Sunshine

Danny Boyle hired the physicist Brian Cox of the University of Manchester as science adviser after seeing him on the BBC’s Horizon. Cox lectured the cast on solar physics and had the payload scaled down from the Moon’s mass to Manhattan’s size. On the commentary he says the film is not a documentary: its realism is deliberate and partial. Cinematographer Alwin Kuchler built the interior from grey, blue and green and kept orange, red and yellow out; that absence is where the heat comes from when the sun arrives. Boyle refused to cut back to Earth, barely shows the ship from outside, and keeps space black rather than starry. The helmets have horizontal slits instead of visors, the funnel shape chosen to shut the actors in. The cast lived together and toured a nuclear submarine in Scotland. NASA advised bigger quarters to protect the crew’s sanity, and the oxygen garden. All 750 effects shots went to one company for consistency, which lengthened post. The budget was 40 million dollars and cinemas did not return it. A good fit if you take the gap between the cold interior and the shock of the sun as the event. Not for viewers expecting the adviser’s realism to hold to the end, when the payload itself was shrunk on purpose.