by Ben Falk
So, Cox set to work and Gia managed to snag a job on the movie, too: as a website designer. ‘There was so much research done for this film,’ says actor Chris Evans, who plays the macho officer Mace. ‘Everyone involved really got our hands dirty to understand what these characters are going through and what the movie is about.’ First off, he had to come up with a reason as to why the sun might be dying in the first place. General scientific theory suggests the sun has enough energy to last for another 5 billion years or so. So why was it dying in the 21st century? Cox went away and hatched a plan. He read an academic paper suggesting there were exotic objects known as supersymmetric particles drifting around the universe that could be as old as the Big Bang. For the purposes of sunshine, he extrapolated that a huge collection of these particles may have drifted back into the sun (which is, after all, a star). Like cancer, they would eat away at the star, destroying it from within. It would be impossible to re-ignite the sun but Cox’s theory was that these particles could be disrupted by a big enough bomb, so removing the cancer and setting the sun’s fusion reactions back on track. As he himself said: ‘This might be far-fetched, but it is allowed by certain theories of a sub-atomic world.’
Funnily enough, on the Sunshine DVD commentary, he makes a £10 bet with the viewer that by 2017, super-symmetrical particles will have been discovered at CERN. As of the end of 2011, results from the Large Hadron Collider actually suggest they don’t exist. Professor Jordan Nash, who was working on one of the LHC experiments, told BBC News: ‘The fact that we haven’t seen any evidence of it tells us that either our understanding of it is incomplete, or it’s a little different to what we thought – or maybe it doesn’t exist at all.’
And the sun’s problems were not the only issue he examined. The spacesuits worn by the astronauts in the film are made of gold, rather than the usual white. Although they are visually stunning, Cox did an experiment to see how close one could get to the sun with gold. He told Boyle and Garland that the bomb (originally said to have the mass of the moon) should be scaled down to Manhattan because the rockets required to power the initial idea would be practically impossible to build. In addition, he had several discussions with the screenwriter about the psychology of long-term spaceflight and more specifically, those who would do anything to prolong the human race and those who believe life is innately meaningless in the sense that the universe is forever expanding. Both are key concepts of the movie and Cox’s sanguine outlook on the latter issue in particular perturbed his movie colleagues.
‘In that universe, no life can exist forever, absolutely none,’ says Cox. ‘No legacy can be left, in principle, forever. That really bothered [Alex]. I’ve had loads of conversations with him about it and I smile when I say it because I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me – it’s a long time in the future. We live in this immense universe and when you know that, that sense of perspective can do two things to you: it can either make you in awe of it and feel nature’s an amazing thing, and make you feel like you want to look at it and think about it and investigate it. Or you can kind of go the other way, and just shrink and think it’s too much and we’re insignificant.’ This must be part of the reason why Cox was drawn to the film: it debates the issue of religion, man versus nature and science in subtle ways that appealed to the avowed atheist. In the plot, there is Capa, who does everything in his power to save what he perceives to be a valuable Solar System, an important civilisation. Then there’s the villain of the piece (no spoilers here), someone who believes mankind is simply a transient piece of the puzzle that is the ever-expanding universe and attempts to foil the mission.
‘The physicist reacts to it the way I would,’ says Cox. ‘Then there’s the fundamentalist, who thinks it’s all too much, we’re completely pointless and we should all go away. To me, he’s a religious fundamentalist. I think what you have to recognise is in this “meaningless” universe, there’re still sparks of meaning in it and the sparks of meaning are people. The incredible thing about the universe is that beings like us evolved and even though we’re here for a small amount of time, we’re still important enough for us to try and save.’ He kept returning to the subject of what space travel over long periods would do to the human mind. ‘These astronauts on Icarus II have been there for 16 months before the film begins, cooped up inside this small space together,’ he explained. ‘There’s this very famous quote from one of the Russian cosmonauts that if you lock two or three men up in a container for months on end without access to their loved ones, then you have all the conditions for murder. There’s a beautiful picture taken by Voyager 2, which was one of the first spacecraft that went out to Saturn and Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus. There’s a picture of the earth and the moon hanging in space, beautiful crescents. It just shows you how absolutely fragile we are. And when you read a lot of the writings of the Apollo astronauts, when you look back [on] the whole earth, that sense of perspective is very affecting.
