Xixax Film Forum

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The Sun is dying, and mankind is dying with it. Our last hope: a spaceship and a crew of eight men and women. They carry a device which will breathe new life into the star. But deep into their voyage, out of radio contact with Earth, their mission is starting to unravel. Soon the crew are fighting not only for their lives, but their sanity.

The film once again pairs director Danny Boyle with writer Alex Garland and producer Andrew Macdonald, who previously teamed up for the thinking person's zombie film, 28 DAYS LATER.

The cast is led by Rose Byrne (TROY), Cliff Curtis (WHALE RIDER), Chris Evans (FANTASTIC FOUR), Troy Garity (AFTER THE SUNSET), Cillian Murphy (28 DAYS LATER), Hiroyuki Sanada (THE LAST SAMURAI), Benedict Wong (DIRTY PRETTY THINGS) and Michelle Yeoh (CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON).

EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK:
http://www.sunshinedna.com/videos/8

My initial reaction to this based on the plot alone had me thinking of something along the lines of THE CORE! But i trust danny boyle and alex garland, so this could be swell

Quote from: squints on June 21, 2006, 10:15:10 AM
My initial reaction to this based on the plot alone had me thinking of something along the lines of THE CORE! But i trust danny boyle and alex garland, so this could be swell

Actually...

Quote from: MacGuffin on February 05, 2004, 12:29:10 AM
Boyle & Garland Creating Sunshine
Source: Variety

28 Days Later director Danny Boyle and its writer, Alex Garland, are back in business with U.K.-based DNA Films and its financial partner, Fox Searchlight. Garland has just sold his spec sci-fi thriller Sunshine, with Boyle attached to direct.

Described as reminiscent of Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 pic The Wages of Fear, which followed men hired to transport an urgently needed shipment of high explosives without the equipment that would make it safe to do so, Sunshine follows a similarly fraught mission in space.

While no budget has been set for the film and no cast determined, Fox Searchlight confirms it will likely be in production by year's end. Sunshine would film in Europe and is expected to carry a budget of between $40 million and $45 million.

TRAILER HERE: http://www.vmix.com/view.php?id=2061018&current_resourceid=2061018&type=video

Danny Boyle's 'Sunshine' Might Be 'Alien'-Like Sci-Fi Breakthrough
Secrecy and major buzz surround upcoming release from 'Trainspotting' director.
Source: MTV

The New Year is young, but already buzz — or at least a sort of preliminary giddiness — is building about a movie that practically nobody has seen. It's "Sunshine," the forthcoming film by English director Danny Boyle, and speculation in fantasy precincts is that this picture could be the next step in the century-long visual evolution of big-screen sci-fi — an artistic breakthrough possibly on the order of "Alien," which brought post-industrial grubbiness to the previously pristine reaches of outer space 28 years ago.

Well, maybe, who knows? The movie's just-released trailer indicates that its most novel element is a really big role for the sun. No longer is deep space just a vast black vacuum sprinkled with stars and hung with huge orbs floating about in poetic slow motion. The sun, that incomprehensibly enormous ball of fiery plasma, heats things up visually, and provides a rich new source of deadly problems for the film's interstellar explorers.

The story is solidly anchored in the sci-fi tradition. It's set at a point in the future when the sun is dying, and along with it, life on Earth. Scientists have developed a sort of bomb that could jolt the sun back to life (or something). One of these devices was dispatched on a spaceship called Icarus seven years earlier. That ship disappeared before completing its mission. Now another ship, Icarus II, is on its way to the sun, bearing another bomb. Onboard is a crew of eight — six men, two women. Each, of course, has a vital scientific specialty. Naturally, not all of them get along. Soon they learn that ... they're not alone.

"Sunshine" looks like an exceptional stylistic advance in the career of Danny Boyle, previously best known for such gritty films as "Trainspotting" and "28 Days Later." The cast is a fresh mix, too, an assemblage of distinctive actors that includes Cillian Murphy ("Batman Begins"), Rose Byrne ("Wicker Park"), Michelle Yeoh ("Memoirs of a Geisha"), Hiroyuki Sanada ("The Last Samurai") and Chris Evans (Johnny Storm in "Fantastic Four").

The movie has been an unusually hush-hush project from the outset (filming and post-production reportedly took well over a year), and even though it's now 95 percent finished, Boyle is still keeping it under tight wraps — the cast and Fox Searchlight execs are among the few people who've seen the whole picture. When will the rest of us get a look? That's hard to say — there's no release date yet (possibly because there's no MPAA rating yet, either). However, March, April, somewhere in there seems likely. Let the looking-forward-to begin.

it's got a great premise and all, but you know he'll just screw up the ending again.

and that trailer looks pretty spoilerful. i doubt the film is 90% action sequences.

henri sanada and michelle yeoh!

There's something about Cillian Murphy's American accent that I find both creepy and mesmerizing.

New Trailer here. (http://www.sunshinedna.com/content/videos/21/stills/KanedaTrailer.mov)

sucked. feels more like joel schumaker than danny boyle. and enough w/ the requiem score in trailers already!

it's a shame b/c the idea is really cool.

Quote from: ©brad on February 27, 2007, 03:45:28 PM
sucked. feels more like joel schumaker than danny boyle. and enough w/ the requiem score in trailers already!

it's a shame b/c the idea is really cool.

wait, did you just review the movie or the trailer?

no, i'm still pretty confident that this will be really good.  the trailer is more standard but it still looks cool and the trailer for Millions made it look pretty shite and that was still great.  so, if its not trainspotting you cannot make a trailer for a danny boyle movie look good.  maybe.

Best sci-fi movie of the year (so far).

Quote from: modage on February 27, 2007, 10:42:37 PM
so, if its not trainspotting you cannot make a trailer for a danny boyle movie look good.  maybe.

"The Beach" trailer was amazing.

Quote from: polkablues on February 27, 2007, 11:55:38 PM
Best sci-fi movie of the year (so far).

Quote from: modage on February 27, 2007, 10:42:37 PM
so, if its not trainspotting you cannot make a trailer for a danny boyle movie look good.  maybe.

"The Beach" trailer was amazing.

but the movie wasn't that great, so the worse the trailer, the better the movie. so this will be great.

Quote from: picolas on February 28, 2007, 12:12:15 AM

Quote from: polkablues on February 27, 2007, 11:55:38 PM
Best sci-fi movie of the year (so far).

Quote from: modage on February 27, 2007, 10:42:37 PM
so, if its not trainspotting you cannot make a trailer for a danny boyle movie look good.  maybe.

"The Beach" trailer was amazing.

but the movie wasn't that great, so the worse the trailer, the better the movie. so this will be great.

Your logic is off here.  But your conclusion is probably correct.

Sunshine Bumped to December!!
Source: Cinematical

Fox Searchlight pulled Sunshine from March ... and today comes word that the flick won't see the light of day until ... December!!

No word on why Fox has bumped the title, but considering we're talking about Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Millions), I'm guessing it's not because the movie is a big fat stink-bomb. (Oh dear lord I hope not.) Perhaps they're still tightening the special effects or just wanted the flick released at a less congested time. But December is pretty stocked every year, so that doesn't make much sense ... unless Fox is holding it for an Oscar campaign, which doesn't seem all that likely.

News from the Sunshine Q&A in Sydney
Source: Moviehole

'Matthew' attended the 'Popcorn Taxi' Q&A with Danny Boyle ("Sunshine") last night – following a screening of the film – and summarised the revelations revealed in the Question and Answer session.

Hey Clint
Even though I thought it sounded like THE CORE II, I really enjoyed it. The Q and A was interesting. There were a lot of kiss ass comments coming from the audience but there were some good questions also. Here's some of the stuff I remember (I tried to take my mp3 recorder in but security was tight). Not sure if any of it would be of interest or not.

* budget was $40 million
* spent 1 year in post production
* over 35 rewrites of the script
* the studio where the film was shot was only 10 minutes from where Boyle lived
* wanted Rose Byrne after seeing her in Troy
* thought Cillian Murphy was too "attractive" to play a biologist, but then met a biologist who was helping out on the film and he was more "attractive" than Murphy, so it justified his casting.
* the final scene was originally shot on DV to convince the studio to give them more money to shoot it properly.
* he would rather be in music than film but has no musical skill.
* put 3 Asians in the ship when he found out over 80% of Americans wouldn't have agreed to the first moon landing if they knew how much it was going to cost. (wanted universal casting).
* after the film was shot, the studio paid for him and 35 journalist to experience a zero gravity flight.
* had the cast live in student amenities for awhile where they had to cook for themselves, to create a feel of solitude and being confined together.
* test screenings went "shit" cause the visual effects were not completed and he doesn't think the audience could look past the incomplete effects.
*his next film is about a guy who knows the answers to things and he goes on "who want's to be a millionaire" because the girl he likes watches the show.
* turned down Alien:Resurrection because at the time he was too scared to handle the amount of effects involved in making the film.

Quote from: MacGuffin on March 12, 2007, 07:28:23 PM
* ... 35 rewrites
* ... 35 journalists

:ponder:

Interview: Danny Boyle
The acclaimed director talks 'Sunshine', special effects and his 'Trainspotting' sequel.
by Patrick Kolan , IGN AU

After reaping some massive gains from his internationally-acclaimed zombie film '28 Days Later', director Danny Boyle is set to tackle another genre - science fiction - with his latest flick, 'Sunshine'. Yet another notch in his genre belt, Sunshine adds an emotional and philosophical spin to this interplanetary tale. We recently spoke to Boyle in Sydney, where he discussed the premise of the film, its design inspirations and his rationale on the credibility of the near-future technology. He also dropped a few hints about his follow-up to 'Trainspotting', based on the novel, 'Porno'.

IGN: After filming '28 Days Later', what compelled you to do another 'genre' release? And why now in your career?

Danny Boyle:Well, Alex Gardner, who I worked with on '28 Days Later', wrote the script. He gave it to me in a pub in London - we met for an illicit cigarette, you know, which we do occasionally - and I just thought, "What an amazing premise for a film." This idea of eight astronauts strapped to the back of a massive bomb, the size of Manhattan Island, flying towards the heart of the Sun where they're going to try to explode it. I just thought "That's pretty cool."

I've always wanted to do a space movie. I know and I love them; and there's not been a movie made about the Sun, really. And yet, it's the most important thing. And you know, we think money's important - we make lots of films about that; we think love's important - we make lots of films about that. This is seriously important. And there's never been any movies made about it! So we thought, "Let's do that", because everybody's focussing on global warming and stuff like that. The fear is that everything is heating up - let's go the other way, flip it, and make a film about global freezing - like at the end of the film. And if Sydney's frozen, you know the planet's in a bit of trouble.

IGN: 'Sunshine' takes place 50 years from now. Why was this time period selected instead of the more distant future or present day?

Danny Boyle: Good question, that. There's no indication in the script, so the key question is 'When is it?' We have this rule called the 'Red Bus Rule', which is that in London 50 years ago there were red buses, and there still are today. They're slightly different, but basically they're something you can recognise.

We thought, right, 50 years in the future it'll have advanced to allow us to travel to the Sun, but the technology will still be recognisable. There will still be screens and buttons and there'll be a feel of familiarity. It's more NASA than Star Wars. It's not outrageous creatures or things like that - it's still within our world, within our possibility to touch.

IGN: What influenced your design choices in the film, such as the golden suits, gold-leaf reflective shield and glow of the Sun?

Danny Boyle: The gold-leaf was NASA - the satellites they send out need that to deflect the heat and radiation. So immediately you take that as being the shield that they hide behind, that the bomb is hidden behind, that the crew shelter behind. And if they have to go out there then you think, well, make the suit of gold - which is a very bold thing to do because basically the producers want you to use the NASA suit because it's the one everybody's familiar with and can't go wrong. But it's good to take a risk and push it a little bit.

The other big question is the helmet. What's the helmet gonna be like, because that's the nightmare of "Are you going to be able to see into it? And how are you going to cover it? Is there going to be light inside it?" All that.

IGN: You actually mounted the camera on the side of the helmet, didn't you?

Danny Boyle: Yeah, inside the helmet. With the helmet, the Sun is so, ah ...dangerous that you have to hide from it. So you make this helmet based on a kind of medieval style to protect them. And it's sort of based on 'Kenny' from 'South Park', as well - the kind of funnel-shape sort of influences it. And you put the camera on the side so you can see into it. It's great. Although it's very uncomfortable for the actors to wear, it gave a kind of claustrophobia that they use, then, in their performances. They learn very quickly what's gonna work, and not. They learn how to use a tool like that, and then that benefits the film.

IGN: The final shot in the film features the Sydney Opera House quite prominently. Why was Sydney, above other cities, chosen for the closing moments of the film?

Danny Boyle: Because, basically you've got six monuments in the world that are universally recognisable and only Sydney has the heat-thing I think. I guess the Taj Mahal,I suppose I could've done as well. In fact, I've just been there [The Sydney Opera House] and it's really interesting - the Opera House. I was looking at it yesterday and it's got this kind grace that's very beautiful and it was nice to be able to do it like that. And hey, Rose [Byrne] is from here, and it's nice to have the connection with that, even though she's playing an American in the film.

