British director Danny Boyle wanders back and forth between film genres like others between cereals. Horror, sci-fi, thriller, touching drama, musical comedy, adventure – he has covered all bases with great films. Now you can his second and final science fiction film Watch on Disney+: Sunshine.
Sunshine on Disney+ is a must for sci-fi fans: That’s why Danny Boyle has turned his back on his best genre
Danny Boyle reinvented the zombie genre with 28 Days Later in the early ’00s and he delivered with Sunshine in 2007 one of the best space thrillers ever. For sci-fi fans, this makes him a directing legend. Sunshine manages to add something new to the claustrophobic spaceship horror. But that came at a price.
This is what Sunshine on Disney+ is about: In 2057 the sun dies. A crew is sent into space to reignite it and save Earth from cold death. A mission had already been sent out, but the spaceship Icarus disappeared without a trace. Now the salvation of the world rests on the shoulders of the astronauts of Icarus II.
20th Century Studios/Disney+
Sunshine: The crew of the Ikarus II
In our ranking of the best sci-fi films since 2000, Danny Boyle takes 8th and 26th place with 28 Days Later and Sunshine. He is one of the few directors to have two entries in the list. After Sunshine, however, he put an end to the genre. It is simple too draining to handle a big sci-fi production.
Anyone who approaches the whole thing like Danny Boyle shouldn’t be surprised. He had the cast live together for months to make them feel like a real spaceship crew. The entire team received seminars from a physics professor, and Boyle wrote 35 script drafts with his colleague Alex Garland. Last but not least, filming in artificial weightlessness is a different matter than on the ground. That’s draining.
But for Danny Boyle it was above all one “spiritual exhaustion”as he reported to the Guardian in 2007 – and the genre is to blame:
There’s a reason many directors only make one sci-fi film. Because you completely exhaust yourself, spiritually. I became more spiritual while working on the film – you have to be open-minded.
While according to Danny Boyle other space horror films like Event Horizon and Alien would search for hell in space, he would have looked for the sky. This is what distinguishes his visually stunning, light and flame-soaked epic from the other genre entries.
Sunshine is now available to stream as a subscription on Disney+*. Disney+ is currently the only service where you can watch the sci-fi film at a flat rate.
There are even more sci-fi and streaming tips in the Moviepilot podcast: The 15 best September releases
In the monthly preview, we’ll bring you closer to the most exciting September series, which you can stream on Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+, among others:
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We have checked the long starting lists of the streaming services and are introducing you to the 15 big highlights of the month in the Moviepilot podcast Streamgesucht. Included is Netflix’s farewell to Sex Education and the return of the acclaimed Apple series The Morning Show. Amazon also has a John Wick series ready for us and is sending the great fantasy series The Wheel of Time into its second season.
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