Battalion

And as the eons mutated animal life prayed just as much as human, and the nature of their metabolisms changed, through frost and ice and sweltering humidity, century after century, millennia after millennia. 

Prayers answered through the varying intensity of light beams generated by the sun, and slowly transmitted across the ages with enduring patience and diverse agility. 

The cultivation of the beams invoked meticulous intricate bearings, with the dreams of manifold species taken into environmental account, like building tens of thousands of positronic brains simultaneously side by side, it took dexterity and innovation, to gradually bring about sundry newfound characteristics. 

As dinosaurs decreased in size certain plants began to eat bugs, while insects themselves developed wings and antennae, and human beings embraced rational discourse. 

But it wasn't only giant lizards who desired flight certain rodents did so as well, and the omniscient compassionate sundwellers answered their call with brilliant light.

Thus, the wise, courageous, temperate, and just mice, as accidentally envisioned by Plato, were granted wings upon reincarnation, and with flight, composed themselves honourably. 

Bats having arisen to rid the night sky of so many pests that feast upon us.

Until it became apparent humans couldn't care less.

And they developed foul diseases of their own. 

*Um, so the sun gods answered animal prayers and transformed virtuous mice into bats, who then tried to help us by eating bugs, but then turned virulent when we overlooked them?

**So the story goes son.

*I might be getting too old for this!

**Some say, never say die!

*It is peculiar that bats resemble mice, and why should some mice have wings while others don't, but evolutionary intensity built into sunlight, isn't that a bit of a stretch?

**It does solve several problems but is somewhat difficult to monitor, beyond the masternarrative, I suppose it does sound rather silly, even if it unites science and religion. 

*Look, Scruffy's growing wings after praying for millennia to be like birds!

**And I'm growing gills so I can breathe underwater!

*Fresh water and salt water?

**I imagine so son, I imagine so. 

Sunshine

Don't know how many claustrophobic spaceship films I've seen but there's been a bunch. Possibly 12. And Danny Boyle's new feature Sunshine fits somewhere in the middle. Aboard the Icarus II, a team of astronauts have a mission to fire a payload deep into the heart of the sun. They hope this payload will generate an explosion that will reignite its dying embers, thereby saving planet Earth. During their voyage, they encounter a distress beacon from their lost predecessor, the Icarus I, and decide to investigate. Within this investigation, lies both their personal doom and their eternal salvation.

Alex Garland's script showcases some of the typical sci-fi-thriller tropes. The tight quarters cause egos to erupt, leading to fighting amongst the crew. An evil force is encountered bent on destroying their mission. Love-play is absent as the crew have more serious matters to take care of, and recreation can be found in a room which manufactures whatever its inhabitant desires. Of these traits, I was somewhat disappointed by the introduction of the evil force. The villain certainly provides the heroes with plenty of opportunity to be heroic but couldn't these traits still be effectively displayed without the presence of a bloodthirsty lunatic?

Probably not, but it would be nice to see if the filmmakers could pull it off without being either excessively mundane or trivially over-the-top. I suppose I'm searching for another 2001 but even it had its own version of a monster.

Okay, perhaps you need monsters in science fiction thrillers of one kind or another, but I still don't like the demon that inhabits Sunshine. Nonetheless, it certainly doesn't take away from the script's interesting characteristics. The crew has recourse to a special room that offers them an extremely close up encounter with the rays of the sun, and, even though none of them seem that tanned, the image can represent research or the pursuit of knowledge. The maximum percentage of brightness that a viewer can be exposed to is somewhere around 3.1%, a statistic that represents knowledge's pursuit insofar as no matter how much we learn, there are always billions of other things we'll never know, each producing their own life breathing intensity. One death scene stands out as well, where the captain surrenders to the hopelessness of his predicament and burns up with the sun (after having rescued the ship). There he stands, alone against the universe after having sacrificed himself for the sake of humanity. His situation represents the end of a committed artist's life, to me, an ending which sees that artist forced to face the beautifully horrific details of life, up close and personal.