We shot it in Stockholm, in fact - the scene and the snow was all shot in Stockholm, and the Opera House was from here.

IGN: And they made a composite of the two?

Danny Boyle: Yes! It's like they can do anything these days! (laughs)

IGN: 'Sunshine' is the latest film you've made that deals with ideas of God, humanity and morality. What is it that attracts you to scripts with these kinds of subtexts?

Danny Boyle: I was brought up a very strict Catholic and I don't practice anymore or anything. I kind of call myself an atheist, I suppose - although quite a spiritual atheist, I hope. You can't get rid of it; it's there. It kind of lurks and hovers all the time, behind you. I think for everybody, no matter what their upbringing - to go and meet the source of life in the solar system - is bound to create a spiritual dimension. You try to cope with something of this scale, of this power and this magnitude, against our smallness and insignificance.

And that was something really interesting - there is a spiritual side to it. But then there's an arrogance about science - a wonderful, necessary arrogance. It feels that it can create a bomb that can affect this enormous, unbelievable, unimaginable power. But science believes that they should be able to do this. That's wonderful; that's creation-science. I guess, if you believe in God, the star is His really.

IGN: Your cast had to endure some interesting training for their roles, such as living in close quarters and studying their movie professions with real-life counterparts. Can you discuss some of this?

Danny Boyle:I always think that actors, especially international actors like this who fly in to London from all these different places, they arrive in a kind of bubble. A little "actor bubble" - that's what I always think. And I was very keen to pop that bubble as much as possible - it pushes them together.

We made them all live together and we did space training and all sorts of weird things - scuba diving, watching films together. You're just trying to bond them as much as possible, because the film opens and they've been together 16 months. You want them to have that familiarity, that sense of togetherness. And indeed you hope that another bubble forms around all eight of them, so that they are a 'conspiracy' together, in a way. Which I think would happen, if they were in space that long together.

IGN: As director, what kind of special research and training do you take part in?

Danny Boyle: We did lots of stuff, really. We went to a nuclear submarine, which was really fascinating - which, apart from oil rigs, is the closest you get to this kind of claustrophobic living conditions. This sense of having to depend on each other at all times.

We went up in an acrobatic plane to do zero-G, which was really exhilarating as well. Scuba's quite a good way of doing it, because it gives you that sense of being in a different world. You just try and do as many of those different things as possible, really. And you get all these different people talking to you - scientific advisors, futurists and people who are developing products for the future. They say what the world will look like in 30 years time. And you kind of soak up as much as you can and then you dump it all, and tell the story.

IGN: Finally, it's been ten years since 'Trainspotting' so can we expect to see the sequel, Porno, in the near future?

Danny Boyle: That's the thing. We've been given the rights to do the sequel to it, and there is a script - a very early script from John Hodge, the writer of the first one. And we got the idea of doing it, but it depends on [the actors] being quite a bit older than they are at the moment. They need to have a bit of age. Our take on it is, their headiness - these guys who lived at the absolute brink, felt they were invincible and felt they could abuse themselves to the absolute limit - suddenly hit middle age. They're in their forties and they look it - but they don't really look it, those actors, yet. They're a bit moisturised up and looked after. So when they get a bit older, we'll have a go at sassing it up a bit, yeah.

IGN: Fantastic. It's been a pleasure!

Danny Boyle: Great! Thanks very much.

well that was spoilerrific.

Quote from: MacGuffin on March 16, 2007, 04:09:40 AM
Danny Boyle: Great! Thanks very much.

New International Trailer here. (http://www.foxmedia.se/films/Sunshine/trailer/trailer480_3.mov)

Quote from: MacGuffin on March 16, 2007, 04:09:40 AM
Interview: Danny Boyle
we met for an illicit cigarette, you know, which we do occasionally

Perhaps if I smoke one of these the trailer will be a lot cooler?

I saw it about a month ago.
I really liked the film, it was a great experience, really got me on the edge of the seat. The photography is amazing, some of those wide space shots are really beautiful. Three films were constantly coming to mind: mission to mars, alien, and 2001.
The trailers are really bad and the film already was some nice weird music, i don't know why they didin't use it in the trailers instead of requiem.

Quote from: rustinglass on March 21, 2007, 02:50:46 AM
Three films were constantly coming to mind: mission to mars, alien, and 2001.

It's a little distressing that they're listed in that order.

The sun is the star
The sci-fi thriller Sunshine sees director Danny Boyle continue his love affair with genre films. But, he tells Patrick Barkham, he's no 'Star Wars geek'
Source: The Guardian
 
Briilllliiaaaannnttt! Danny Boyle in full flow bears more than a passing resemblance to the Fast Show's boundlessly enthusiastic teenager, Brilliant Kid. Today the director of Trainspotting is mostly raving about the sun, Kenny from South Park, student digs, acrobatic planes, CGI hamsters, cordless kettles, Dr Brian Cox, D:Ream, the God particle and Hugh Grant. Grant apart, these things all play a role in Sunshine, Boyle's new film and his first foray into science fiction.

"I am a sci-fi fan," says Boyle, whose boyish lust for life knocks a decade off his 50 years. "I'm not a Star Wars geek. I like the hardcore stuff, the Nasa stuff. But I hadn't thought, 'Oh I must do a sci-fi film.'" Then he read the script for Sunshine by Alex Garland, his collaborator on 28 Days Later and The Beach. "I thought it was brilliant. What a great starting point: eight astronauts strapped to the back of this massive bomb, behind a shield, flying towards the sun. Fantastic. I'd go and watch that."

Set half a century in the future, Sunshine, which cost £20m to make, is not as much of a boys-only affair as it first appears. The hero of this claustrophobic thriller is the slight Irish actor Cillian Murphy, all hooded eyes and sloping shoulders. The sun is dying, the earth in permanent winter and Murphy is the physicist in an eight-strong Asian-American team of astronauts 16 months into a mission to reignite the sun with a nuclear bomb the size of Manhattan.

Boyle reckons Sunshine is the first sci-fi film with the sun as its star, probably because until now we haven't had the computer-generated wizardry to represent its molten fury in flaming close-up. In keeping with his genre-hopping reputation, Sunshine appears a world away from Trainspotting. But it does share one small motif: the CGI sun is "very, very trippy", according to Boyle. "That was one of the briefs to the CGI people - it should feel like hallucinations towards the end."

Three years in the making, the director began by dumping his international cast - including the Australian Rose Byrne, American Chris Evans and more established Asian talents Michelle Yeoh and Hiroyuki Sanada - in a student dorm in Mile End, east London. "They've got some very nice student digs there but it ain't the Dorchester. Actors want to impress at the beginning," Boyle chuckles, "so you take advantage of that by suddenly saying, 'Right, you're here for two weeks.' What you're doing is creating a siege mentality. It's just like football managers. You're making them feel like it's eight of them, alone, against the world. At the start of the film, the characters have been together for 16 months and you've got to make some gesture towards that."

The film's premise may strain credibility, but Boyle devoted his energies to making his actors convince as astronauts in the claustrophobic corridors of a space ship. He took them scubadiving, introduced them to the work of Richard Seymour, a futurologist who invented the cordless kettle, and put them in a 747 flight simulator.

Then Boyle dragged them into an acrobatic plane. "They put a glove on the dashboard and there's a moment of zero-G where the glove just floats off. It's fantastic. It's so they could experience things that they hadn't in their last film. You don't want them bringing that film with them. You want to pop the actor's bubble and let them be part of this film."

Finally, he brought in Dr Brian Cox from Cern, the particle physics laboratory in Geneva, as their scientific adviser. "He somehow makes it accessible and puts it in human terms," says Boyle. "When you begin to learn about the science, it makes your mind swell."

Scientists may scoff at Sunshine's most bonkers bits and may also feel that Murphy is too young (he's 30) and good-looking to save the world. Boyle will have none of it. Take Cox, he says. He is a proper scientist "who is very handsome and used to be in D:Ream. He's one of the backing musicians on Things Can Only Get Better. And he looks like Cillian."

Boyle gave Murphy his big break on 28 Days Later, his 2002 zombie movie. "He's a reluctant hero, that's what's good about him. He's next door actually." Murphy is being interviewed in the adjoining hotel room. Boyle adopts a conspiratorial whisper. "He's quite modest as a person, and he has to be pushed into the centre of the film a bit. He kind of turns away from the camera. I saw him doing that in the Ken Loach film [The Wind that Shakes the Barley] as well. He has to be eased in there and that's really appealing. It stops it being too obviously heroic."

Boyle shrugs off his reputation for uncovering young actors. Shallow Grave saw Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston and Peter Mullan enter the mainstream, while Trainspotting made names of a generation of actors from Robert Carlyle to Kelly Macdonald. Does that make him a great talent spotter? "Huh huh huh. It makes me out to be Simon Cowell. I trained in the theatre. A lot of film directors are quite scared of actors. They are a bit of a nightmare sometimes, but I like them. It looks like cunning, but you try to get extra things from them all the time, by stealth, by making them feel confident, so they trust you and you can push a bit."

As well as deploying natural cunning to create a cast of characters under siege, Boyle ramped up the claustrophobia in Sunshine by refusing to cut back to shots of our planet as "earth jeopardy" films usually do. Most of the action is within the space ship, Icarus II, and he increased the sense of confinement by resisting the urge to frequently show off its magnificent outside ("It's good, isn't it?" he says proudly of the twirling, enormous CGI ship, before explaining that the designers who built it are known in the trade as "hamsters"). Adding to the sensory deprivation are shots of Murphy from inside the helmet of his gold space suit. "We came up with this idea of a Kenny funnel shape for the helmet. South Park was one of the drawings we used as a reference point," he laughs.

Sunshine may mirror the apocalyptic tone of current debates over climate change but Garland, says Boyle, deliberately chose an alternative future: the earth getting colder and science as a saviour. Boyle, however, agrees his film is about the hubris of science. He tried to imbue his actors with the "uncompromising, cold eye" of scientists. He lowers his voice again. "Brian Cox is the nicest guy, but he's so arrogant. I used to tell the actors to watch the way he'll just go 'no'. He works at Cern, where they are looking for this particle they nickname the God particle. There is a tiny, tiny chance that when they collide these protons they'll create a black hole into which we'll all disappear. I said, 'You're still going ahead with it?' He said, 'Don't worry about it, you won't know anything about it [if it happens].' Everything will be gone!

"We had this argument in the bar last night. He said it's absolutely critical we use nuclear power and Cillian said, 'What about the Irish sea? It's so polluted and there's all these leukaemia clusters.' And Cox went, 'If we use nuclear power we can give light and food to a million people in Africa and you're worried about a few hundred people in Ireland?'"

In keeping with his habit of hopping between completely contrasting projects, Boyle's next scheduled film is Slum Dog Millionaire, based on a true story about a boy who wins the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire but faces the widespread suspicion that he cheated. Boyle has just come back from a scouting trip to Mumbai, where it sounds like the pace of life would suit his kinetic film-making.

Before the sun burns out, Boyle, slightly surprisingly, says he'd like to work with Hugh Grant. He also hopes to team up with McGregor again. The pair fell out badly when the director refused to cast his usual leading man in The Beach. They have only spoken a couple of times since and, momentarily, Boyle's enthusiasm dims. "I don't really hang out with actors. You can't really be top friends with actors as a director because you are often judging them about something they want to do and you won't give them."

Although some years back McGregor publicly dismissed talk of a sequel to Trainspotting in the form of Irvine Welsh's novel Porno, Boyle still holds out hope. "I'm sure we will get back together again, I hope we can, because we had a really good run. He's one of those guys who can do it, who has got that magic thing that people love. You don't come across it very often."

The script for Porno "starts with this amazing premise. Begbie is in jail for 17 years for manslaughter." Boyle sounds perky again. "He gets this guy to stab him so he can go into hospital and break out and this guy stabs him in the wrong place, in the kidney." He doubles up, chuckling. "You can feel the characters straightaway. We just need the [Trainspotting] actors to feel a bit older. They look like they're in a spa every weekend rather than a bar. But when age hits them we'll be there, waiting."

2007: a scorching new space odyssey
One of the most exciting British movies this year is Danny Boyle's sci-fi epic, Sunshine, which puts the divine back into a genre that had lost its way. To film-makers, it seems, the infinite has a spiritual attraction
Source: The Observer

At a key moment in Danny Boyle's radiant new sci-fi film Sunshine, a character is asked, 'Are you an angel?' With its retina-scorching visuals, which blaze from the screen into the dark abyss of the cinema auditorium, this extraordinary epic certainly seems to burn as brightly as a host of fiery angels. Set in 2057, Sunshine follows the crew of the spaceship Icarus II as they attempt to deliver a thermonuclear payload into the heart of the sun, lending new light to our galaxy's inexorably darkening star. En route, they pick up a distress signal from their lost predecessor, Icarus I, which disappeared into the void seven years earlier. Like an interstellar Marie Celeste, the first Icarus now hangs in space like a ghost ship, seemingly without a soul in sight. But as the reason for its mission failure is gradually revealed (more psychological than scientific), the crew of Icarus II fall prey to the eternal inner demons which haunt those who fly too close to the sun.

