Sunshine

(This was also from November 11 of 2008, although I rewatched "Sunshine" yet again the other night, so it's on my mind -- new comments are in brackets).

I watched most of "Sunshine" again last night. It's an almost-great SF movie that unfortunately falls far short near the end. It's unfortunate, because they set up this great stuff, and then blow it. Now, as is sometimes the case with movies like that, I make "sense" of it by spoofing it a little. What follows contains spoilers, so if you're intent on seeing the movie, don't read it!

[I read in the wiki entry that director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland took a year to write the script, and went through 35 drafts!!! Given how the story lurches badly in the third reel, I wonder what they were thinking in the overall process -- I think they could have salvaged the movie, but were clearly locked in around a particular arc that derailed what could've been a masterpiece]

I think what really happens aboard Icarus II is that Cassie goes insane, and kills off the rest of the crew, projecting this in the personage of Pinbacker. She seems to be the nicest person aboard the ship, certainly the softest, which is why nobody would suspect her. Thinking of it this way, the movie makes more narrative sense, rather than having Pinbacker as this hack-and-slash villain who miraculously survived all that time aboard Icarus I, only to pounce on the astronauts on Icarus II. And it being an "inside job" would account for all of the various breaches of security and protocol that afflict the crew -- that, and perhaps a collective psychosis resulting from their long voyage toward the Sun. The flakiness of psych officer Searle, for example, evident at the outset, busy nearly blinding himself, kind of tripping out, and Captain Kaneda, who's not much better [he is incredibly passive for a spaceship captain]. The crew can basically be split between sane and insane crew -- with Mace, Corazon, and Capa being the sane members, and Kaneda, Searle, Cassie, and Trey being the insane ones. Harvey is mostly a coward, so I guess he caucuses with the insane ones, under the circumstances. Cassie for awhile talks Capa into things, before he eventually gets his wits about him and completes the mission. The key is why is Cassie so intent on stopping the mission? She's easily the most wishy-washy member of the crew, but perhaps that's because she's so keen on maintaining this mask of sanity.

Anyway, that outcome makes it a more satisfying movie than the whole bogeyman-in-space outcome of a straight read of the story gives you. Of course, the film's production people don't really give one the above; there's not enough slack in the story to really run with that interpretation -- everything is what it appears to be. It's just that if they had done the above, the movie would've been more compelling than it ended up being. Plus, it's amusing to think of it like that, since Cassie is so clearly supposed to be the most sensitive of the astronauts, given her constant careworn looks on her face throughout it [a Rose Byrne trademark].

I did the same thing with "Forrest Gump," among other movies -- like you can believe Gump led this uniquely ultra Baby Boomer life, or you can believe he's just deeply delusional and builds this fantasy world out of what he sees on television. I like the latter interpretation, as it mocks the generational fellatio the filmmakers perform on the Baby Boomers, versus it being this case of this dullard leading a superhero's kind of life.

[Other options include having the Icarus II crew actually interacting with Pinbacker -- making him another character, instead of simply a monster out to kill the crew of the sister ship. One could also eliminate Pinbacker entirely and run with the ghost ship in space and the Icarus II crew quietly going insane. The character of Harvey is completely wasted, too -- it's clear that nobody on the crew likes him, and he's not keen to be there (having family at home, it's understandable where his heart and head is) -- but that gets wasted, along with everything (and everyone) else. There are serious flaws in the movie -- bad decisions made at key points that lead to an inevitably bad outcome, and the writers basically just throw the characters into a blender and hit "puree" and that's that. "Alien" was clearly some of the source material for this movie, but "Sunshine" lacks the good writing of that, so one ends up with a movie that has a good enough concept, great set design, a good cast, and half of a good story that is completely squandered by the end, as the writers force the conclusion they want to reach.]

The Last Winter and The Strangers

(this was from November of last year, from another blog)

I watched "The Last Winter" and "The Strangers" over the weekend, part of my usual Halloween frightfesting. Although the former was well-reviewed, I felt there were some big-time problems with the actual writing of the story; it could've benefited from a few more revisions of the screenplay, I think. My sense was that the writers were happy to indulge Ron Perlman in it, and as such, his character got away with a lot more than he should have, to the detriment of the overall narrative. Also, the "hero" in the story would've been better off as an early victim, as he doesn't quite do his part in the story. Further, the story arcs a certain way that doesn't do half the cast justice in it. There were some good eerie moments in it, but overall, I think the work didn't fully use all of its resources.

I was much more impressed with (and scared by) "The Strangers" -- which was a far simpler story than "The Last Winter," but while it might've been only four cylinders, it was running smoothly on all four of them, and made excellent use of terror and dread in the story to build into a real nightmare of a story. The primary weaknesses were the "true story" lead-in to it -- that wasn't necessary, was distracting (esp. since the "true story" basically alludes to the Manson family murders, as well as a creepy personal experience of the director).



It filled me with dread, made me so grateful I no longer owned a home in the country, for sure. I'm used to dealing with city weirdness, but it's a different brand of weirdness to country creepiness.