I went to see Sunshine yesterday, thanks to the National Media Museum and their policy of screening stuff again well after the original release.I really wanted to like it. It had Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada (from the brilliant Twilight Samurai), Cillian Murphey and was an Alex Garland and Danny Boyle thing. So I was expecting something good.
There were good things... the sound, the visual effects were stunning. The acting was for the most part excellent. The plot... ah... here's where it got a little silly. Very silly at the end actually where it veered into a sub-Alien spaceship's not a good place to hide.But that's not my real issue.
THERE'S NO SOUND IN A VACUUM!
But this is the tip of the iceberg. It's an indicator that you're watching a comic... something less than serious, and for me, when I see that sort of thing I need a story and characters that are totally engaging for me to suspend my disbelief... otherwise I find, completely without meaning to, that I want to say things at the screen.
THERE'S NO SOUND IN A VACUUM (I want to tattoo it on the inside of the eyelids of movie producers).
Okay. I'm not the norm... but imagine you were watching a film set in Yorkshire, in Leeds... and it's part of the plot... it's Leeds. Yet in the background you see Tower Bridge. Do you just say 'oh it's not that important. So what? Who cares?". I care.
SOUND VACUUM
In some films and TV (Firefly is a good example) the story is so good, the characters so gripping that you don't need answers to these questions (well, tell a lie, I do. I just don't need them so much unless it's a slow episode, and in the TV series space was silent, it only had noise in the movie). With Sunshine... I definitely did.
And that ruined it. For me.
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