Shot not in Hollywood but in the 3 Mills studios in London's East End, Sunshine boasts extraordinary computer graphic imagery so luminescent you feel you could get sunburn just watching the film. As a sensory experience, it's overwhelming. But perhaps more importantly, Sunshine also harks back to a time when sci-fi turned its attention not toward the hallowed teen market but toward the heavens. Although screenwriter Alex Garland has said the inspiration for the film came from 'an article projecting the future of mankind from a physics-based, atheist perspective', this ambitious British fantasy increasingly blurs the boundaries between science and religion. In this respect, it falls within a grand tradition of adult-orientated science-fiction which is haunted by the question of divinity, whether as a presence or an absence.

These ideas are familiar to director Danny Boyle, who had a traditional religious upbringing, and planned to join a seminary at the age of 14. 'I was at school in Bolton,' he remembers, 'and all set to transfer to this seminary near Wigan. Then one of the priests told me that maybe I should wait, maybe I should stay and finish my school education. Quite soon after that, I saw A Clockwork Orange, which was the first film I went to see by myself. And it just changed everything. I know it all sounds too neat, but that's what happened.'

Boyle went on to make Trainspotting, which has been dubbed 'the Clockwork Orange of the Nineties' - a viscerally hip portrait of anarchic youth culture which became both a controversial modern film classic and a defining pop icon. Yet despite his current free-form agnosticism, Boyle's films have continued to be haunted by the detritus of his religious background, from the worldly angels of the romantic fantasy A Life Less Ordinary (which owes a debt to Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death aka Stairway to Heaven) to the solidly earthy apparitions of saints who appear to the young hero of the underrated Millions. Other Boyle hits include 28 Days Later, a Garland-scripted zombie shocker set in a terrifying post-apocalyptic Britain. Now, with Sunshine, Boyle has set his sights higher than ever before, making a film which addresses 'what happens to your mind when you meet the creator of all things in the universe'.

Sci-fi fans will see a range of familiar texts echoed in the broadstrokes outline of Sunshine, most notably Paul WS Anderson's Event Horizon, a flawed but fascinating Nineties Brit-pic in which a lost spaceship re-emerges from a black hole having been to hell and back - literally. There are also nods to John Carpenter's Seventies cult classic Dark Star, in which co-creator Dan O'Bannon plays Sgt Pinback, whose oddball moniker inspired Sunshine's most mysterious character, Pinbacker. O'Bannon went on to co-write Alien, Ridley Scott's deep space shocker to which so much modern sci-fi owes a debt, and with which Sunshine shares its use of the time-honoured 'intercepted distress signal' motif. And then of course there's my own personal favourite, the underrated sci-fi masterpiece Silent Running - Doug Trumbull's eco-warning dystopian fantasy in which the last of Earth's forests are consigned to giant geodesic domes in space, an idea that appears to have blossomed into the 'oxygen gardens' aboard the Icarus spaceship in Boyle's 21st-century adventure.

Yet the primary heavenly body around which Sunshine charts its orbit is Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a weighty and portentous work which opens with 'The Dawn of Man' and climaxes with the birth of a Star Child in what appears to be an extraterrestrial rewriting of the creationist myth. Just as God creates Adam in his own image in Genesis, so the 'aliens' of 2001 transform a dying astronaut into a perfectly formed space baby, the first of a new species which will return to earth (presumably) to herald the next age in man's cosmic evolution.

This conclusion may be obliquely expressed (I remember thinking 'what was all that about?' and having to read the novel to find out) but the mesmerising symphony of sound and vision which constitutes the film's final act clearly suggest a metaphysical encounter way beyond the realms of rational explanation. Dubbed 'the ultimate trip', Kubrick's psychedelic movie used music by the avant garde composer Gyorgy Ligeti, which Underworld's Karl Hyde admits profoundly influenced his own work on the music for Boyle's new film. 'I'd never heard anything like it,' says Hyde of Ligeti's Lux Aeterna, which sounds for all the world like choirs of alien angels ringing throughout the heavens, investing 2001's baffling denouement with undeniable overtones of religious ecstasy and unearthly transcendence.

There's a strikingly similar blend of science and theology in Sunshine, in which whizz-kid physicist Capa (played by the ethereally blue-eyed Cillian Murphy) comes face to face with his maker in the shape of a dying sun. Just as the enigmatic monoliths from 2001 act as creative gods to the earthlings, so the sun serves as both the giver of life and the source of all knowledge in Boyle's soul-searching movie.

'I tried to keep it visual,' says Boyle, 'because some of the ideas in the film are very hard to talk about. But when we were making Sunshine, which involved a lot of post-production special effects, my responsibility to the actors was to describe to them what they would be seeing. I was brought up in a religious environment, and so my natural tendency was to lapse into descriptions which were broadly creationist. I'd be saying things like: "Kneel before the source of all creation, bow down before the source of all life!" And even Alex [Garland], who is quite an aggressive atheist, has that same cultural instinct in the language that he uses.'

So too, it appears, does Sunshine's scientific consultant Dr Brian Cox, who works at Cern (the Centre for European Nuclear Research), the world's largest particle-physics laboratory. According to Boyle, Cox's work includes the pursuit of the 'Higgs boson', the missing piece in the current theory of the fundamental nature of matter which is affectionately known amongst scientists as the 'God particle'. 'Brian Cox admits that you can't really speak about these things without allowing for what some people would call a "spiritual dimension",' says Boyle. 'The question is, of course, whether that spiritual dimension is just a constraint of the language - the fact that we simply have no other vocabulary to describe such things. I think that's what Alex believes. But for me, what Capa sees at the end of the movie is definitely something beyond the rational.'

The other significant star in Sunshine's cinematic galaxy is Tarkovsky's Solaris, a sombre Russian classic which, like 2001, uses a journey into deep space to dramatise a symbolic voyage into the very soul of man. Tarkovsky and Kubrick were aware of each other's work, and their joint efforts represent the twin peaks of a neo-spiritualist brand of science-fiction cinema which reached its apotheosis in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Other contemporaneous works (which flourished in the period before Star Wars turned sci-fi into an amusement park ride) include John Boorman's bonkers Zardoz, a self-important romp with philosophical pretensions. Here, Sean Connery (in leather straps, boots, and fetching posing pouch) can be found climbing inside the mouth of the flying deity Zardoz which rules the wastelands of the earth in a godforsaken near-future. Zardoz is meant to be a marauding, all-powerful divinity but, as Connery's Zed discovers, he is nothing more than a false idol - a smoke-and-mirrors illusion like the Wizard of Oz ('Zard-Oz', geddit?). The movie was pretentious, boring, and very, very silly. But its adults-only X-rating and esoteric script spoke volumes about the grown-up aura that sci-fi had attained in the wake of 2001 and Solaris

Nor were the theosophical tendencies of the genre utterly quelled by the kidtastic assault of George Lucas and his clones. Although Star Wars and its spin-off sequels and prequels played primarily to a congregation of children and arrested adolescents, the endless ooga-booga about 'The Force' and 'The Dark Side' have since flourished into something resembling a modern religion which commands an army of merchandise-hungry disciples. I can't stand the Star Wars movies, which always seemed to me to represent a gross infantalisation of the dark hearted 'serious' sci-fi (Quatermass and the Pit, Silent Running, Soylent Green) on which I was raised. But I've heard pulpit preachers quote Yoda in their attempts to engage young people with religion, the battle between Good and Evil having been played out in the popular imagination as a war between Sith Lords and Jedi Knights.

Even Captain Kirk has dabbled in the search for God, most egregiously in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier in which the Enterprise boldly goes 'through the barrier' between this world and the next. One sub-2001 light show later, and Kirk is splitting infinitives in heaven. Of course, it all turns out to be a Zardoz-style con, but not before everyone has had a chance to pontificate at great length about the meaning of paradise and the nature of the divine being. (The film was directed by William Shatner himself, which perhaps explains why God turns out to be no match for Captain Kirk.)

Danny Boyle sensibly prefers Robert Zemeckis's 1997 film Contact, large swathes of which involve heated debate about whether a priest, a psychoanalyst or a particle physicist would be best placed to represent mankind in our first meeting with extraterrestrial life-forms. 'I was there on opening night,' says Boyle, a devoted sci-fi fan with an enthusiasm for the genre in all its forms. He was even slated to direct the third Alien sequel but backed out due to anxieties about the level of special effects and the studio's evident desire for a nuts-and-bolts, action-orientated romp.

Having completed Sunshine, however, this endlessly energetic filmmaker has no plans to revisit sci-fi, which has a habit of producing creative burn-out. 'There's a reason why many directors only make one science-fiction film,' he says.

'It's because you exhaust yourself... spiritually. I do think that I've become more spiritual working on this - you have to be open-minded. The interesting thing is that the more commercial sci-fi films, like Event Horizon or Alien, tend to go for Hell in space. But maybe its more ambitious to aim for Heaven...'

Five-star sci-fi

2001: A Space Odyssey
(Stanley Kubrick, 1968) Arthur C Clarke's short story 'The Sentinel' provided the inspiration for Kubrick's work in which enigmatic alien monoliths play God, leading mankind on a voyage of discovery - 'beyond infinite'!

Solaris
(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972) Art-house fans howled in 2002 when US director Steven Soderbergh launched his remake of this revered Russian classic, which many consider a poetic riposte to the cold 'inhumanity' of 2001.

Dark Star
(John Carpenter, 1974) Astronauts amble through space with a talking bomb with delusions of its own deity in this low budget cult classic. 'In the beginning, there was the darkness ... and there was also me. Let there be light...'

Altered States (Ken Russell, 1980) Apocalyptic religious imagery abounds as William Hurt's drug-addled Harvard Scientist journeys into inner space in search of 'that true self, that original self, that first self ... tangible and incarnate. And I'm gonna find the fucker!'

Event Horizon
(Paul WS Anderson, 1997) Space travel turns into a journey to hell. 'I created the Event Horizon to reach the stars!' burbles Sam Neill's astro-boffin. 'But she's gone much further than that - to a dimension of pure chaos, pure evil!'

The Danny Boyle Webchat Transcript
Source: Empire Online

From the back streets of Edinburgh to the very empty streets of London, via the beaches of Southeast Asia, Danny Boyle's career behind the camera has taken him to some extreme locations with some very extreme characters. But the director has always managed to keep two feet firmly on planet Earth. With the release of his new sci-fi extravaganza Sunshine, that's all changed. Danny Boyle joined us here at Empire on 5 April 2007 for his exclusive live webchat where the readers of Empire had the chance to quiz him on his latest film and a whole host of other topics.
So, read on for the full transcript, in which Danny discusses his next project, his thoughts on Hot Fuzz, and what he really thinks of Michael Bay...


Rikkie: Danny, great to have you here. Let's face it, thinking about space a bit too much can make your head reaaally hurt. How many times whilst making the film did you yourself go through existential moments of "why am i here"?
Pretty much all the time really. Your head kind of pulses when you hear some of the facts about it. It loses five thousand million tonnes of mass every second. And yet it will burn for another four and a half billion years. You can't get your head around that - you just have to submit!

PDM: Was there ever a point when you considered actually setting the film 4.5 billion years in the future, or did that just seem to impossibly ambitious to imagine?
Good question! First time I've had that, very clever. Clever, but expensive!

Ross: Mainstream Hollywood big budget disaster movies have always made out the Americans to be the only supreme race that can resolve any of Earths problems - be it war or natural causes.
Yeah... Well, the Americans are always right, aren't they?

Ross: My question to you Mr. Boyle is during the start of the production of Sunshine did you make the decision to cast an international cast to break free of the predictable and lets face it the unlikely conclusion that only one nation can save Earth?
Yeah. In truth, in 50 years time, it will be entirely Asian. They will be leading the space race. Between India, China, Japan, Korea etc. But you have to have some Americans still in it, for the cinematic market I guess. But it was a chance to work with Michelle Yeoh, that was the real reason! The coolest Bond girl ever... 

elasticfrog: Hi Mr Boyle (Danny if I may) I am a budding cinematographer and I have always been impressed with your experimentation with people like Darius Khondji and Anthony Dod Mantle and I was wondering how you approached Sunshine visually.
Great cinematographer, Alwin Kuchler, on this one. A real prince of darkness. My kind of eyes, really, on the movie. He had this amazing idea of keeping the interior of the spacecraft all grey, blue and green. No reference to orange, red, yellow. And then when you go outside the ship, you re-introduce yellow, having been starved of it for 20 minutes. We wanted the light to literally penetrate people's bodies.

gritman: directing a big budget sci-fi, where you scared that your film would be compared to the classic greats, or was your aim to be nestled nicely underneath them? Or where you aiming to produce a classic of your own?
I can't say that, but you can. There's a plateau that you have to approach, and on it perch 2001, Tarkovsky's Solaris, and Ridley Scott's Alien. Up to you to judge whether we get on it or not.

statostatostato: Hi Danny, Loved Sunshine (and really ALL your movies)-What was the inspiration for telling this story? Was it a case of yourself and Alex Garland developing it together?
Alex wrote the script and then we worked on it for a year together. Eventually 35 drafts were produced, but some of them were just correcting spelling mistakes. Some steps forward, some sideways, but you try to do all your experimenting in the script... Because it's the cheapest area you ever work in. Once you lock the script and start shooting you keep very faithful to it.

naomi: Hi Danny. Why do you keep working with Cillian (and I mean that in a good way)?
(Laughs) He's made some really good films since I've worked with him, and I was hoping some of it might rub off on me.

