Sunshine: Cillian Murphy’s Sci-Fi Movie Writer Reflects On Conflicting With Director On 1 Theme

Sunshine screenwriter Alex Garland reflects on the one conflict he had with the director of the Cillian Murphy sci-fi film. Set in the year 2057, Danny Boyle’s 2007 science fiction drama concerns a crew of astronauts undertaking a hazardous mission to stop the Earth’s sun from dying. Despite a strong ensemble cast and impressive visuals, the film was a box office disappointment, grossing just $34 million on a budget of $40 million.

With his own new film Civil War set to make waves, Garland recently looked back on writing Sunshine, discussing the conflict he had with director Boyle over the meaning of the film. Check out Garland’s remarks below (via GQ):

I’m a science nerd. When I say I read nonfiction, a lot of it is history or science. That’s the zone that I go into the most. What we had was a conceptual difference, which was really to do with physics, believe it or not—with what the future of the universe was. For me, Sunshine was a story about a world that’s dying and somebody saying, “By saving the world temporarily at this moment, all you’re doing is delaying the horror of extinction to your ancestors, and that’s not fair on them. We should take that horror ourselves, and not hand it on, as it were, to our great-great, great, great-grandchildren,” because you are going to reach the same point, which is the heat-death of the universe.

Danny was like, “No, we’ll find a way.” I was saying, “We’re not going to find a way.” That disagreement, a sort of physics-based disagreement, expanded out into all sorts of things to do with the film and what the antagonist believed or represented.

Garland’s Version Of Sunshine Would Have Been More Dark And Pessimistic

Garland and Boyle’s argument over Sunshine’s themes seem to boil down to a basic philosophical disagreement. While Garland saw nobility in the idea of the ship’s crew failing in their mission, and sacrificing all of humanity to spare future generations from a grim fate, Boyle saw the story as one of heroism. For his part, Garland seems to have favored an ending that saw the astronauts accepting their fate, while Boyle favored one that saw them struggling against that fate at all costs, and ultimately triumphing (in the finished film, they succeed in their mission and humanity is saved).

This conflict points up a fundamental difference in sensibility between Boyle and Garland. Though Boyle’s films can often get very dark, he frequently gives his characters unambiguous victories, showing them overcoming all obstacles to win in the end. That basically optimistic outlook has helped spur Boyle to a lot of box office and critical success, peaking with the Oscar-winning smash hit Slumdog Millionaire.

Garland has a much more pessimistic outlook than Boyle, as reflected in movies like Ex Machina and Annihilation, which deal in ambiguity and moral shades of gray. Garland’s latest movie, Civil War, indeed seems downbeat and filled with moral conflict, reflecting a tendency that was already showing up when he wrote Sunshine. Had Garland himself directed Sunshine, the movie would have been very different, but not necessarily more successful, given the downbeat way he would have ended the story.

Source: GQ