Sunshine

Sunshine (2007)

11 corrected entries

(2 votes)

Corrected entry: When they have to travel through space from the Icarus I to the Icarus II, one of the men must remain to open the lock gate. Why don't they choose the man with the spacesuit [Capa] to open it? He could do it and after that, fly to the other spaceship.

Correction: Capa won't be able to fly back because Icarus II is moving away from Icarus I and they needed the suit because it was better suited to maneuvering into space towards the ship.

Corrected entry: As they approach Mercury the planet moves from the right to the left in front of them. Given the angle, direction towards the sun, and the counterclockwise rotation of all planets this is entirely impossible. The planet would move from left to right in front of them.

Correction: Unless they were upside-down in relation to what's generally considered "up" in solar system terms, in which case everything would be reversed.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: At the point where they need to leave "Icarus 1" the sexy guy rips some foil apart to reveal the space suit. Shortly afterwards, one of the others blows dust from the suit, as if it has been out in the ship's atmosphere as long as everything else on board.

RoK

Correction: "The sexy guy" is ripping insulation off the walls, upon one of which the only remaining space suit hangs, in order to provide the other two with a degree of protection. The suit is not behind this insulation.

Phixius

Corrected entry: The first ship would not be called "Icarus 1", but simply "Icarus". It makes sense to call the second ship "Icarus 2", but when the Earthlings had all faith in the original "Icarus" being successful, why tempt fate by adding the numerator "1"?

RoK

Correction: Historically, space programs have almost invariably numbered their first mission as number one, even though it's technically unnecessary. Naming the ship Icarus I is simply following space-flight tradition.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: A human body is mostly composed of water at the right atmospheric pressure. In a vacuum environment, the water will instantly evaporate. Making the astronaut's bodies explode when propelling themselves from Icarus 1 to 2. Otherwise astronauts wouldn't need pressurized suits.

allibyx

Correction: It takes a much greater shift in atmospheric pressure to cause a human body to explode. Google the question and you'll find that most every expert agrees a human being could survive exposure to space for up to 30 seconds with no permanent injury.

Phixius

Corrected entry: Cappa's last message to his family is seen to arrive directly before the sunshine brightens and the end credits roll, a long time after it was sent. Although sound waves travel at a low speed (about 340 m/s), all electromagnetic radiation (including radio transmissions) travels at the speed of light (300 000 000 m/s). Thus the eight minute travel time specified for light emanating from the sun would also apply to radio communications.

Correction: It's not seen specifically to arrive - it's seen being watched. When a message like that arrives, it would be unthinkable for his family not to save it and watch it multiple times. Capa's sister is simply watching it again while her kids are busy playing.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: In the scene where Capa is the only man in the spacesuit and two other crew members have to jump with him through space, the two other crew members would not survive. The difference in pressure between space (0kg/cm^2)) and Earth (1kg/cm^2) would surely cause the astronauts' bodies to leak or explode. Therefore Harvey would not even have time to become frozen: he would sooner begin to leak and be torn apart by the pressure inside of him. The same goes for the other guy (the one who makes it without the suit).

EpicFishFingers

Correction: Yet another one who's fallen for the whole "humans explode in space" myth. Sorry to break it to you, but it's completely untrue; the human skin is way tougher than that. NASA estimates that a human being could survive without protection in space for at least thirty seconds without serious long-term effects. What we see in the film is entirely plausible.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: In order for a star to die, it must first go through a "Red Giant" stage, after which it would either become a dwarf star or implode, thereby creating a black hole. Nevertheless, Earth would be destroyed in the Red Giant stage because the stars growth would envelop the planet.

Correction: The trivia section of imdb.com says the sun is not dying "in the normal sense". It is a bit wordy: http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/trivia.

Rlvlk

Corrected entry: The crew are ongoing with the repairs to the payload shield, and the oxygen garden catches fire by reflected sunlight from the damaged com towers. The big plot hole here would be: why design such a critical area with pointless windows, which only expose the very critical area needed for the human crew to survive, to possible but unlikely destruction? There is no reason to have windows, as the sunlight would be destructive. It did, in fact, cause the destruction of the oxygen garden in the first place.

Correction: Why put windows in the garden area? For the same reason as they put windows everywhere else, including cutting one in the very shield that protects them - to look out of. It's a human psychological thing, the need to look around them, to see what's there, directly, with the naked eye. The whole thing is a freak chain of events, starting with the discovery of the believed-destroyed Icarus I and the resulting change of course from the mission profile (something that could not possibly have been foreseen), that leads directly to the accident. Failure to anticipate something as phenomenally unlikely as that does not constitute a plot hole in the slightest.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: Capa escapes the Icarus II spacecraft using the spacesuit to reach the bomb payload. When the bomb payload begins to move away from Icarus II, the rocket thrusters damage the Icarus II spacecraft to the point of destruction. When you see the spaceship explode you can see that the front part of the craft where the shield dish is has no thrusters or engine in which to move away from the sun and the bomb payload. I assume that the craft designers orginally intended for the crew to be able to survive the mission and escape, but how is this possible if there is no engine or thrusters for the ship to move away from the sun? Turning the ship round is no option, as the sun would destroy the ship, hence the need for the dish which acts as a shield.

Correction: The ship has its own thrusters that rotate in whatever direction needed. The payload thrusters did not damage the ship to the point of destruction. The ship was destroyed by the sun.

Phixius

Corrected entry: There's something a bit unfortunate about the name "Icarus". Why would they give the spaceship a name of a Mythological character who died because he approached too close to the Sun?

Correction: By what stretch of the imagination is this a movie mistake? Just because you think something's "a bit unfortunate"? So the choice is slightly ironic - it's still entirely appropriate. The ship is going way too close to the sun for comfort, exactly as the mythological Icarus did.

Tailkinker

Continuity mistake: When Cillian Murphy's character is recording his message prior to entering the 'dead zone', our viewpoint is from within the monitor in front of him. As such, we see the on-screen image he sees, but reversed, floating between our vantage point and his image. At the bottom of the screen are touch-screen function 'buttons', again in reverse, which read (our left to right) 'RECORD', 'SEND', 'DELETE' and 'REVIEW'. But when our view changes to see the screen as we look over his shoulder from behind him, the visible buttons now read (right to left) 'SEND' and 'REVIEW' (he presses 'SEND'). They should be 'SEND' and 'RECORD'. (00:06:15)

johnrosa

More mistakes in Sunshine

Pinbacker: Are you an angel? Has the time come? I've been waiting so long.

More quotes from Sunshine

Question: The captain of the first Icarus is insane, burned worse than Freddy Krueger, and his crew has been dead conceivably for 7 years. How is he even alive still without medical care, let alone able to attack and murder members of the second Icarus crew? Insanity doesn't bar one from infection or organ failure.

Answer: Actually, there is a perfectly logical explanation for Pinbacker being on the Icarus II: he went through the airlock while the team was searching the ship and sabotaged the connection from there.

Friso94

Wouldn't the Icarus II immediately sense his presence though? As soon as Capa and Mace reach the airlock, the ship acknowledges that they are there.

Phaneron

Answer: It is implied that Pinbacker's dedication to his mission to destroy humanity allows him to ignore his injuries. It must also be pointed out that Pinbacker was intentionally designed by director Danny Boyle to break the "realism" of the film. His survival is intended to be almost supernatural. Note that there is no possible way Pinbacker could have made it from Icarus I to Icarus II, but he does somehow and it's never explained.

BaconIsMyBFF

More questions & answers from Sunshine

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