FameAsser: 28 Days Later brought about a new Era of Zom-flicks...I wanna know how 28 Weeks Later is shaping up. Are we going to be sat saying "its the same as Days but with American characters" or is there a whole new area of Zombification to explore in the new film?
It's got an amazing landcsape of a deserted London. Different from the first film because it'sshot by a Spanish director, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, and an Ecuadorean cameraman, Enrique Chadiak. And they bring an outsider's eye to the capital. The rest of it is so violent I don't know whether you'll ever be able to see it!

punchdrunk: Also you have a lot of badly made sci-fi made to compete against, how have you combated people's negative expectations of sci-fi genre when marketing the film?
You just try to invoke the great ones, really. And hope you get close to them. Audiences are very intolerant of small mistakes in sci-fi. And rightly so.

s02bf16c: Hello Danny, Its been reported that Sunshine was at times a pretty damn difficult shoot, will it be a while before you return to the Sci-Fi genre?
I will die before I return to sci-fi.

Rikkie: I'm really really looking forward to hearing the Underworld soundtrack, is there any news of an OST release for Sunshine? (By the way, give Rick and Karl a nudge to do some gigs in the UK.)
Rikkie, they're getting a new album ready right now and then they'll tour I guess. It was one of the big buzzes for me, getting them to do the soundtrack. 

gritman: you seem to be tackling each genre of film with great force, I'm interested to know if this is your intention to show your diversity as a director, and what area can we expect to see next?
Gritman, you don't see it like that until afterwards, when you start to publicise the films. But it's lovely to do different genres, because it involves long afternoons of research in front of the telly.

kevincolmcondon: If there was some sort of horrible parallel dimension where Danny Boyle wasn't a film maker, what would you think he'd be doing instead of making flicks?
Train-driver. I've always wanted to be a train-driver.

FameAsser: Danny, before Trainspotting, you directed a lot of TV projects. Is it something you would ever consider returning to, or does the bank balance suggest that movies are the only way to go?
No, I love TV. Apart from American Idol, what do I watch religiously...? (Thinks) I watch Hollyoaks over my daughter's shoulder... (Publicist requests that Danny withdraw this answer)

rhubarb: Danny, is there a chance you'll return to the Trainspotting world, by filming the sequel, Porno?
Oh yes. When the actors age sufficiently so they look a bit more shagged-out, we'll be waiting for them with the sequel.

dcox: Just come in late so apologies if anyone's already asked this, but are we ever going to see Alien Love Triangle? Or at least your section of it?
I'd love it to come out as a DVD extra, because it's only 25 minutes long. But the Weinsteins own it and it means doing a movie for them first, I think.

Michael J Dowswell: Hi Danny, hope you are well and have managed to get some sleep after directing Sunshine. Struggling (very struggling) filmmaker here in rural South West Scotland. Question: what is the single best piece of advice you would give to a struggling filmmaker?
Persistence. You'll need a lot of it. Pictures - collect them and distribute them to your crew. Trust the actors to get you out of a corner, where you will certainly find yourself.

Jack Bauer: I heard a funny rumour that people approached you for Transformers, is this true or just a big fat lie?
(Laughs) All I can say about Transformers is that I hope Michael Bay doesn't find himself near me when he's on fire.

chanting_ray: Our script has been universally loved. Problem is that the actors willing to attach, we're told aren't big enough, the actors big enough to bring finance, won't attach until we're fully financed! How can we break out of this chicken and egg scenario?
Lower your costs, chanting_ray. Lower your costs.

rhubarb: if you were on the ship to save the sun and could only take three films with you, which would they be?
Good question!! Wow... Apocalypse Now, as always. Don't Look Now. And Au Revoir, Les Enfants.

kevincolmcondon: What are you considering as your next project?
Slum Dog Millionaire. Written by Simon Beaufoy of Full Monty. Set in Mumbai, it's the true story of an illiterate slum kid who goes on the Hindi version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and wins it. Like chanting_ray I'll have to keep the costs down.

gritman: On the Empire webchat with Neil Marshal, I asked what he thought of your film 28 Days Later. he said he loved the beginning, but not so much the rest. so what do you think of his big film The Descent? (ps he said you where a lovely man!)
I don't believe that. He must like the whole film - he virtually copied it for The Descent!

Benjamin Dover: Ok, If you were locked in a room, detoxing from herion, seeing babies in the ceiling, what 3 cds would you bring?
(Winces) This is sooo tough. Seriously, there's a great New Order song called Subculture, which is a forgotten, really great New Order track. (Thinks) I'll come back to the rest...

v for vienetta: Apologies for my lateness, been for a pub lunch. Danny, Shallow Grave's on tonight, will you be watching?
(Laughs) Where's it on? Oh, I know, there's some pillock introducing it, I think. Me!

elasticfrog: In your films I have loved the dark comedy, does comedy come natural to you and would you consider going further into the comedic direction? I think you could take Will Ferrell to the dark side - a womanising, elephant poacher maybe?
You're not allowed to mention Will Ferrell, as he opens this weekend in a movie as well. If you go to see his film, please buy a ticket for Sunshine and then just switch cinemas when the lights go down.   

SSO-M: what do you want people to learn while watching Sunshine?
I want people to literally journey to the sun. I think that's what only a movie can do. Nothing else can give you that. A mental and physical journey.

tonywatkins: I'm most intrigued about whether the sun is a metaphor for something else, and therefore what you want the audience to come away with?
It's not really prescriptive in that way. It's about what's biggest in your own mind.

scudder: Hey Danny. Sunshine seem like the spiritual successor to Alien, but is there any film that you would actually be tempted to remake? Especially as this year's Oscar winner is a remake.
I've recently been offered Don't Look Now and The Man Who Fell To Earth. Two Nic Roeg films which I love - how could you ever consider remaking them?

thenextbenhersom: You're famous for being such a diverse filmmaker, what do you look for when you're choosing your next project?
Passion, exhilaration, a kind of buzz. The kind of buzz I got from watching Apocalypto. Barking mad but brilliant.

lane11011: You mentioned your next project 'Slum Dog Millionaire'. It struck me as a similar premise to your film 'Millions'. Is the thought of a kid winning lots of money one you dreamt about yourself as a kid or do you just like the idea?
I love making films about money, that goes without saying! Godard said all you need to make a film is a girl and a gun. I think the British equivalent is a girl and a bag of money, because we don't have guns!

EchteG: Danny, there's a Golden Globe nominated Hungarian movie called Sunshine directed by Istvan Szabo. Did you see it?
We had a lot of problems securing the title because Hollywood Studios have an agreement not to duplicate titles, so ther'es no confusion in the DVD shop. The real reason is they wanted a different title, like Solar Earth Mission. Or Endeavour Enterprise. But we loved Sunshine.

Jay: Danny, as a keen and geeky reader / game-player, I was wondering if there's anything else you're interesting in adapting to film? And yes, Sub-Culture is fantastic.
Alex Garland is the game-player. I'm more music really. I'd like to make a film about The Undertones.

jigs: If you could sit on another director's set for learning purposes, who's would it be?
Ken Loach. In fact, Krzysztof Kieslowski said that he would kneel on a Ken Loach set.

Cloudinsane: So, Danny - why do you freeze frames during intense and heightened scenes in your films?
In Sunshine it's because time and space are distorting. In the other films it's because it's cool.

Robyn: Have you ever (like some other stars have admitted to) 'Googled' yourself? or looked yourself up on Imdb....especially since they've introduced the STARmeter bit?
When my daughter's not watching Hollyoaks, she's Googling me, so I watch over her shoulder then as well.

Mr Phil: Talking of space, have you ever been on a donkey ride on Blackpool beach?
Many, many times.

kevincolmcondon: It seems the earth and its mother is trying to cash in on the superhero genre, have you ever considered joining that exclusive club that includes Bryan Singer, Richard Donner and Tim Burton?
I think there was something in the Empire review about directing a superhero film! I'm not really a comic-book person. I'm more music.

jigs: Have you any interest in directing the third installment of Kieslowski's Heaven, Hell, Purgatory trilogy?
No but I'd love to put The Double Life Of Veronique on my CV. 

Benjamin Dover: Danny, what kind of budget does one need to make a Zombie film like 28 Days Later? And how many litres of fake blood does one need?
It's not a zombie film - how many times do we have to say?!

tonywatkins: What is it you particularly admire about Loach? Would you film in a strictly chronological way like him?
Perfomances. Chronological shooting. No bullshit. And only he, along with David Bowie, has turned down one of those ridiculous awards from the Queen.

Donnie24: Would you like to work with Cillian or Ewan again or do you not belive in repeating actor director partnerships e.g Depp and Burton, De Niro and Scorcese?
Both great actors. Would love to do something with them when we find something right.

Aaron: The soundtracks, particularly in Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, really made the films for me and are an unforgettable part of the experience. Do you personally choose the tracks for your films, and for orchestral stuff, who is your favourite composer?
Yeah, I choose all the music. And I upset composers by replacing their stuff with pop songs. John Murphy is my favourite, as he used to play backing musician in Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

EchteG: What's your favourite scene from Sunshine?
There's a great scene where they vote on killing a member of the crew to save oxygen. Very simple, the best scene Alex Garland has ever written, and when they're that good they shoot themselves.

PDM says: What exactly is your role in Dead On: The Life and Cinema of George A. Romero, are you interviewed only or have you any larger part in the making of the film?
Quick interview, that's all.

s02bf16c: Have you asked Empire what happened to your other star yet??!
The office went very quiet. They're ashamed of themselves and so they should be.

Jay: What would you call the 'monsters' in 28 Days Later? Recently, in a large lecture theatre, I scorned a girl for calling them zombies. I listed all the reasons why they aren't zombies, but the best I could come up with was 'infected people'.
We call them "the infected". They were actually cast from an agency in East London that specialises in retired athletes. People who are very fit still but can no longer compete. That's why they're so terrifying when they're running at you...rather than ambling towards you.

anton: Speaking of musician, Danny, have you ever approached a favourite of yours to make his next video?
I've only ever done one video, for Iggy Pop, to promote Trainspotting. I hired 50 people of different ages from 5 to 70, all wearing only his black leather trousers and dancing behind him while he performed the song. It was an act of love, but I think he thought I was taking the piss.

lane11011: I noticed in the trailer for 28 Weeks later that Robert Carlyle stars in it. Was this a choice personally made by you or just a coincidence as you have worked with him numerous times in the past?
I recommended him to Juan Carlos, and he showed great taste in casting him. He gives a blinding performance - literally.

Benjamin Dover: Danny, What are your thoughts on a Norwegian Zombie movie, with blizzards and snow. The plot is Russian genetically modified Zombies coming to eat us, and of course, blood splattered in snow follows! Do you thing it's a possible hit?
If you're planning to make this or convincing someone else to do it for you, watch the John Carpenter version of The Thing before you begin. That wilderness is a great place for a horror film.

gritman: what are your opinions on trailers showing too much of the movie? Do you have any input into the editing of them? Have we seen all the good bits from Sunshine or are there plenty more to come?
There are so many good bits in Sunshine, even the Americans couldn't cram them all into a trailer.

danbo12: Danny when you said that its easy to get lost when you've made a hit in the movie business - what did you mean by this?
Nobody tells you the truth anymore. Everybody thinks everything you say is genius. Or that's the impression they give.

James Dyer: Genius answer.

SimonK: Follow-up to the Loach question above. Who do you rate amongst your peers, ie young British filmmakers?
I loved London To Brighton, by Paul Andrew Williams. And Andrea Arnold. They are two of the newest, brightest suspects.

tonywatkins: Which of your films gives you the greatest sense of satisfaction?
Today it has to be Sunshine.

jigs: Do epic, multi-film stories, or franchises, interest you or do you prefer more contained films?
Not franchises so much. But multi-stranded stories are good, I think.

lane11011: Would you ever consider directing a Harry Potter film, maybe the last one? I hear M. Night Shyamalan would like to do it.
Not really my cup of tea.

EchteG: How did you find Hiroyuki Sanada? I really like him since his '80s ninja movies.
I saw him in Twilight Samurai, in which he's fantastic. He was recommended by Wong Kar-Wai when we were looking for an Asian captain for the ship.

Aaron: With the recent surge in popularity of the 'zombie' sub-genre, do you think there's scope for a TV series based on the world of 28 Days/Weeks?
I think the deserted London idea could be expanded... There are endless possibilities with it as a backdrop.

gritman: was going into zero gravity worth the money then? how did it make your stomach feel?
They give you an anti-nausea pill, but it didn't seem to work with the producer, Andrew Macdonald. He felt like he was in a Michael Bay movie.

rhubarb: Who would win in a fight between a Grizzly Bear and a Lion?
Rhubarb, please watch Grizzly Man.

