This is the movie Event Horizon probably aspired to be, if it didn’t give up and go with the lame supernatural angle. Leave it to Danny Boyle of 28 Days Later and Shallow Grave to bring out the horror, fright and terror people bring upon themselves without having to resort to some deus ex machina solution…I’m looking in your direction Tim Burton.
Fifty years from now, our Sun is dying because something is destroying it from the inside; an impossible object called a Q-ball as explained by the movie’s science advisor Dr. Brian Cox. All life on Earth is gambling on the eight crew members of the Icarus II to deliver a nuclear weapon the size of Manhattan which will reignite the Sun and purge the Q-ball. Definitely a suicide mission.
It wouldn’t be much of a movie if the mission went smoothly. Notice the “two” after the ship’s name. Almost 10 years earlier, the first Icarus left for the same purpose and all contact was lost some time after the vessel passed Mercury. Everyone assumed the spacecraft was destroyed but it’s parked very close to the Sun. Commander Kaneda decides to investigate at the advice of Physicist/Payload Specialist Capa; their reasoning is that the nuclear device they’re carrying may not work so it would be wiser to have two. This leads to the Icarus II getting damaged and now they have no choice but to dock with the older vessel, find out what happened to the crew and cannibalize it for spare parts. Anything further would spoil it.
I really liked it because I felt terrified for the crew. They’re caught between being instantly desiccated by the cold vacuum of space or getting vaporized by the Sun if the ship’s giant deflector fails. The tension amongst the astronauts doesn’t help, this was established immediately to illustrate why Computer Specialist Mace dislikes and distrusts Capa. It didn’t seem genuine at first yet it wasn’t detrimental to the big plot’s execution. I also thought Boyle trying to make the crew as international as possible was a nice touch: two Americans, an Australian, a Malaysian, a Maori/New Zealander, an Irishman, an ethnically Chinese Englishman and a Japanese commander.
SPOILER ALERT: I know it’s just a movie but the ship losing the ability to communicate with Earth before it reaches Mercury is poetic license on Boyle’s part. NASA sent probes there in the Seventies and successfully received scores of pictures on the first planet in our solar system. I guess it wouldn’t be as terrifying if Icarus II could get further advice from home.
Definitely worth renting if you want to see a scary, realistic SciFi flick in the same vein as 2001, 2010 and the first Alien. Even though The Black Hole is plain silly and Event Horizon was disappointing, Sunshine shares some elements from them. Now to see if Dr. Phil Plait ever got around to reviewing this.