‘I like to think that these astronauts that have been looking at the earth receding away until it’s just a speck in the sky for 16 months would [have] started to ask these profound questions which are dealt with [towards the end of] the film. One of the things that space does to you, or it certainly does to me – I wanted to be a physicist and an astronomer from a very young age, it gives you perspective.’
He also had input on features such as Corazon’s Oxygen Garden, which in the movie is the source of the ship’s air supply, using his scientific knowledge in a more theoretical arena. ‘The Oxygen Garden was another piece of accuracy, I think, on the ship,’ he said. ‘It’s absolutely clear that one of the problems in a three-year mission is oxygen and plants are a beautiful way of taking carbon dioxide and turning it into oxygen. So there was this wonderful Oxygen Garden on the ship and I think that’s probably the way you’d do that if you’re going on a manned mission to Mars. I’m sure there’d be plants on the ship and maybe they’d be the primary life support system.’
He also tackled one of the most debated inaccuracies in sci-fi movies – the existence of artificial gravity on board the spacecraft. Acknowledging the only way to truly achieve this would be to have a rotating ship (like the design Stanley Kubrick uses in 2001: A Space Odyssey), he also suggests it’s an acceptable flaw in a film and that Boyle adds a nod to it by having one part of the ship spinning. Some people didn’t agree, such as Ajana Ahuja, who lambasted the scientific inaccuracy in The Times. Eagle-eyed critics also picked up on other ‘errors’ – among them, the moment when a character says the outside temperature is completely zero (-273°C), whereas space is actually 3° warmer. It annoyed Cox, who felt such viewers were on the wrong track.’
I don’t mind geeks being geeks, I like it – I’m a geek myself,’ he told Adam Rutherford on Radio 4. ‘So it’s interesting to see these debates on the Web about the science that was wrong. But if you try and judge the worth of a film by a pedantic reaction to a certain thing in the film, I think you really are missing the point.’ He also suggested that in the movie, it’s the biologist Corazon who has the temperature line and it’s perfectly valid that she – not a physicist – would get it wrong. In fact, he suggested to Rutherford some things about space travel simply cannot be recreated for cinematic audiences. ‘We discussed how space would look from a spacecraft and if you look at pictures from Apollo, there are no stars visible in the sky because it’s light inside and dark outside. Danny tried that – not have stars and not to have sound from the spacecraft because that’s another common gripe, but you find it looks entirely wrong, it doesn’t work. [It] proves you can get the science right and provide a less realistic experience for the cinema-going audience – there’s a cinematic shorthand.’
But while the filmmakers wanted Cox’s input on some of the more generic elements of the story, perhaps the most important job he did for them was in coaching the actors in scientific equivalent of boot camp. To recreate the claustrophobia of the Icarus II, Boyle placed all his actors in tightly knit
dormitories in east London, forcing them into close contact. ‘In the film, we join the crew when they have been living together on a spaceship for 16 months,’ explains Boyle. ‘One of the key things was to get the cast to bond as quickly as possible and break down any barriers. The actors thought they’d be living in a big house together, so the single room, student-style accommodation was a bit of an unpleasant shock yet it was crucial.’
‘There’s a certain kind of chemistry you can’t act,’ says Cillian Murphy. ‘It’s just in the room, in the chemistry between people, that familiarity or irritability, or whatever it may be.’ With the performers in close proximity, it was time for Cox to turn them into scientists, or at least make them appear savvy within that environment. Boyle asked his scientific advisor to give an initial lecture to the cast on general physics – about CERN, the sun and particle physics – so they were able to see how a scientist talked. When Cox had first met the director and screenwriter Garland, he had warned that they might have to put up with a few things. One was that he would try and tell Boyle how to direct the film and he would also tell Garland how to write it. He explained it was a trait of scientists.