Benjamin Dover: Danny: Any tips on dating? should I take her to see Sunshine?
Yes. Take a number of girls on different nights.

HelenOHara: How is Ponte Tower coming along?
Nothing yet, Helen. A bit of an overexcited press release - it got ahead of itself.

WillSun: What did you think of Shaun of the Dead?
WillSin, I love it. And I loved Hot Fuzz. I met them coming out of a radio studio in Sydney, Australia. I was going in to promote Sunshine and they were on their world tour for Hot Fuzz. Seriously underrated acting from Nick and Simon, really well acted.

ChrisHewitt: Danny: what's your best joke?
Okay. It's a Gordon Strachan one, famous because of Trainspotting obviously. As he comes out of the dressing room, the press gang press forward, shouting, "Gordon, give us a quick word!" He stops, says, "Velocity" and walks away...

That article is spoiler-ific

'Sunshine' Bumped Up For July Release

Cinematical was just informed (via a press release) that Danny Boyle's Sunshine has had its release date pushed up to July 20.

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Extended Trailer here. (http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/sunshine/extendedtrailer/)

maybe i should have watched this when it was released here several months ago. (https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi5.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fy154%2Fpubrick%2Femoticons%2Ficon_darin.gif&hash=44f6e5d313993b11a250a9908a592fcf2e91526f)

my exact same thoughts.

sure, me too.  :yabbse-sad:

Danny Boyle feels the heat with 'Sunshine'
The director ('Trainspotting,' '28 Days Later') has turned in a kind-of '2001' for 2007. But it wasn't easy.
Source: Los Angeles Times

London — IN "Trainspotting," Danny Boyle turned junkies into charismatic antiheroes. With "28 Days Later," the British director transformed typically lumbering zombies into sprinting killers. In his new movie, "Sunshine," Boyle faced perhaps his greatest challenge yet: making weightless astronauts actually look ... weightless.

Just a few days into production on the science-fiction film at London's Three Mills Studios, Boyle was growing more exasperated by the minute. His film's astronauts, sent 50 years into the future to reignite the dying sun, were supposed to be carefully maneuvering outside their spacecraft. But the crane on which the actors' stunt doubles stood was jerking around like a '57 Chevy.

Still, it was an improvement over Boyle's first pass at a zero gravity a few days earlier. "That would have looked better if I had just carried the person in my arms," Boyle said of the subsequently discarded footage.

As his effects team labored to reset the crane, the Shakespearean theater director turned independent film darling tried to console his actors, who had been pacing around the London soundstage all morning. "My apologies," Boyle said to his film's costars, Cillian Murphy ("Batman Begins") and Hiroyuki Sanada ("The Last Samurai"). "I guarantee you we will do your scenes first thing tomorrow."

In the scheme of "Sunshine's" difficult production, that one-day delay would prove minor. From that frustrating morning in September 2005, Boyle would spend more than another full year working on "Sunshine," with Fox Searchlight having to reschedule the film's release not once but twice.

While he could not have imagined on that September day two years ago how challenging the film's special effects would be, Boyle seemed to sense the trouble ahead. A video team shooting interviews for the film's website stopped by, asking "Sunshine's" cast and crew what item they would bring into space. The 50-year-old Boyle had a succinct answer: "A noose."

Nearly two years later, "Sunshine" is finally finished — and Boyle didn't quite kill himself making it (though he went about $5 million over budget).

If Boyle faced a difficult test in reproducing zero gravity, distributor Fox Searchlight now is confronted with an equally daunting trial. In a season filled with big-budget blockbusters on the high end and smaller, personal films on the low, the studio somehow must fit "Sunshine" in between.

Neither a glossy popcorn movie nor an intimate art film, "Sunshine," premiering tonight as the closing film of the Los Angeles Film Festival and opening in theaters July 20, occupies dangerous territory: it's a thinking-person's save-the-world film. Imagine "Armageddon" — with good reviews.

Like much of Boyle's earlier work — the Manchester-born filmmaker burst onto the scene with 1994's "Shallow Grave" and made "Trainspotting" two years later — "Sunshine" is visually stylish and narratively idiosyncratic. His new film embraces some of the familiar beats of science fiction and tries to reformulate others. Where Boyle brought new urgency to the zombie genre with "28 Days Later," he delivers contemplative patience to "Sunshine."

"I think fans of original science fiction will really appreciate it," Steve Gilula, Fox Searchlight's distribution president, said of "Sunshine." "The question we had internally is, 'Can you release a "2001" in 2007?' We think there is an audience, but we don't want to minimize the challenges."

Together again

"SUNSHINE" marks a reunion between Boyle and novelist-screenwriter Alex Garland, the director's collaborator on both his biggest hit — 2003's "28 Days Later" — and his principal disappointment, 2000's "The Beach."

Both movies grossed about the same domestically, but "The Beach," adapted from Garland's novel of the same name, was a $50-million, post-"Titanic" Leonardo DiCaprio movie whose difficult production (and subdued reception) led Boyle to steer clear of sprawling, big-budget movies for a while.

But Hollywood kept calling, and after his "28 Days Later" and his saints and miracles fable "Millions" were behind him, Boyle was set to direct "3000 Degrees," a hefty Warner Bros. movie about a Massachusetts blaze in 1999 that killed six firefighters. But then that movie fell apart, as some of the victims' survivors and other firefighters opposed the production.

Around the same time, Garland's "Sunshine" script came in. "I knew it was a mission to the sun," Garland said of his initial "Sunshine" idea, "and that it was going to belong to the strand of science-fiction movies of the 1960s and '70s — '2001,' 'Silent Running,' the original 'Solaris.' "

Those movies are anchored more by big ideas than big effects; the movies may be set in the cosmos, but space is used as much for mood as for drama.

"You go into deep space," said Garland, whose novels include "The Tesseract" and "The Coma," "and you encounter your subconscious."

However poetic that notion, the movie still needed a plot. "The original trigger for the movie was an article about the long-term future of the sun," Garland said. "We completely rely on the sun for life. And it's totally hostile. It's beautiful, but if you look at it, it will blind you. I'm an atheist, but you can make a fair argument for the sun as God. It does a lot of God-like things, even though it's not sentient. It's a life giver and a death giver, in equal measure."

When "Sunshine" opens, we're five decades into the future, and the big ball of light is in its death throes. Instead of global warming, "Sunshine" presents the counterintuitive idea of a freezing planet. The first mission to relight the sun with an island-sized nuclear device has gone missing, so a second crew sets off seven years later to try to finish the job.

After 16 months and 55 million miles of space flight, Icarus II approaches the center of our solar system. Cooped up together for far too long, its international crew of eight is starting to fray at the edges. When they find the remains of the original Icarus I spacecraft, let's just say one of its crew members might have taken Garland's God analogy a little too seriously.

The movie didn't come together easily. Boyle's longtime producer, Andrew Macdonald, had a deal with Fox Searchlight, which was initially nervous about "Sunshine's" subject matter and its preliminary $40-million budget, much higher than Fox's specialized film unit usually spends on a single film.

"Twentieth Century Fox was not bidding on 'Sunshine,' " Macdonald said. "They reason is pretty obvious — they had made 'Solaris.' " That 2002 Steven Soderbergh-George Clooney remake had been a critical and commercial dud, grossing just $15 million. And "Sunshine" wasn't going to be an obvious, down-the-middle movie: it would be part suspenseful thriller, part existential meditation.

To get "Sunshine" rolling, Macdonald had to cobble together money from British lottery funds, U.K. rebates, and outside investor Ingenious Film Partners.

"If you pitch the movie, it sounds like [the 2003 bomb] 'The Core,' " Macdonald said. "But the key thing is that the people — especially Danny — are going to do it a whole lot better."

One of the things Boyle tried to do better was to create a believable "Sunshine" world. To that end, the film's 2057 looks and feels a lot like 2007 — "Star Trek's" skin-tight Lycra thankfully hasn't replaced T-shirts.

"My problem with science fiction is when you try to invent too much," Boyle said. "A phone looks like a banana and not a phone, and that doesn't make any sense. You don't have to have everything reinvented. Look around today. You can have an iPod on a Victorian desk."

Boyle, production designer Mark Tildesley and costume designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb reached into all directions of history, industry and pop culture for visual and narrative references. The corpses of some of the film's victims (of course people die!) are modeled on Pompeii; the Icarus II interior is designed like an oil tanker, the disfigurement of burn victim Pinbacker (Mark Strong) was influenced by the scarring suffered by race car driver Niki Lauda, and the astronaut's space helmets owe more to "South Park's" Kenny than NASA.

At the same time, the "Sunshine" production team wanted to make sure the film's outer space looked severe and inhospitable, rather than Hollywood's usual cool and beautiful depiction. Producer Macdonald said one early scene needed to be re-shot because it actually looked too nice.

"It didn't look harsh enough," Macdonald said. "It was too warm — not threatening."

Even though the script is clearly fictional, Boyle and Garland met with scientists and physicists to try to keep the film from taking a constellation of factual liberties. "The script does take some leaps at the end," Boyle said. "But if you can ground it in the first quarter, you can believe the stuff that happens in the end, when it all goes time-warping ballistic."

Instead of the industry norm of farming out visual effects to a dozen vendors, Boyle essentially used one effects house (London's Moving Picture Co.) for almost all of the film's 750 effects shots. Macdonald said Boyle preferred working that way because it gave him the greatest level of quality control. Yet it also slowed the post-production to a crawl.

"Sunshine" was supposed to be completed a year ago, with a planned theatrical release in October 2006, which was then moved to March 2007. "Sunshine" eventually opened in Britain, and most other foreign territories, in April. The reception, like the movie's global weather, was cool.

View from the finish line

WITH Boyle's film finally done in early 2007, it's hard to get a read on the filmmaker over lunch. He's either excited, relieved — or both.

"No director, unless they are contractually obligated, will ever go back and do a sequel set in space," Boyle said. "When I finished it in January, I would have said no, it wasn't worth it. Because I fell out with everybody. To make these movies, you have to be so uncompromising and scorch all of the ground in front of you. But now, especially talking about it, you realize what you've learned from it."

In a way, the lessons of making this movie parallel what Boyle hopes audiences take away.

"Do we go back to the moon? Do we go somewhere different?" the director said. "Do we play safe? Or do we take a big risk?"

Boyle himself, who is remarkably candid for a director of his caliber, said his next movie will be far more manageable. Not that he's playing it totally safe. "Slum Dog Millionaire," as the movie is called, unfolds in Mumbai around the Hindi version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

"But I can shoot it in summer," Boyle said, "and be done by Christmas."

I saw it months ago and was pretty good, in fact only this and Zodiac are the only really good films I've seen this year. So my Top Ten right now has only these two films and I'm sure Ratatouille will get in there.

Edit: 28 weeks later wasn't so bad either.

A slashing attack on a fellow director
Source: NY Daily News

"Trainspotting" helmer Danny Boyle says Eli Roth, who directed the horror film "Hostel," isn't very good.

"His movies aren't even particularly well done," he told us at a screening of his "Sunshine," out July 20. "They're not even scary. They're horrible, but that's not scary. It's not suspense. And if you watch my films in detail, there's actually not a lot of violence in them. You get numb with violence very quickly."

Roth's spokesman Simon Halls told us: "Eli has a lot of fans out there, and these last reviews he received were really great."

Regardless, Roth's sure to be crying all the way to the bank, with $65 million in box office so far for "Hostel" and its sequel, out now.

Boyle reinvented the zombie flick with his "28 Days Later." His latest project, "Sunshine," stars Cillian Murphy as an astronaut and physicist who must detonate a nuclear bomb that will restart the dying sun.

The mission, natch, goes terribly awry and had the audience peering through its fingers.

Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh and Rose Byrne round out the cast of spacemen and -women, but even "Fantastic Four" hottie Evans - who Boyle calls "a brilliant actor ... like DiCaprio" - couldn't kick-start any intergalactic romance.

"It's an obvious thing when there's a young cast like this - you think it would develop romantically," said Boyle. "But it just doesn't work in space. We tried it and wrote some stuff, and it's just embarrassing."

That doesn't mean the cast didn't get personal time."I made them live together in the beginning," said Boyle. "I think they were all expecting to stay in the Dorchester or the Hilton, and I put them in student digs together. And it worked really well. They became a really strong ensemble really quickly."

Dorms instead of luxury suites? This director knows how to bring horror to Hollywood.

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The Space Odyssey of Danny Boyle
Source: New York Times

PEOPLE often ask what connects all the films," the British director Danny Boyle said recently. It's not a line of inquiry he enjoys.

"It's embarrassing when they start talking about the work in the sense of an oeuvre," he said, accentuating the Frenchness of the offending word. "It makes me self-conscious."

Mr. Boyle, 50, has directed nine movies, beginning with "Shallow Grave" in 1994, and his discomfort at being pigeonholed is evident in a filmography marked by both restlessness and agility. Like Steven Soderbergh and Michael Winterbottom he is something of a professional chameleon. His protagonists have included nihilist junkies ("Trainspotting"), enraged zombies ("28 Days Later"), neo-hippie backpackers ("The Beach") and saint-worshiping children ("Millions"). His genres have ranged from black comedy to apocalyptic horror to — with his new film, "Sunshine," scheduled to open July 20 — metaphysical science fiction.

