Sunshine (2007)
Directed by Danny Boyle
Fifty years into the future, the sun is dying, and Earth is threatened by arctic temperatures. A team of astronauts is sent to revive the Sun — but the mission fails. Seven years later, a new team is sent to finish the mission as mankind’s last hope.
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What critics compared Sunshine to
There are shades of other wonderful features here: a glorious green garden is reminiscent of the environmental isolation of Silent Running ; the team’s objective is similar to Danny Boyle’s Sunshine , although tonally disparate.
I’m thinking of John Carpenter’s Dark Star and Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running —and the lushly damp-bejeweled hothouse foliage seen throughout High Life appears directly to echo that movie’s environmental imagery (a version of the artificial space jungle also appeared in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine , another desperate-journey drama).
High Life skips the technical accuracy in favor of a compendium of callbacks to other movies set on spaceships: the long, quiet maintenance sessions of 2001: A Space Oddity; the grubbiness of Alien; the flourishing garden oasis of 2007's Sunshine.
High Life follows in the tradition of space horrors like Danny Boyle’s Sunshine and the groundbreaking 2001: A Space Odyssey (and, to a certain degree, the David storyline in the later Alien films, like Prometheus and Covenant) in its questioning of what makes the human experience, what components are required of it, what makes a life.
Their world on the spaceship is not the sterile and symmetrical aesthetic of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey , but a grimy and organic environment of fluids and violence, more like the lived-in aesthetic of Alien meets the philosophy of Tarkovsky’s Solaris or Boyle’s Sunshine .
Manically riffing on “Sunshine,” “Interstellar,” “Alien,” and then “Event Horizon” in a mad dash to obscure the fact that the film looks like a basic cable episode of “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Cloverfield Paradox” illustrates the dangerous cognitive dissonance that can result from a painfully derivative movie about a situation where anything is possible.
1979's "Alien," 1997's "Event Horizon," 2002's " Solaris ," 2007's " Sunshine ," and 2017's " Life ," to name a fewall are far superior space-set variations on similar themes and concepts involving alternate realities, deadly creatures, and a valiant attempt to save the world as the body count rises.
The film is that particular sort of sci-fi picture that most naturally asks to be described largely in terms of the other sci-fi pictures it resembles: in this case, the (wonderful, ever-underrated) 2007 Sunshine passes through 1997's Event Horizon on the way to becoming Alien , because of that universal law which decrees that all sci-fi/horror films eventually become Alien .
As you watch, you’ll think of movies like Event Horizon and Sunshine—and then you’ll immediately feel a need to apologize to those movies.
There’s no antagonist whatsoever in Cloverfield Paradox , not even an abstract one, like the sun in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine , or the merciless void of space in Gravity .
It’s hard not to be engaged by the core concept of the movie, especially as someone who is such a big fan of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s Sunshine.
…its protagonist's technically-grounded astronautic adventure has shades of Interstellar, Moon, and Sunshine…
…the broader premise feels indebted to Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007), written by Alex Garland, about a crew similarly trying to save Earth from a cooling Sun.
Los temas planteados por el guion de Jon Spaihts, quien también colaboró en el libreto de Prometeo (2012), tocan venas cercanas a Solaris (1972) de Tarkovski con la irreverencia post apocalíptica del programa televisivo Last Man On Earth; y la elegancia formal de Gravedad de Cuarón o Sunshine de Danny Boyle; pero tal como ésta última, todo su potencial es destruido por otra angustia, terriblemente banal: la recaudación monetaria.
You won't find Moon's musings on isolation, Solaris' pondering of love and loss, or Sunshine's psychological complexity here.
(Earlier, a slingshot around a burning star likewise recalls Danny Boyle’s underrated Sunshine .)
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This isn’t to put it in the company of more metaphysical movie marvels like “2001,” “Solaris,” “High Life” and two-thirds of Danny Boyle’s “Sunshine.”
We’re in a spaceship this time, and in the cinematic terrain of Gravity, Ad Astra and Danny Boyle’s Sunshine.
Alex Garland, a novelist and screenwriter ("The Beach," "Sunshine") making his feature directing debut, doesn't shy away from big ideas or smart talk, with references to philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and vocabulary like "stochastic" scattered throughout.
But similar to his underrated work scripting Danny Boyle's "Sunshine" and adapting "Never Let Me Go" to the big screen, Garland effectively inspires his audience to ponder big questions while simultaneously feeling the queasy discomfort of good, provocative horror.
Garland—a frequent screenwriting collaborator with Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, Sunshine), making his directing debut—creates an effectively ominous, claustrophobic environment full of reflective surfaces, with characters often appearing duplicated in mirrors.
Written and directed by Alex Garland (making his debut behind the camera after penning screenplays for the likes of "28 Days Later" and "Sunshine"), the story is about a young programming whiz (Domhnall Gleeson) who's summoned by his reclusive CEO (Oscar Isaac) to that man's very remote estate and lab to deploy the Turing test.
Writer/director Alex Garland, who previously scripted 28 Days Later and Sunshine, uses the enclosed setting of Nathan’s compound to tell a bigger story about surveillance, control and artificial intelligence.
The film is written by Alex Garland, author of 28 Days Later and Sunshine (both directed by Danny Boyle) among others.
Known for penning acclaimed films like 28 Days Later and Sunshine , Garland’s directorial debut of Ex Machina in 2014 turned heads.
As the screenwriter for the fiery, closed-quarters Sunshine and the zombie treatise 28 Days Later , Garland moved through the ecstatic wonders of genre fiction before turning his attention to directing with the slippery and imperfect Ex Machina.
This meme-friendly query lingers in multiple films touched by novelist, screenwriter and director Alex Garland, most notably the blood-simple climaxes of his triptych of collaborations with Danny Boyle (The Beach, adapted from his novel; and 28 Days Later and Sunshine, both from his original screenplays), as well as his directorial debut Ex Machina.
Garland’s screenwriting work, on films like 28 Days Later and Sunshine, and later directing work—starting with 2014’s Ex Machina—frequently falls under the umbrella of science fiction or horror.
In each of his films as director and his collaborations as screenwriter for Danny Boyle (for instance, 28 Days Later, 2002; Sunshine , 2007), Garland questions the world and presents often disturbing alternatives.
The former screenplay writer and novelist who was previously best known for his work with director Danny Boyle on "28 Days Later ..." and "Sunshine," made his feature directorial debut in 2014, with "Ex Machina," another sci-fi tale, about a madly rich tech CEO who develops a beautiful robot AI for testing, only to fall prey to his own hubris.
The paragon of this kind of movie (mid-budgeted sci-fi thriller in which a talented cast is picked off one by one) is Danny Boyle’s 2007 masterpiece Sunshine , a grim and quietly influential space-mission yarn.
From Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007) to China’s box office juggernaut The Wandering Earth (2018), this is a common sci-fi premise.
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Prometheus is perhaps the best blend of thoughtful science fiction with classic genre thrills since Danny Boyle’s Sunshine.
Think about the ambiguous, glorious ending of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey or the head-scratching finale of Danny Boyle's underseen, under-appreciated, extremely messy Sunshine, the one where a malevolent force interrupts the mission of an international crew of really chill astronauts and it all winds up feeling like a Tiesto-headlining rave on the sun.
Nothing flashy or explosive; in some ways, I found myself thinking of 1970s science-fiction films, or the best parts of Danny Boyle’s 2007 Sunshine , which grounded its humanist story in deep quiet.