Rather than balk, ever the collaborator Boyle embraced it. ‘Cillian told me one of the things Danny said to the cast was that they should listen to me when somebody said something that I thought was stupid,’ says Cox on the film’s DVD. ‘I’d just say no really, really definitively. I think that’s a trait of not only scientists but all academics and Cillian told me Danny told the rest of the cast to listen to me when someone said something stupid to me and listen to the dismissive nature of my response.’ Cox certainly notices this in some of the cast’s behaviour while delivering their lines, whether it’s actor Troy Garity being dismissive of the other characters when they don’t believe he’s heard a distress call, or when Capa reacts to the news that the ship has been damaged because one of the crew has neglected to correctly alter the shield’s co-ordinates.
Since he had been hired because of his similarity in age to the character of Capa – and because he was the ship’s physicist – it was inevitable that Cox focused mainly on working with star Cillian Murphy. ‘He’s a very nice man, who put up with all my idiotic questions,’ says the actor. Cox took Murphy to CERN, where he sat in on meetings. ‘He said to me later one of the things he likes to do is pick up small things that will allow him to build a character, so he doesn’t act like himself,’ said Cox. Some of that included taking on specific characteristics of his mentor. While shooting a video diary scene in the film, Murphy can be seen pressing his hands together in front of his face, almost, ironically, as if he’s praying. It’s something Cox’s friends tell him he does.
Some of the real-life scientist’s work even made it into the movie: on the walls of Capa’s bunk. The set designers wanted some papers with equations written on them to pin up in the character’s sleeping quarters, work he could have already done or was doing. What the audience sees is actually a bunch of research papers written about what might happen when the Large Hadron Collider is turned on and since published in academic journals. Murphy was also intrigued by the brutality with which scientists treat each other in meetings when it comes to their work. He brings that into the movie at several moments, startling Cox, who recognises it as one of his least agreeable traits. This sits alongside his scientist’s comfort when it comes to what is outside his knowledge. ‘I’m very comfortable with saying “I don’t know”,’ he says. ‘I’m comfortable with just not knowing and keep prodding away. I talked to Cillian a lot about this. There’s a certainty in science and the certainty in the happy existence of the things I know, and the things I don’t know. I’m happy and smiling, and I’ll keep chipping away at these things.’
He also worked hard with Murphy on some of the moral conundrums thrown up by the story. Capa has to react to several scenarios in a fairly cruel way, but Cox was keen to ensure the filmmakers knew this would be the physicist’s way. ‘There’s a great scene when they’re talking about killing [a character] because they need more oxygen,’ remembers Cox. ‘They go round the table and it gets to Cillian and he really quickly says “What are you asking me to do, weigh the life of one against a whole civilisation? Kill him.” It’s absolutely right, morally and logically correct. But I was talking to Danny and he said to me “You know that’s what Stalin did in a way? He just said, I kill two million people but ten million people are better off.” Danny thinks you should deal with the person in front of you, don’t try weighing this against this then you go on your own slippery slope. That’s in the film, it’s nice.’