In an apparently rare moment of self-reflection Mr. Boyle said that the one through-line in his career was not a thematic obsession but a faith in "sheer physical pleasure," as he put it, sounding every bit the hedonist director of "Trainspotting." He added: "I don't want people to sit there and objectively watch the film. I want them to experience it as something that's under their skin, so you try to make the films really tactile."

That principle of sensory stimulation is front and center in "Sunshine," which depicts a manned mission to the Sun. A crew of scientists (aboard the pointedly named Icarus) has been given the task of restarting the dying star by torpedoing it with a nuclear payload. The plot might evoke the dim, head-banging likes of "Armageddon" and "The Core," but the tone is a throwback to the age of Moon-landing utopianism and "2001: A Space Odyssey." (Completing the impression of '60s-style cosmic reverence, the premise seems to be lifted from the 1968 Pink Floyd title "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.")

During an interview in Manhattan last month Mr. Boyle said that he and his screenwriter, the novelist Alex Garland, who also wrote the script for "28 Days Later," embraced the idea that "Sunshine," precisely because of the vastness of its subject, would be a space odyssey in the most interior sense: a head trip. "It's like films about mountains," he said. "They're not about mountaineering. They're about the mind. Movies about space raise those questions of what we're doing here, and that inevitably introduces a spiritual dimension."

A journey toward the source of life, "Sunshine" is also a film about confronting death. In the time-honored tradition of the dwindling-crew thriller, it picks off its cast one at a time, often in spectacular fashion; many of the deaths verge on the rapturous. "I remember thinking when I first read Alex's script that it basically goes from one fantastic death to another," Mr. Boyle said. "That's the structure."

To get his international ensemble cast members (Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans and Michelle Yeoh, among others) better acquainted with one another and with the cramped dimensions of a spacecraft, Mr. Boyle put them up in East London student housing during rehearsals. He brought in a particle physicist to offer lessons on the science of the Sun. He also tried to inspire a suitable degree of awe for the scenes that simulated contact with the Sun (crew members peer out at the looming orb through Ray-Bans and filtered windows). "I'd say things like, 'Every bit of you is just a bit of exploded star,' " he said.

A visual stylist by nature, Mr. Boyle admitted that he was outside his comfort zone when it came to the computer-generated imagery so crucial to "Sunshine." "I didn't understand how C.G. worked, but I was adamant about how I wanted things to look," he said. To communicate his wishes to the effects team, he compiled an album of photographs that included images of the sun captured by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a spacecraft that revolutionized solar studies when it was launched in 1995.

"Sunshine" dares to imagine how the Sun would be experienced at unthinkably close range. "We could make the impact very striking immediately," he said. "You blast light, add loud music, and you're there, bang."

Mr. Boyle wanted to minimize the clichés of the genre: twinkling star fields, zero-gravity floats, cutaways to the spacecraft inching across the frame. He was also wary of the plastic images that are the hallmark of ill-deployed C.G.I. "I was desperate to avoid that thing that happens in big movies, where part of your brain goes, 'I don't believe that,' " he said.

The impulsive detours and quick course corrections of Mr. Boyle's career indicate a willingness not just to experiment but also to assess his own strengths and weaknesses honestly. "Shallow Grave" (1994) and "Trainspotting" (1996) made a star of Ewan McGregor and positioned Mr. Boyle, his producer Andrew Macdonald and his screenwriter John Hodge as the bright young hopes of the British film industry, part of the Cool Britannia wave that swept Britpop onto the music charts and New Labor into office. But the American studio movies that followed, the romantic trifle "A Life Less Ordinary" (1997) and "The Beach" (2000), an adaptation of Mr. Garland's best-selling novel, were critical and commercial disappointments.

Instead of hanging around Hollywood waiting for his shot at redemption, Mr. Boyle went back to basics and, in 2001, made a pair of low-budget movies for British television (where he began his directing career, after a stint in the theater). "Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise" and "Strumpet," both shot on digital video, loosened him up again and paved the way for 2002's jittery "28 Days Later," about the outbreak of a rage virus. As zombie movies often do, the film dovetailed with contemporary anxieties (in that instance, over anthrax and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS). It cost under $10 million and grossed more than $80 million worldwide.

Mr. Macdonald, who has produced most of Mr. Boyle's films, said that the Boyle-Garland genre updates were notable for their high-concept nerviness. "They're not scared of big ideas," he said. "I think that's what separates them. British filmmaking can often be very parochial."

As for Mr. Boyle's highest profile project, "The Beach," with Leonardo DiCaprio, it exists for its director mainly as a reminder of how never to make a film.

"I had everything I wanted," he said, "and that just doesn't do me any good. I'm not recommending it to everybody — some people do need every little toy they can get — but for me, I had nothing left to do. I'm much better under the radar a bit and actually figuring out how to make things work. Money's so elastic in film anyway."

A Bright Future "Sunshine," given the go-ahead after the success of "28 Days Later," was made for $45 million, not a small sum but a little less than the budget of "The Beach" and a lot less than a studio would have spent on an effects-heavy sci-fi summer movie.

For now Mr. Boyle remains based in Britain. The industry he was supposed to have helped revive has, in his opinion, not changed at all. "The British film industry is best described as occasional," he said, laughing. "We get the cinema we deserve. We're not like the Americans or French or Indians, who are dedicated to the cinema in the millions. We just don't go."

Mr. Boyle, born in Manchester to working-class Irish parents, said class barriers still play a part in the British film scene. "Kids with talent form bands," he said. "With film it's still regarded as an Oxbridge thing, as though making a film is some kind of intelligence skill, which it's not, clearly."

His roster of forthcoming projects is typically diverse. He's teaming with the screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce, who wrote "Millions," on an animated film. And he hopes eventually to get around to "Porno," the novelist Irvine Welsh's sequel to "Trainspotting." It's set two decades after the original, so the actors will have to age visibly. "There's been no massive hair loss yet," Mr. Boyle said.

First up is "Slum Dog Millionaire," set in Mumbai. Written by Simon Beaufoy ("The Full Monty"), it centers on a boy who wins the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

For Mr. Boyle the chief appeal of the film is that Mumbai is about as far as you can get from the airless confines of a spaceship. "It's the opposite of 'Sunshine,' which is such a controlled world," he said. "Movie productions are all about stopping life. In Mumbai life is splattered everywhere. You can't control it, so you've got to find a way to absorb it."

Mr. Boyle's years in the business have instilled a belief that success has nothing to do with growth as it's conventionally defined. "Ironically you've got to try and stay like you were," he said. "You get better technically, and technical expertise is a source of danger." In other words, professionalism can get in the way of what's important. "In a sense you never make one as good as the first film," he said.

Does he really think "Shallow Grave" was his career peak? "I'm not saying it's the best one, but in some way it is and will always be the best one," he said. "Everything after the first one is business. There's something about that innocence and joy when you just don't quite know what you're doing."

Mr. Boyle permitted himself another moment of introspection. His movies bear so little obvious relation to one another perhaps because they are devoted to recapturing the magic of the first time. "One thing you can do is change the technology you work with," he said. "That can be an enormous rebirth. You can also change genres a lot. You don't go back to what you've done. You do something that leaves you as a learner again."

Danny Boyle's Space Odyssey, By Kurt Loder
In 'Sunshine,' the '28 Days Later' director takes us on a fantastic voyage.
Source: MTV

Fans of the English director Danny Boyle may have given up wondering what he'll do next. There seems to be no telling. Boyle likes to go to some unusual new place with each of his movies, but he's never been interested in going there twice. His first feature, the 1994 "Shallow Grave" (which also launched Ewan McGregor), was a tart, twisty crime caper, cultishly admired to this day. His second, the 1996 "Trainspotting," was an electrifyingly nasty (and influential) drug-world adventure. These impressive films were followed by a screwball fantasy ("A Life Less Ordinary"), an odd trouble-in-paradise tale ("The Beach," with Leonardo DiCaprio) and a smashingly successful low-budget horror movie ("28 Days Later") that actually managed to ring some new changes on the musty zombie genre. (Look at 'em run!).

Now, with his latest film, "Sunshine," Boyle ventures into another venerable cinematic precinct: outer space. Building on the work of such stellar predecessors as Stanley Kubrick ("2001: A Space Odyssey") and Ridley Scott ("Alien"), Boyle has extended the pictorial vocabulary of the rocket-ship thriller by sending his astronauts not to the moon, or to Mars, but to the sun. This was a considerable technical challenge (especially with a $40-million budget). Space movies usually play out in the inky, star-flecked blackness of some vast intergalactic waste. "Sunshine" — as the misleadingly cheery title suggests — is often bathed in solar glare as the ship draws ever closer to its fiery target. The sun is dying, and along with it the Earth, unless this mission can kick it back into gear with an onboard nuclear device. A sizeable problem, obviously. But not the only one, it turns out — or the scariest, either.

Boyle assembled a strong international cast for the picture, including Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh and Chris Evans. He also did a lot of research, and he brought in University of Manchester physicist Brian Cox to be the film's science advisor. The project has clearly been a sizeable learning experience. We wondered what it had taught him — not just about space itself, but about space movies, as well.

MTV: Were you daunted at all entering this sci-fi genre, in which there are so many classic movies, and not having a blockbuster budget to work with?

Danny Boyle: Yeah, it was terrifying, because it's quite a narrow field. I've never worked on a film where your predecessors just kind of surround you constantly. Like, when you do a thriller, you don't think of Hitchcock the whole time. But when you do a space movie you're just thinking about, you know, "2001," and the first "Alien," of course. You can't avoid them.

MTV: Are there limitations on what you can do in an outer-space movie?

Boyle: Yeah, it boils down to three things: a ship, a crew and a signal. Basically, that's what you have in this kind of sci-fi. Not in fantasy sci-fi, like "Star Wars," where you can go to any planet and find creatures or whatever. But when it's based on a certain amount of realism, and on space exploration as we know it, then it comes down to: there's a ship and a crew and a signal that changes everything.

MTV: And then we watch the crew get picked off.

Boyle: And then you watch the crew get picked off. And you can kill them in any order you want — that's great. The good thing about space, it's [ideal for] ensemble acting; it doesn't really suit massive stars. These movies tend to suit a group of actors, and you don't know in what order they're going to die. That's one of the really cool things about it.

MTV: What did you want to add to this genre, to sort of twist it a bit?

Boyle: There are certain things you can't change. You think you can, but you can't. Certain principles have been established, some of which are fake, some of which are just movie [conventions]. Like weightlessness. If you watch [actual] space-station weightlessness, [movements are at normal] speed. But in movies, it has to be done in slow motion — if you do it the way it's done on a space station, it looks phony.

MTV: What did you learn about the sun?

Boyle: It loses some five million tons of mass every second, and yet it will burn for another four billion years. And we are about halfway through its life cycle. If you put a pin-head's worth of its matter out in the street, it would destroy Manhattan. There would be nothing left standing anywhere. It's extraordinary.

MTV: I think "Sunshine" has a pioneering look for space movies, because the sun is so dominant. That must have been daunting, how to convey the power of the sun, and shoot it.

Boyle: That was the biggest challenge, really. Because the film is ultimately meant to be quite frightening. But in movies, normally you use darkness to create fear and terror. But [this movie] is based on light — it's the art of lightness, really, rather than the art of darkness. So to portray [the sun's] power, and to incrementally increase it as they get closer and closer, was the greatest challenge. And the way we did it, we tried to rob the audience of the colors orange and red. We didn't have any of those colors inside the ship. And then when you went outside the ship, you suddenly felt all this orange light. It's like you had been thirsty without being aware of it; you had been denied this color range. And then suddenly you're flooded with it.

MTV: It doesn't feel like there's a lot of computer-generated imagery in this film, but obviously there must be.

Boyle: There must be. I think that's the reason there hasn't been a film made about the sun, because I think until recently there wasn't a way technically to represent it. But CG is now capable of almost anything, as we've seen in this summer's releases. And we tried to do it in an organic way, so it didn't feel like a big special-effects movie. We always tried to give the actors something [to look at] that was similar to what the audience would eventually see them facing.

MTV: So it wasn't green-screen all the time?

Boyle: There was very little of that. We had this extraordinary set for the end, where Cillian faces the sun bursting into the bomb chamber. They built this huge rig of scaffolding with lights on it. It looked like a U2 concert; it was incredible. And they put it on wheels and pushed it down the room towards him, this huge thundering thing, and that gave him a sense of what it would be like to be out there.

MTV: Some of the big CGI films, like the "Spider-Man" movies, sometimes look like cartoons. Do you think that that computer technology loses its effect after a while?

Boyle: I think our eye is extraordinary, the way we know that's not real. It doesn't stop people enjoying it — you still enjoy it. But I think there will always be filmmakers who will come back and do it for real sometimes. The effect is different. There's still something slightly plasticated about CG, and I don't know whether they'll ever conquer that. The brain is so quick in saying, "That's not possible. That isn't a human going through that."

