Sunshine: The plot is elegantly simple: the sun is slowly dying, condemning humanity to a long, frosty goodbye. Hence, we have sent a spaceship, the hubristically-named Icarus II, filled with pleasantly multi-ethnic mix of attractive astronauts and carrying a thermonuclear weapon "the size of Manhattan" to attempt a kind of interstellar jump start. Complication: the ship is called the Icarus II because there was an Icarus I.
The philosophizing here is pretty thin: does re-igniting the sun constitute a grave breach of theological etiquette? After all, the sun is probably the closest thing to a tangible manifestation of God we've got: it keeps us warm, grows food, it's extremely distant (93,000,000 miles away) yet omnipresent, and without it we would die. When the sun goes out, it would seem to be an obvious and momentous indicator of His will that our time is over. Unfortunately, the point gets kind of lost because a) it's put in the mouth of the film's most extraneous, and ergo annoying, character, b) the race against the clock factor is much more interesting (will they have enough oxygen? will they be burned up before they can release the bomb?), and c) I think even the most devout among us would view restarting the sun and saving humanity a minor transgression considering all of the other crap we pull on a daily basis.
Sunshine, directed by Danny Boyle ( Trainspotting, 28 Days Later), is a movie that tries to sample the best of its obvious inspirations: 2001, Marooned, Apollo 13, Armageddon, Alien, and even Star Trek V (yes that one) are scoured for spare parts. In a sense it's too big for itself, trying to tether its brilliant central concept with a metaphorical payload to match; the story almost ends up getting drowned out. Yet for all of the bigness, Sunshine has a decidedly minor key feeling to it, reflected in its muted, but gorgeous coda. It's an ending that proves that the film's questions are ultimately all rhetorical.
