TheCorniestLemur

Right, so...this is a weird one. I remember watching this episode for the first time and...still being interested, but having absolutely no idea what nearly anything in Elliot's crazy withdrawal hallucinations was supposed to be conveying.

And to be fair to myself, I really do think that you would need to have watched the whole show to fully grasp what's going on in this sequence. Now that I have...holy crap, this episode is a masterclass in foreshadowing. However, I completely get it if anyone considers the whole withdrawal trip scene to be pointless on their first watch, and it does take up a considerable chunk of the episode.

All I can do without spoiling everything is assure you that it is anything but pointless, and anyway, I think it reveals just enough subtle little details about Elliot's character to feel like it isn't just there for foreshadowing reasons.

Sure, neither Darlene nor Angela's parts of the episode are as fascinating as Elliot's, but they are both necessary, interesting on their own, and don't feel like they kill the pace or make the episode boring. And anyway, writing something as fascinating for either Darlene or Angela when we haven't delved into their minds nearly as much as Elliot's would have been virtually impossible as far as I can tell.

If you don't get it upon first watch though, I get it. I'm not gonna come to your house with a pitchfork. Promise.

Edit: I've decided that, at least for a while, I'm not going to be writing reviews any more. For the sake of time, my mental and financial health, other things I want to be doing, etc, etc, you get the point. It could be for a short time, but I won't lie, it could be forever. Depends on how it goes, but I'll still be rating things so you can get mad when my opinions are wrong...just not in as much detail.

There is some bad science in this good sci-fi.

I don't get very angry at nonsense science in sci-fi, but I do get the slight sense that something went a bit wrong when I can see something wrong with your physics. I got a D in GCSE physics, for reference. I can still tell you that the Sun's gravity is not strong enough to distort space-time, the only thing with gravity strong enough for that is a black hole.

What I do want to talk about is the fact that this film DEFINITELY ripped off an episode of Courage The Cowardly Dog that has nearly the exact same plot. No, I'm not joking, it was called Mission To The Sun and it came out several years before this. More than that, I looked it up and I seem to be the only person on the entire internet who's noticed this.

That said, you most definitely wouldn't get the same experience with the two. If anything, this feels like Danny Boyle and Alex Garland saw that episode and decided to play it straight and serious. And if they would ever like to team up again in the future, I'd be more than happy to check whatever they make out, because after The Beach was...eh?, and 28 Days Later was really good, this was absolutely fantastic. They just kept getting better.

I do think there's quite a bit of room for improvement though, but we'll get to that. Something that doesn't leave room for improvement in this is the acting. Start to finish, every single performance in this is brilliant, and if Cillian Murphy would like to keep working with Danny Boyle too, I'd be A-okay with that.

The narrative and symbolism in this script is easily the most interesting I've ever seen from Alex Garland (although I haven't seen Ex Machina or Men yet), and Danny Boyle took that script and made it even better when filming it. The lighting, the cinematography, and the production design are all jaw-dropping, and the fact that all this was made for just $40 million is beyond ludicrous.

Oh, and of course that score is absolutely gorgeous. You already know that.

However...I have a lot of praise for this, but the ending does go off the rails a bit. I don't have a problem with the villain in concept, and I absolutely adore how he's presented, but something about him does feel a little half-baked. Supposedly, the film was originally going to be a lot more existential, and all the characters would have their faiths tested by the mission and could have been going insane, etc etc...

And I really wish they had stuck to their guns and done that because not only would the villain feel more natural in that scenario, what with him babbling on about how God was speaking to him, but it would also make the other characters a lot more interesting too.

As it is, they're not entirely flat and indistinct from each other, but they really don't do or say a whole lot that lets the audience have any deep understanding of them, so it's screaming "missed opportunity" at me.

And I mean a huuuuge one. If they had just gone that extra step, then I really do think we could have had a masterpiece to rival 2001 for existential and slightly abstract sci-fi.

As it is, it's still damn good though, and it seems to be one of Danny Boyle's least talked about films, which really is a shame. So if you've also been finding yourself cursing the sun recently for being too hot, give this a watch and you might just appreciate it a little more.