Monday, April 16, 2007

Case study - Danny Boyle vs Alex Garland: It's like that

Before I begin this I just want to say that I think Danny Boyle is actually a pretty damn good director. I would also like to state that for the record Alex Garland is also an exceedingly good writer and hugefan of Digitiser so well done to him for that.
Anyway this writing/directing duo have done several films together ofwhich I've only seen two. Interestingly both these films had not the same flaw but the same place in the movie where I got disinterested.

28 Days Later: Zombie film set in London. Cillian Murphy wakes up to find London
deserted (from human life at least) and with a few fast moving zombies kicking about. He finds some survivors and they head to Manchester. As of this point (1/3 through the movie) things get a bit silly with Cillian and the last few survivors held "hostage" in a slightly gay army base.

Sunshine: A team of astronauts have to detonate a nuclear bomb in the middle of our sun to stop it from dying. There are no aliens, the main threat comes from the sun itself (how do you fly a ship close to the sun without it bursting into flame?) The point is that the last 1/3 of the film it changes from a film of 2001esq wonder into some kind of horror movie with lots of running about in the dark. Cillian Murphy stars as one of the astronauts.

So the question is can Danny Boyle and Alex Garland not make the last 1/3 of a film consistent or does Cillian Murphy just ruin it intentionally?

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