The theosophical tendencies of the genre were not quelled by the kidtastic assault of George Lucas and his clones. Although Star Wars and its spin-off sequels and prequels played primarily to a congregation of children and arrested adolescents, the endless ooga-booga about The Force and The Dark Side have since flourished into something resembling a modern religion that commands an army of merchandise-hungry disciples. I can't stand the Star Wars movies, which always seemed to me to represent a gross infantalization of the dark hearted "serious" sci-fi (Quatermass, Silent Running, Soylent Green) on which I was raised. But I've heard pulpit preachers quote Yoda in their attempts to engage young people with religion, the battle between Good and Evil having been played out in the popular imagination as a war between Sith Lords and Jedi Knights.
Even Captain Kirk has dabbled in the search for God, most egregiously in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier in which the Enterprise boldly goes "through the barrier" between this world and the next. One sub-2001 light show later, and Kirk is splitting infinitives in heaven. Of course, it all turns out to be a con, but not before everyone has had a chance to pontificate at great length about the meaning of paradise and the nature of the divine being. (The film was directed by William Shatner himself, which perhaps explains why God turns out to be no match for Captain Kirk.)
Danny Boyle sensibly prefers Robert Zemeckis's 1997 film Contact, large swathes of which involve heated debate about whether a priest, a psychoanalyst or a particle physicist would be best placed to represent mankind in our first meeting with extraterrestrial life-forms. "I was there on opening night," says Boyle, a devoted sci-fi fan with an enthusiasm for the genre in all its forms.
Having completed Sunshine, however, this endlessly energetic filmmaker has no plans to revisit sci-fi, which has a habit of producing creative burnout. "There's a reason why many directors only make one science-fiction film," he says.
"It's because you exhaust yourself ... spiritually. I do think that I've become more spiritual working on this — you have to be open-minded. The interesting thing is that the more commercial sci-fi films, like Event Horizon or Alien, tend to go for Hell in space. But maybe its more ambitious to aim for Heaven."
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