It’s not a film review… more of a rant…
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.
- Where does the gravity come from… you’re not spinning?
- If you can manipulate gravity why are you in this mess?
- How come gravity comes back on when you close the airlock?
- How come you can stop so easily? Your engines are at the back and you haven’t turned round.
- Why do your designers make routine maintenance of kit that might well need maintenance into a process that means certain death for some unlucky engineer?
- How come you need to be here at all? Can’t the computer do it?
- How am I hearing the whoosh as the big bit of the spacecraft goes past?
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.
Tags: film
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I’ve not seen the film in question but I entirely agree with the bare facts of the rant here John. There simply is no medium for sound to travel through in space. Well not since Luminiferous aether was found to be lacking somewhat in the existence department. Star Trek and almost all other space related films/shows suffered from the same issues along with other problematical areas such as banking whilst turning in space, visible laser beams when there are no particulates for the light to reflect off, the list goes on.
But, and there is a but, many of these sonic mistakes are often required as without, the sound-stage would seem somewhat barren. Additionally the years of Pavlovian training in the expectation of visible laser beams etc and the general public’s apparent ignorance of most things related to real life physics makes it difficult for Joe Public to accept reality on what is essentially a medium for putting across anything but reality.
The sound might have to stay I’m afraid. :(