hubblegubble and I went to see "Sunshine" on Saturday. We weren't impressed.


Where to start with this.......

1 The ship is called Icarus and in the myth Icarus doesn't make it and neither does anyone on the ship. It's a foregone conclusion that no one is coming home and personally I require my movie to have a twist to it or some kind of emotional satisfaction. If you know right from the start that they're all going to die then there's no point in watching it.

2 The plot is totally driven by the characters making stupid decisions, by poor standard operating procedures and by bad science. Normally I press my suspension of disbelief button, but there were just too many in this one to ignore. Also I'm fairly non-critical of SF movies, but in this case there were so many I just can't let it go.

2 Right from the beginning you can tell that this ship is in trouble. For a start Mace gets into a fight with Capa because Capa uses up the last of the available time for communicating with loved ones on earth before they move into the dead zone. Why does the captain not allocate the resources more fairly? Everyone should have gone to their cabins, recorded their messages on their camera phones/PDAs/webcam or whatever we undoubtedly have 50 years from now and then downloaded them to the comms station to be sent out as soon as they were ready. Then, if someone is stupid enough to take ages to record something and misses the deadline then it's his own fault, but it won't affect anyone else. So we have poor resource management.

3 Why, if Icarus is so concerned about making sure Searle doesn't harm himself by lowering the filter in the observation room, does she continue to allow him to use it when he's given himself a very severe dose of sunburn? If a crew member endangers himself and shows signs of obsession, why doesn't the captain take some action?

4 I have other problems with Icarus being a crap AI. Why doesn't it warn/remind Trey that a course change requires a shield angle change? Why doesn't it warn everyone when an unknown crew member is on board? Why does it insist on being brought back on line as it perceives that the mission is in danger, but doesn't speak up at any other time, when the mission is also in incredible danger? Why does it have control of the lights, but not of its own cooling system? Icarus and the ship do not require lighting, only the humans and plants do. Why don't the humans have control of the lights?

5 If Capa is so indispensable why is he sent out to repair the shield? He's the only one who knows how to set off the bomb, but that seems to only require him to press some buttons and turn a key. He could have typed up a laminated sheet and trained everyone to do it. He had plenty of time to do that. So now we have poor key-man dependency.

6 What is Cassie's job? If she's the pilot why wasn't she with Trey when he made the course change? Even a 747 has two pilots to check and cross check each other's workings. So now we have poor standard operating procedures.

7 Why on earth would the psychiatrist insist to the captain the they let the youngest, most inexperienced crew member make the most important decision of the mission? I'm going to assume at this point that the sun had already gone to Searle's head.

8 How does Capa intend to use the payload from Icarus I? If the only reason to go to Icarus I is to salvage their bomb, how does he intend to make use of it? He has no plan and the crew don't once have a talk about what the possible scenarios might be. If he's the only one who can set off the bomb how does he propose to set off two bombs? There seems to be no informed decision making at all and the decision should always have been the captain's.

9 If Icarus I failed in its mission for an unknown reason why do they build an identical ship for the second mission?

10 Why is the arming mechanism for the bomb on the actual bomb? Why isn't it in the control room?

11 If the course change resulted in the shield being 1.1 degrees out of alignment, why are the panels jammed at 45 degrees?

12 Gravity. A very poor understanding of gravity in the whole thing. The ship has gravity throughout, I have no problem with this, but when Mace and Capa are in the airlock the gravity doesn't affect them until the air pressure is equalised. I think that someone thinks that we're held on earth by air pressure and men bounce around on the moon due to a lack of air rather than a lack of gravity.

13 When Kaneda and Capa are out repairing the shield why aren't they tethered? To work in low gravity you need to have something to work against or you'd bounce off the hull every time you touched something. No real knowledge of Newton's Third Law. Also if they were tethered to motorised winches they could be hauled in at speed and both would have survived Icarus's attempts to arbitrarily re-take control. How can the loss of the indispensable Capa and the captain be considered as a better option than holding their angled position to the sun for a few more minutes? I mean they've already destroyed their air supply, why not wait another minute or two?

14 What kind of engines does Icarus have that allow it to reverse thrust away from the sun? The engine requirements for the return journey would be much higher than the trip to the sun, but as soon as the payload has separated they have four minutes to get clear of the bombs thrusters while still keeping their much smaller shield in between them and the sun. You can't just throw thrust engines into reverse, because it's not a bloody outboard motor. There's nothing in space to suck on to create a reverse thrust.

15 Why do they slingshot around Mercury? The only reason to sling shot is to pick up speed which they immediately need to dump when they get to Icarus I. How do they slingshot and keep their shield between them and the sun and keep their engines behind them? If Icarus can keep the ship sufficiently oriented during that maneuver it should have had no problem with Trey's initial course change.

