I for some reason had the urge to watch a 1960s movie called Voyage To
The Bottom Of The Sea the week before, it was a fine movie for it's
time, but when I watched "Sunshine" the following week, I was
distressed about how three major plot elements seemed very much lifted
from Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and redressed. Myself and the
maiden with whom I watched the movie were very upset by this, it just
spelt out that people have great trouble writing really new material.
As soon as they got aboard the place where the uninvited guest came
from, I just turned off and wondered what I was doing in the cinema
watching this film. I could have used my time better painting the
toenails of the maiden who watched the movie with me than watching
this film at that point. But all the exterior shots were very
beautiful. I went ahead seeing the movie fully informed that I
wouldn't find it that interesting, and as it goes, whenever I see a
Danny Boyle photo or see him wandering around a bookshop in London, or
even read an interview with him, I'm hit by waves of disinterest. I
think that the title of his movie A Life Less Ordinary did make more
sense when I would call it A Lifeless Ordinary. But Sunshine was the
first movie of his that I saw, and maybe it might well be the last.
But I acknowledge that it might well be hard to make a movie these
days, and that Danny Boyle did have an interesting idea for the
unwanted visitor that he couldn't get the money to shoot, in terms of
glowing interior organs. I suppose also Alien's plot elements were
borrowed from past movies and the act of borrowing and redressing
elements from Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea is the natural thing to
do for Sunshine's script writer, it might even be a brave move. When
Sunshine comes out on DVD, there is a possibility that I might buy it
for reasons similar to why i bought Event Horizon.
It's probably a terrible time for new sci-fi ideas.
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