When it hit cinemas in April 2007, the movie met with mixed results. The Internet Movie Database says it made just over $24.5 million at the worldwide box office and it retains a 75 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes, a collation of various reviews. Philip French in the Observer wrote: ‘Sunshine is remarkable for the technical virtuosity with which it creates life on a space vehicle and the cosmos around it.’ Stephanie Zacharek praised Cillian Murphy’s performance in particular on Salon.com: ‘The picture would be nothing, an incomplete Venn diagram, without Murphy. [He] pulls off the near-impossible task of making saving earth look like something you just do without thinking.’ Many critics praised Boyle’s ambition and lauded the way he focused on the psychology of space travel. Others lambasted the last third of the movie when the baddie begins to wreaks havoc on the crew, claiming it made an otherwise thoughtful work into something more straightforwardly genre. Some picked up on the filmmakers’ dedication to ‘good’ science. ‘It belongs to that select group of science-fiction films that care more about the science than the fiction,’ argued Brandon Fibbs in the Colorado Springs Gazette. Meanwhile on Digital Spy, Ben Rawson-Jones wrote: ‘Sunshine is a fantastically enjoyable film that works our minds, delights our senses and shows that futuristic science fiction can be serious drama rather than mere popcorn fodder.’
For his part, Cox thoroughly enjoyed the experience. ‘I’d recommend it, actually,’ he said. ‘If you ever get called up by Danny Boyle and he says, “Do you want to work on my film?”, I would recommend it!’ And he saw a lot of his chosen career in the process of making a movie. ‘One of things I’ve taken away from this experience of working on a film – it’s the first one I’ve worked on – is the attention to detail,’ he recalled. ‘Obviously I knew these films took many years to put together but the final film is only one hour forty and every bit’s been thought about and discussed. I was involved in a lot of discussion of various scenes.’
The experience also provided him with a rare though much appreciated chance to reflect on the path he had taken into science. Speaking to Radio 4, he said: ‘[The filmmakers] want you to express to them what it is about science that you love and you fear. Really, to understand what you perceive as the beauty of the science; what motivated you to become a scientist as a kid, because the actor wants that in their mind. Sometimes you forget that. If you’re a professional scientist, or indeed a professional in many areas, when you become focused on the minutiae of your job you forget the bigger picture and you forget what motivated you to do it in the first place. And I’ve always thought, certainly since Sunshine, I’ve realised doing science is an emotional reaction to nature. Because it was once when you were the kid who looked up at the stars and thought the sky was beautiful and fascinating, and wanted to be an astronomer. That’s an emotional reaction. So, to be reminded of that constantly because someone is trying to extract that out of you in order to put it on-screen is a very refreshing experience, actually.’
Cox told friends he felt as if he had undergone free psychoanalysis as a result of participating in the film. He revelled in spending time on the set at 3 Mills Studios, near Bromley-by-Bow in London, watching in awe as actor Hiroyuki Sanada performed a particularly emotional scene against a green screen. And he was amused to see Mark Strong, playing the heavily burned, malevolent character Pinbacker, during his downtime. ‘We’d see Mark Strong in his outfit, rea
ding the Guardian,’ he remembers. ‘He was obviously thinking of it, getting annoyed, but he was also making salad and running around and delivering his performance.’ He also enjoyed watching the finished shots, where Capa has to do something action-y. It was where the child in him triumphed over the mature adult, such as when Capa gets stuck in an airlock as the clock ticks away. ‘Capa as a physicist has been given this challenge, he’s been given this problem, which is one of the things we all like as scientists,’ said Cox. ‘He’s locked in the airlock – he’s got a few things in there. He’s got a spacesuit and luckily, he’s got a blowtorch. He’s got to find some way of getting out of the airlock.’
Despite reading it in the script, the finale involving Cillian Murphy coming face-to-face with his destiny ended up being one of the most emotional moments for Cox. Together with Boyle and Garland, he had discussed the moment when Capa reaches out his hand to touch what appears to be the surface of the sun but nothing had prepared him for the finished special effect and the trio argued about what the image meant. The director preferred to see it as meeting God. As a non-believer, Cox was never going to agree, but instead thought: ‘He’s been brought face-to-face with the beauty of nature, which is why he’s a physicist. Perhaps for the first time he’s really understood what it was that made him study nature all his life.’ He saw the film with a number of scientific colleagues and they all admitted they found the final moments extremely powerful. It was helped, in his opinion, by the music from Manchester band Underworld.
