Sunshine: A Screenplay

Sunshine is Alex Garland’s screenplay for the Danny Boyle film that’s just come out, chronicling a crew en route to the Sun in an attempt to reignite the dying star, onboard the spaceship Icarus II. Garland’s script consciously harks back to SF stories such as 2001 and Solaris , and – as with much of the best SF - is concerned less with the science and more with the human element of the mission.

As the ship comes closer to the Sun, the crew become more drawn to the power of the star itself, and the effects of it on their psyches start to threaten the mission. Then, in the orbit of Mercury, the crew come across the Icarus…the lost spaceship that first attempted their mission.

Garland writes in the foreword that he and director show more Danny Boyle differed in their interpretation of the film’s main theme, which concerns Man’s relationship with God. Both see the Sun as representing a god-like power, overwhelming each of the crew as they come ever closer, but for Garland the interpretation is atheistic; for Boyle the Sun comes to stand more directly for God himself. Regardless of that difference in interpretation, the strength of the script is in how the characters react to the immense power of the Sun. No conclusions are forced, leaving everyone to make their own mind up as to what the script is saying.

There is a beauty to Garland’s descriptions, and I really must get around to seeing the film to see how well that was translated. While there is a little of the formulaic thriller element to the story, it isn’t the main focus, and what there is serves more to advance the theme than it feels like a tacked-on element. show less

I wish this were a novel by Alex Garland. I've truly enjoyed both his novels and screenplays in the past, but this one needed a bit more depth. It was interesting, but too much went unexplained, even for a film. Also, in some ways it felt anti-climactic, and at times I felt like it was struggling to decide whether it was horror or sci-fi. This seeming uncertainty really hurt the work as a whole for me. I really wanted to like it--but I needed more focus and depth of explanation/thought. I this this could be a great 300 page novel, but as a 120 page screenplay, it needed more.