in the UK.^[65][66] However, many found the last reels disappointing, with one critic suggesting the switch to "slasher movie" mode might have been inserted to appease teenage audiences.^[67]

Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four and said that "the [actors] are effective by trying not to be too effective; they almost all play professional astronaut/scientists, and not action-movie heroes", and also that the film "is strongest when it focuses on the sheer enormity of the mission and its consequences".^[68]

Scientific inaccuracy[link]

Professor Brian Cox served as the film's scientific advisor, though he noted in the DVD commentary that several inaccuracies were permitted to allow for plot. He also dismissed criticisms of the film by scientists: "Sunshine is not a documentary. It's trying to just, in an hour and forty minutes, get across a feeling of what it's like – not only to be a scientist, because obviously there's much more in it than that. So, I found it interesting to watch the kind of people that get upset because the gravity is wrong."^[69]

Slow motion during weightlessness was inaccurately portrayed; the director had discovered this when riding the Vomit Comet, but he kept the slow motion to meet audiences' expectations. The film's premise of the sun dying out is also inaccurate, since the sun is estimated to die out in five billion years' time, after becoming a red giant and not by a gradual decline in brightness. Part of the film's back-story included the sun's death being caused by a Q-ball caught in the solar body, but realistically, the sun would not be dense enough to trap a Q-ball.^[70] Another purposeful inaccuracy was the "whooshing" of the ship despite the vacuum — Cox later mentioned in the BBC's Stargazing Live programme in January 2011 that this was simply because without accompanying sound, the CGI shots seemed "cheap". Mercury's orbit was also pictured at many times its actual rate.

When the crew use the airlocks to move between ships without space suits, one of the crew members claims the temperature outside is −273 °C (0 K; −459 °F), which is absolute zero. Not only is this incorrect, as the temperature in outer space is slightly higher, −270 °C (3 K; −454 °F), but orbiting the planet of Mercury behind a heatshield as close as they are, the temperature would be higher than −173 °C (100 K; −279 °F). The low temperature of space would not actually cause astronauts to freeze after a few seconds without space suits, as there is no medium to absorb their body heat.

The film's scientific content has been criticized by "specialists" with arguments often found contradicted by statements pertaining to the film.^[71] For example, the science periodical New Scientist claimed that the nuclear device (stellar bomb) used by the crew would be woefully inadequate to reignite the dying sun (billions of such devices would be required).^[72] The periodical found the film to be confusing and disappointing. Although some argue the "stellar bomb" may have been an unknown type of advanced technology, the film specifically states it they have used "all of Earth's fissile material" and the description of how the bomb works involved atoms "becoming two" (fission). Similarly, solar physicist Anjana Ahuja, a columnist for The Times, commented on the lack of source of artificial gravity onboard the spacecraft, claiming "Danny Boyle could have achieved the same level of scientific fidelity in Sunshine by giving a calculator to a schoolboy". Ahuja was, however, more positive about the psychological aspect of the film, joking that "the psychology of extended space travel is covered well, although we could have done with a space bonk".^[73]

Home media[link]

The DVD for Sunshine was released in the United Kingdom on 27 August 2007. Extras include separate commentaries by Danny Boyle and Prof. Brian Cox, an alternative ending, 11 deleted scenes, web production diaries, and the short films Dad's Dead and Mole Hills.^[74] It was also released on UMD for the Sony PSP. A Blu-ray version was released in the UK in October of the same year. In the United States, Sunshine was released on high-definition Blu-ray Disc and standard definition DVD on 8 January 2008.^[75] As of 17 February 2008, Sunshine had grossed $15.83 million in rental sales.^[76]

Awards and nominations[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Sunshine

• Official website
• Visual effects article at VFXWorld
• Sunshine at the Internet Movie Database
• Sunshine at AllRovi
• Sunshine at Rotten Tomatoes
• Sunshine at Metacritic

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