MTV: Why is there never any sex in space?

Boyle: It's very difficult in space. I'm not quite sure why, but for the movie it didn't work. We put it in — we actually tried it in the script — but it just felt really wrong somehow. You would think it would be a natural thing with Chris Evans and Rose Byrne, or Cillian and Rose Byrne, for it to develop romantically in some way. But it doesn't really suit it at all.

MTV: What are your favorite sci-fi movies? What did you grow up watching?

Boyle: I was a big "Star Trek" fan when I was a kid, the TV series. But I never watched the movies. I don't know why. I never made that transition to the movies. I'm not a big fan of the fantasy stuff, like "Star Wars." It's really more the hard-core stuff, like "Alien," especially the first one, using that almost Victorian industrial look in space. It's brilliant. It's about 28 years old and it still just stuns me. It has been much-copied.

MTV: Weren't you asked to direct the fourth movie in that series, "Alien: Resurrection"?

Boyle: I was, and I was very tempted, because I was such a big fan. But then I realized I would ruin it, so I kept away. I felt a responsibility toward the other film, so I said no and stepped away.

MTV: In "Sunshine," there's a very unusual-looking bad guy. Did you already have the design of this character in mind going in?

Boyle: He's not your regular villain. We had an idea that he was a spectral presence — but not a ghost. Because he's real, because of the damage he does. But somehow, the forces of light he's been exposed to have sort of reorganized him. And when [the crew members] see him, it's a challenge to their sanity: Is it possible for somebody to be like this? Not just in terms of disfigurement — he is burnt — but also because it appears that all the pieces that make him up — the protons and neutrons — have been reorganized in some way and put back together differently. And that is not a CG effect. We did that all live with a special lens on the camera.

MTV: In the end, the movie seems to start sailing off into the metaphysical ...

Boyle: There's a bit of that in there, yeah. They see something out there that's not entirely natural. Something much bigger than we could ever [comprehend]. You [have to] realize how narrow our thinking is, normally. You've got to imagine that there might be something else out there that's much bigger and wider than we think.

MTV: Did the company you did this movie with, Fox Searchlight, get involved in the making of it?

Boyle: They did mention changing the title to something a bit less like a musical. But no, they were brilliant actually. We had made "28 Days Later," which was very successful, and that buys you a certain amount of freedom. And we used that freedom to set up the film in the way that we set up "28 Days Later" — we made it in London, in a small studio, and we kept control of it and used the kind of actors we wanted to use, and [Fox was] brilliantly supportive.

MTV: One of the casting surprises in "Sunshine" is Chris Evans. A lot of people probably think of him as that guy from "The Fantastic Four." He's so underrated.

Boyle: He's a superb actor — and I'm not saying that just 'cause he's in my film. I didn't really know him — I hadn't seen "Fantastic Four" when I cast him. The casting director in America said, "You should meet this guy. He's underestimated. I think he's brilliant." And Chris came in the room, [and he was] superb. He's a very, very talented guy, really very special. He can do anything.

MTV: You might be able to go into the franchise/sequel business with this movie. You did executive-produce the "28 Days Later" sequel.

Boyle: I'm not particularly keen on franchises. I find it really depressing that they're so successful. It used to be, when I started, that a sequel would only make 60 percent of what the original movie did. Now, of course, the sequels are much more successful than the originals. I'm more interested in doing originals. If you can come up with good enough ideas, people will come and see original films, rather than the rehash, you know? Rather than the sequel.

MTV: But there must be some studio enthusiasm for another "28 Days" sequel — "28 Years Later," maybe?

Boyle: There is an idea for the next one, something which would move [the story] on. I've got to think about it, whether it's right or not.

MTV: Would you actually go back and direct it this time?

Boyle: Well, I didn't want to do the second one, because I was involved in "Sunshine." But I went out and I helped them [with "28 Weeks Later"]. I did some second-unit shooting on it. And I really enjoyed it, actually. There's something about doing something trashy that's great. Where basically you just come in the door and you just kill them. That was rather refreshing.

dude has officially spent more time talking about the movie than he did making it. and surely more than anyone will spend talking about it after its american release.

depressing.

moreso because every interview he's given has been infested with spoilers to the point where nobody who's reading them would ever have to watch the movie.

Exclusive: Danny Boyle on Sunshine!
Source: ComingSoon!

Danny Boyle has been at the forefront of British cinema since his 1994 debut feature Shallow Grave showed he had the chops to hold an audience in suspense. In 1996, his heroin-infused Trainspotting became an international sensation and made a star out of Ewan McGregor. After a sour turn at studio filmmaking with The Beach, he created another star in Irishman Cillian Murphy and simultaneously revived the zombie genre with 28 Days Later.

Boyle has re-teamed with Murphy for the new sci-fi thriller Sunshine, which depicts eight scientist-astronauts in the future flying a bomb the size of Manhattan through space in order to reignite the Earth's dying Sun. When they pick up a distress beacon from a ship thought lost from the previous attempt, Murphy's lead scientist decides to divert the mission, throwing it, the crew, and the lives of everyone on Earth into jeopardy.

In the New York interview, which follows, Boyle talks more about the research that went into making this a more serious sci-fi venture in the vein of 2001 or Silent Running. Boyle also talks about his next film, an India-set comedy-romance called Slumdog Millionaire.

ComingSoon.net: There's a recurring element in the film, never discussed, which is the idea of the sun being addictive or having a kind of power over the crew, specifically the Cliff Curtis character who gets gradually more and more sunburned. Can you talk about that?
Boyle: It manifests itself physically in him, but it's true of all of them really. It becomes addictive, and we talked about that a lot. We talked to NASA as well and they said if you did this kind of travel one of the biggest problems is psychological. They've got a serious problem which is gravity, which is what's preventing us really leaving our planet at the moment on long-term space travel. They can provide oxygen, like an oxygen garden, which is exactly how they'll generate oxygen. They can provide long-term food source, all that kind of stuff. The problem is gravity, but the other big problem that they don't really know what will happen is psychology. There's a great book that we read as research by a guy called Andrew Smith who's a journalist. He had this very clever idea of trying to interview all the guys who'd been on the moon. He didn't get to talk to all of them, 'cause Armstrong won't talk to people, and they're all f*cked up on some level or other by it, either by the celebrity that followed or by, and this was the big thing, about being out of sight of the Earth. These were the first people to ever leave our Earth, you know, and the most lonely moment is when you fly around the dark side of the moon 'cause there's no radio contact for 45 minutes and all you can see is eternity out there, just nothing. He talks in the book about the psychological effect on these guys, and we tried to manifest that through this addictive thing. What replaces that is this sense of going to meet your maker, if you think of it in religious terms or spiritual terms, but it is going to meet the source of all life as we know it, the single most important thing there is. If you could... and the movie lets you do it, if you could pull up really close to it what effect would that have upon you? That was wonderful for the actors to have, and it's addiction, it's like drugs. After a while you just cannot do without it, it begins to kind of pour through you, course through your veins.

CS: To what degree do you adhere to genre standards in production design? There are certain things like the catwalks are grated, and the pipes on the walls, and everything seems stripped down, it alludes to aesthetics we've seen in previous sci-fi films. How do you break the mold while continuing to adhere to it?
Boyle: It's the constant thing you're doing all the time. It's so narrow, this genre, much narrower than say a zombie genre. This is really narrow. There's two branches. There's fantasy, Star Wars and Star Trek, where you can do anything you want. This is the other branch, it's based on realism, that man goes into space in a steel tube. Because of your predecessors, you're constantly in debt to them, either because you want to be like the steel blue-grey look of "Alien" you create that inside the ship, everyone wants to use that, that's great. Or because you can't avoid it, but occasionally you try to break away, you try to make your own little passageway through, like the spacesuit is very original, and that's very dangerous. The producers were really alarmed that we were gonna do something as risky as that, 'cause every other one uses the white suit, it's based on the NASA white suit, but ours is gold, BLING GOLD, and you're not gonna be able to see into the helmet. That really worried people, 'cause all the sci-fi movies use the goldfish bowl and then they have a big problem 'cause you cannot see through it 'cause it's there to protect the astronauts from light! But in a movie you have to have a light inside so that you can see that it's John Hurt or Sigourney Weaver or whoever inside. We said we're not gonna do that, what we'll do is put the camera inside the helmet, and that helped add to the claustrophobia.

CS: It seemed to have a lot of credibility to it just because if you were going on a mission like this where you were getting this close to the sun you would need another kind of material to be resistant to the heat.
Boyle: Yes. Absolutely. In fact what they use is gold leaf. The shield, which we built of solid gold, they use gold because it's the best reflector of heat, it dissipates heat straight away, but what they use on satellites that fly quite close to the sun to photograph it, they use incredibly thin gold leaf. It's astonishing, you think "what?" You go behind a shield of gold leaf that's so thin, thinner than paper. That's how they do it. We couldn't use it for practical reasons 'cause we'd have just torn it (laughs) as soon as the film crew went near it would have torn, we'd still be shooting.

CS: What about Brian Cox and just the thought and physics that went into the designing of the ship?
Boyle: We used this science advisor, Brian Cox, who's the new... I'm sure you have the same problem here, Britain and Europe have a big problem in terms of the face of science to young people. Not enough young people are doing science in school. They've traced it back, when you say science to kids they still think "Einstein... old man, bald head, gray hair, who wants to do that? I wanna be like Rihanna, I don't want to do Einstein!" (laughs) So they point to this guy Brian Cox. He's literally a European-wide face of science now, and he's young, trendy, he was in a group called D:Ream who did a famous song "Things Can Only Get Better". He's super-trendy, you'd never think of him as a scientist but he's absolutely brilliant. We also used NASA, there's ways you can ask NASA just constant questions. Because of their demand for your taxpayer's money they're very PR conscious, they help everybody all the time, they see themselves as a library of information that everybody can access. So we used those two to build the film, the knowledge of the actors on a character, the technical requirements of the ship, what was feasible, what was believable. They'd use gold, they'd have an oxygen garden, and they would cook. NASA said if we ever do long-term space travel it won't be like in "2001" where you have bits of pre-packaged food 'cause that's a sure way they'd go insane. What they'd do is let people grow food, possibly even taking fish and breeding fish so you could nurture and gather your food, cook it, eat it, then wash it up afterwards. They think that cycle is CRUCIAL to your sanity when you're out there, which is really amazing. In fact when the astronauts go up, when they circle the Earth they experience 12 or 14 sunrise and sunsets, but they keep them strictly to the same pattern of Earth, which is one sunrise and one sunset in terms of your sleeping pattern. That's so deeply imbedded in our DNA, that lifecycle of the sun, that to challenge is a certain way of sending them insane, to ask them to sleep in different patterns, so they keep them in the same pattern as on Earth.

CS: Cillian Murphy and the rest of the cast visited CERN in Switzerland in order to prepare for their roles, which is appropriate since it's the only scientific project on Earth that comes close to what they're doing in the film just in terms of scale. Have you visited also?
Boyle: I've never been, actually. I'm due to go in October when they open it, but I don't think I'll get there now because of the film I'm doing in Mumbai. It's meant to be amazing. It's a particle accelerator that's 27 kilometers. There's one in Chicago as well, but this is gonna be bigger than Chicago, this is going to be the biggest one on the planet. Chicago and here are searching for a particle called the Higgs Particle. They fire protons in opposite directions around this 27 km circumference at staggering speeds, just short of the speed of light, and then they crash them into each other and they're looking for that moment of explosion that's the Big Bang in miniature. They're looking for a particle that's smaller than a proton, but these guys, ironically, call it God's Particle. (laughs) That's their nickname for it. So even with these guys, who are top class atheistic scientists, the question of where we come from, who made us, is still hanging in there.

CS: Have you ever been this involved in researching a project?
Boyle: Probably not in a way that I can talk about it afterwards but I try to do this level of research on everything I do. You just absorb yourself completely in the world, or you try to. The other thing we found out at CERN, which is amazing, is in October when they do hit these protons into each other there is a chance, a small chance, that they will create a black hole. They don't know whether they will or not, and if there is a black hole created that's it, we're all finished. Supposedly when the Americans exploded the first Atom Bomb they had to go to congress because the scientists said there was a 10% chance they might set the sky on fire, the whole sky around the Earth. The congress and the president said "go ahead anyway". (laughs) In fact, I said to Brian Cox "so there's a black hole in which we'll all disappear instantly?" and he said "don't worry, you won't remember anything, it'll all be just over like that. (laughs)

CS: Does that add some pressure for you to finish on time?
Boyle: (laughs) Actually it relieves all the pressure!