16 Why are the comm units spinning? The only reason to spin something on a ship is to induce an artificial gravity, so that would probably be required for habitation modules. But the ship has gravity through out so it's not that. How do you send a signal from spinning communications units to a very small point millions of miles away? You need a directional antenna, not a spinning transmitter. Very poorly thought out.

17 When Icarus drops the payload it returns home with a much smaller shield. Wouldn't the comms units be destroyed then? Why not just drop the comms units once you reach the dead zone. You don't need them, keeping them spinning (for whatever reason) requires energy and you're going to lose them anyway once you've dropped the bomb.

18 Why is their only method of oxygen production in one area? Why aren't there plants all over the ship acting as CO2 scrubbers and why are there no seeds in storage? Why haven't they established base camps of supplies, fuel, food and O2 at various points for the return journey. Even during the old days of Antarctic exploring they saw the value of this. Are we really so much stupider in 50 years? If so, then quite frankly we deserve to die out. Very poor redundancy plans and backups.

19 Why is the sprinkler system in the o2 garden insufficient to put out a fire? Surely one of the first scenarios you work through before launch is a fire in the garden. Why if they have a gas management system, don't they flood the burning garden with CO2 instead of o2? It would have put the fire out and not harmed the plants. Trying to make a fire's duration shorter by flooding it with 02 and burning the available fuel quicker is foolhardy and none of you kids should try it at home. The standard firefighting methods even in these primitive times are water, foam and CO2. No one in their right mind would use o2 to fight fire.

20 Why do the crew get to run about the ship willy nilly when there's a crisis? Very poor discipline.

21 Why does Harvey the comms officer tell everyone that he had heard IcarusI? He should have discretely told the captain and let him decide to tell the others. In a confined situation any communication received from outside become very important. Look at what happens in Big Brother when they hear people over the wall, shouting. They have emotional breakdowns. The presence of IcarusI should have been kept quiet. What if they had received word from earth that there had been a war? The captain would have kept that info from them to maintain morale. Very poor psychology and standard operating procedures again.

22 Why, when they know that comms 3 and 4 will be destroyed by their attempts to repair the shield, don't they cut off air and power to the units to isolate them? All they do is tell Icarus to shut off the sensors and silence the alarms. Surely to protect the ship systems they should isolate failing units. Why doesn't Icarus do this, if it's such a great AI? Who is responsible for ship operations?

23 When Trey is on suicide watch, who is actually watching him? Icarus? Cause we know how good she is at speaking up.

24 When Capa finds out that an unknown crewman is on board why does he go for a wee look himself. Why doesn't he ask Icarus to shut the observation room door and do a ship-wide comm to the others to warn them? Why doesn't he ask Icarus to raise the filters in the observation room so he can actually see who is in there?

25 Why is there a manual lock on the airlock door on one side only?

26 Why are the tags used to communicate with the ship and monitor vital signs held on my a piece of plastic string? Why aren't they on a wrist band?

27 What was the plan once they got onto Icarus I? It should have been prioritised that they go to the o2 garden and salvage what they can. They should have run an umbilical over to the o2 tanks and stolen what o2 they had without even going on board. They should have worked out well in advance how they were going to use the second bomb. In the end they achieve nothing at all by going to Icarus I, not even the only reason for diverting their mission of getting the second bomb.

28 Why, when Capa Harvey and Mace blew themselves out the damaged airlock, didn't they tie themselves to Capa's suit? They found enough silver insulation to wrap themselves in, why just try and hold on instead of tethering themselves to him so no one drifted off? Poor Operating procedures and decision making again.

29 How do we hear Harvey's arm smash? In space no one can hear you scream far less smash to bits.

30 Where is the observation deck? Is it in the shield facing forwards? No it's not. It's in the side. How does it get a direct view of the sun if it's behind the shield? Is it an image from Icarus's sensors? Well then how does it have the capacity to burn skin and drive a man mad if it's only an image?

31 How big is the bomb? As big as Manhattan we're told. Is that to give americans the idea that it's big? Is it joke referencing the Manhattan project since it's a nuclear bomb? Or is it bunk? Even a bomb as big as the whole world wouldn't make any significant difference to the massive fusion reactor that the sun is. No effect at all. Vaporised in an instant. Not a snowflake's chance in hell.

32 Why is there only one airlock? Why no escape pods or shuttles? Why is it even a manned mission at all? If we can fire a probe to Mars and it still functions years later why can't we punt a bomb at the sun?

33 Is this crew really the best that mankind has to offer? A boy that is so clever he can't think himself out a wet paper bag. A computer expert who thinks the best way to save the machine is to dive into its cooling tanks ad thinks it's ok to fight fire with o2. A captain that can't/won't make decisions. A overly talkative and cowardly communications officer. An arrogant pilot that won't accept input from his co-pilot and becomes suicidal. And a psychiatrist with an obsession? A biologist without a separate potting shed or a seed store.
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Ahhhhh. I needed that. Sorry if anyone liked it, but it might have made sense in the fifties, not now that we have science taught in schools.