CS: Can you tell us a little more about the movie you're making now in Mumbai?
Boyle: It's called "Slumdog Millionaire" and it's written by Simon Beaufoy who wrote "The Full Monty," which is one of my favorite British films. When he sent the script I didn't really... the byline is about a kid who goes on the Hindi version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and wins it. I thought "I don't want to make a film about "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", but I read it out of respect for him 'cause he's a fantastic writer and it's just brilliant. It's incredible, the Hindi version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" isn't like the American or British version. It's actually INCREDIBLY difficult to win, because what you have in India is this incredibly highly populated educational strata who are very poor, they don't have much money, but they are professors so they go on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?". After the first couple of questions, the first couple of easy questions to settle you in, the question level jumps straight away to nuclear physics! Boomph, like that! I can only ever get past the first 3 or 4 questions, that's it. Anyway, this kid is from a slum, uneducated, literally went on it and won it. They thought he cheated and everything like that, but the structure of the film, which you'll see when you see it hopefully, explains how he knows all the answers which is really the clever bit of it. The heartfelt bit is the reason he goes on the show isn't to win it, it's actually 'cause he lost his girl in Mumbai, she's a slum girl and he can't find her 'cause there's like 20 million people in the city. All he knows is she watches the show religiously so he goes on the show in order to get back in touch with her. So it's a love story. But it's good, I'm really looking forward to it! It's completely the opposite of "Sunshine," 'cause Mumbai is kind of an ordeal of humanity, just humans coming at you endlessly day and night!

CS: And it's an all-Indian cast?
Boyle: Yeah. So it'll be opening at a film festival I think, not a multiplex, 'cause there won't be much to sell it besides the film itself.

Sunshine opens in limited release on July 20 and then wide on July 27.

Quote from: MacGuffin on July 16, 2007, 10:44:13 AM
Exclusive: Danny Boyle on Sunshine!

Haha

Handmade visual effects warm Boyle's "Sunshine"

Smack in the middle of the summer's CG-heavy, massively budgeted tentpole blockbusters, Fox Searchlight is boldly going where few have gone before. On Friday (July 20), the specialty films distributor launched the sci-fi thriller "Sunshine."

Produced at a cost of $40 million, the space pic looks like it could have cost more than twice that, but it didn't because the filmmakers constructed most of their special effects by hand.

"The industry has made sci-fi this holy grail of VFX (visual effects), that you have to spend money to get anything good," said Tom Wood, "Sunshine's" VFX supervisor. "I don't agree with that. I feel filmmakers are put off doing sci-fi because of that idea."

Sci-fi is hardly alien territory to director Danny Boyle, who notes that "Sunshine" took some budgetary cues from his 2002 hit, "28 Days Later." The two features even filmed in the same small London facility, 3 Mills Studio.

"Working with a slightly crippling budget, which would make other people despair; I know what I'm best at," said Boyle, who felt strongly that he could make a visually exciting sci-fi film -- about a crew flying to the sun to save it from dying -- without major use of computer graphics.

In one sequence, a character is shown tumbling into the sun. To achieve the effect, Boyle explains that they put the actor on a large gantry, then had 20 men wheel a vast sliding rig of lights around during filming. Later, another character turns into dust, which was literally whirled around the actor for the effect.

FEELING IT

Such methods save on costs and come with hidden benefits, Boyle said. "When we blasted (the actor) with the dust, it didn't cost much -- just a couple of air blasters and a lot of edible dust and lighting. But you could feel it when it happened. Now, if I can feel it, you're not telling me that doesn't affect the spirit in the actor. Whereas if you say to him, 'We're going to blow your hair and put the dust in later,' he's going to fake it. That's the thing with actors."

CG effects' lifelike mimicking is meant to save problems on the back end, said Boyle, but ultimately the human mind knows better. "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," he said.

Boyle added that he's no Luddite and noted that there is room for CG in places -- the film's spaceship, for example, was computer-generated. But he's not entirely alone in trying to dial back the overwhelming use of CG to tell a story this summer: 20th Century Fox's "Live Free or Die Hard" has been praised for the verisimilitude of its stunts, which were done by stuntmen and only rarely computer-assisted.

"I think there's a staleness to films that rely too heavily on CG," said Wood, who's now working on Buena Vista's CG-fest "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian." "I felt like on 'Sunshine' ... I was making shots for Danny Boyle's film in a way that Danny Boyle would have made himself."

As for Boyle, this was his final frontier. "I will never go back into space again," he said with a laugh. "You can feel when you're making the film that the audience expects, and you have to reach, that standard or forget it. It's very much a premiership league."

This was pretty good, but the third act kinda goes haywire.

SPOILER

It would have been perfectly fine without the crazy captain turning it into a variation on Jason X meets Event Horizon. There was more than enough technologically based suspense already -- plenty of things that could go wrong. What about having the suicidal guy actually be the one responsible, instead of letting it be false herring? He could even have gone completely berserk, paralleling the captain on Icarus I. That would have been far more chilling than some silly and improbable monster. Also, I suspect the makeup looked really stupid, because I can't think of any other reason why the imagery got all trippy and opaque when he showed up.

That said, there's some pretty suspenseful stuff here. The first space walk gave me a mild case of vertigo.

SPOILERS

I actually quite liked the crazy captain stuff at the end, partly because it totally took me by surprise generically for it to suddenly launch into that horror territory. I also like the overall point of that character being the ultimate antagonist, because it hammered home the point that this film is (despite all the comparisons and echoes) the anti-2001 in philosophical terms. In 2001 it is science and technology that is dangerous, and it is the search for some kind of higher, spiritual transcendence that is the saving grace for mankind. In Sunshine the search for God/ enlightenment proves fruitless, and in fact creates a mad religious-freak killer.

The film as a whole, though, wasn't good enough to deserve all the philosphical implications that it strived for, but they were there I think.

This worked on every level for me and I agree about the 2001 comparisons and contrasts. Actually a couple of times during the scenes of them in suspended space I really was enamored and happy. I was surprised because I didn't watych the trailer and I tried to stay away from most of the spoiler reviews and articles from here so I wasn't expecting anything and it turn it presented itself to me as something just plain wonderful. Definitely huge replay value. The theatre was packed with people.

SPOILERS

I agree with Ghostboy. The thing with the captain....just plain dumb. He's not even fleshed out (no pun intended) into a dynamic metaphor or anything. Just a big, inexplicable creature. It's ironic that given how logical the film and its characters are, how realistic the science seems, that this character comes out of nowhere. And it felt way too much like Event Horizon and Sam Neill's character. --thanks P

However, I would compare the film to 2001 in regards to the special effects, which I thought were really amazing, to the point that I didn't notice them. And it's a fucking movie about being inside the sun, so that says something. They made than unimaginable obvious, and it was really great. Became a great grounding point, when everything else was going weird, the sun and the ships made sense.

sam neill.

this was this worst movie ive seen in a long time. i dont know how anyone could find something positive in this movie, with the exception of some of the visual effects. the script and dialogue were horrbile/laughable and i would never compare it to 2001. huge let down.

first of all. clerkguy is a retard.
second: if you haven't seen this yet and if you haven't watched any of the trailers or read any of the bullshit danny boyle has said about it.....for your sake please please don't, it will make the movie a million times better. the main reason to see this is because there hasn't been anything like this visually in the theaters since the fountain. did anyone else feel a fountain comparison at all? like:
spoiler
the scene at the end where he's facing the big wall of energy or whatever and he's all smiles and happiness like hugh jackman looking directly into the nebula

i was totally getting the whole event horizon feel and i hated the fact that the other captain looked like freddy krueger. The movie could've been just as suspenseful without that guy. i mean shit, the ultimate villain in the film is THE FUCKING SUN! and space and human emotion and everything else.

still: go see this. sit on the front row and damage your eyes. its fantastic.

After watching this, my friend and I had a discussion about how Alex Garland seems to struggle with his third acts. Both 28 Days Later and Sunshine are really good up until the third act when they seem to fall apart trying to get across some big idea to the audience. Overall, I was disappointed by Sunshine. I enjoyed the action and the visuals, but I just wasn't buying the story.

Quote from: elpablo on August 04, 2007, 11:27:37 PM
After watching this, my friend and I had a discussion about how Alex Garland seems to struggle with his third acts.

danny boyle should get some of that credit/blame at least for choosing those kinds of projects. see: millions.

I saw the 2001 connection, and The Fountain connection (as far as visuals and color scheme) but I'm pretty surprised that nobody mentioned how it has the exact same story arc as Alien. It wasn't so obvious at first, but as soon as Freddie Krueger captain man jumped on board, it was JUST like Alien, and even in the way they joked about, "picking off the crew members one by one." I thought that it was stunning, and I enjoyed it, but it was just a little devoid of originality.

Quote from: squints on August 04, 2007, 01:17:51 PM
first of all. clerkguy is a retard.

its nice to know that people aren't assholes on this board.

Quote from: squints on August 04, 2007, 01:17:51 PM
first of all. clerkguy is a retard doesn't share the same opinion about Sunshine as I do.

I just saw this finally and it was great. SPOILERS

I kinda agree with a lot of the stuff said here, especially in the third act with the freak-super-captain. I thought there was so much that could happen other than a freak of nature, but it didnt bother me so much because everything else was great and the way it ended was pretty good too. After thinking about 2001 so much through the movie, I was happy that the ship didnt go crazy or anything like that.

The special effects were amazing and the level of tension during the whole movie, with the music and the background sounds, everything worked great. I tried not to see much footage about this or read articles and I was happily surprised during the film.

This had potential to be an all time great, but as others have said, the third act just falls apart.

Spoilers.

The most interesting and entertaining thing about it was how the crew was dealing with the psychological effects of being on a space ship heading towards the fucking sun, struggling to get just one bare eyed glimpse at it. It got better and better the more the crew began to realize that not only were they never going to make it back to earth, but they may never be able to deliver the payload and complete their mission and save humanity. I wish they would have explored the dynamics of the mentality each crew member must have had. For example some felt like screw the rest of the world, I just want MYSELF to survive as long as possible, and others felt like their life meant nothing and they must finish the mission and save the sun AT ALL COSTS NECESSARY.

I liked when they found the distress signal from the Icarus 1 and decided to change their course and check it out. It gave the film a creepy feeling and it was nice to see some of the more cocky crew members be humbled by what had happened to the crew of the Icarus 1. The shot fo the crew members burned in place holding eachother while staring at the sun was both eerie and beautiful.

All the problems that kept arising just kept adding to the suspense of the movie. I couldn't look away.

Then that third fucking act kicks in with the unidentidied crew member on the ship using up all the oxygen and it just turned into a fucking joke at that point. This stoweaway has super human strength as a result of getting burned in the sun? Gimme a fucking break.

Overall, probably the best first 1 hour and 10 minutes of a movie all year, and probably the worst half hour of a movie of all time.

Did anyone else get a Cunningham vibe from some of the shots and interiors? The solar flares really reminded me of something Cunningham would do.

All in all, this sort of genre (contemporary sci-fi) is probably my favorite genre in all of movies. I may be the only person on the site to have both A.I and Soderberghs Solaris remake as some of my favorite films of this decade. Throw in Children Of Men and this is definetely my favorite (sub) genre in film.

I finally saw this and was really impressed. I suppose I came to it with low expectations having been put-off slightly by the trailer and third-act rumours.

I thought it was great to have a film like this where for the second half the crew are knowingly fighting their way through to their death. Unlike, say, Alien where its pure survival.

I didn't get the impression that this went off on a philosophical tangent, the science was far more interesting (which is why I'm looking forward to listening to the commentary from the technical advisor). Any earthly pondering was in the back of our, and their minds; for them as a matter of necessity. When they have to deal with the issue of self-sacrifice they're almost all pragmatic about it.

...so then the last third. I'm trying not to give the Icarus 1 captain more of my imagination than is necessary in order to preserve the integrity of rest of the film.... For a start, the visual disturbance surrounding him was simply to indicate how destroyed his vision must have been, right? We'd already established he could survive on Icarus 1 and the ship must have been sterile. He was clearly insane. I'm avoiding calling him as some kind of monster in fact my first reaction to him was Kurtz.

SPOILERS

He's no Kurtz, he's just really the thing that ends up ruinning what would have been an amazing movie. Great visuals and a lot of suspense in the beggining made it worth every second. Then... they found Icarus I and even the remote possibility of something happening there, or someone being alive made it even better. Then it all went ape-shit because the third act ruined everything. I can't see anything of any real interest in it. I mean, I wouldn't even have a problem with the captain from Icarus I in there acting loony, if it served the film in any reasonable way or, well, if it made any sense. But no, it went downhill and everything seemed rushed, and Boyle's directing didn't help a bit. In fact, it was as bad as the writting itself in the final act (it was great up until that point). His flashy editing and visuals didn't really made sense and it was sometimes hard to even understand what the hell was happening - and no, not in a good way either. It was confusing visually. Okay, I just saw it and didn't even really think about it enough, but I get really pissed when a great movie shoots itself on its feet at the very end.

The bad thing is, I actually caught "Millions" yesterday on TV and it basically had simmilar problems, even though it never seemed like it could be great, it still would have been nice enough, if it wasn't for the conclusion. So fuck Danny Boyle for badmouthing Eli Roth if he doesn't even know how to make it right.

So in conclusion, this couldn't have been better put:

Quote from: Pubrick

Quote from: elpabloAfter watching this, my friend and I had a discussion about how Alex Garland seems to struggle with his third acts.

danny boyle should get some of that credit/blame at least for choosing those kinds of projects. see: millions.