Sunshine
The Sun is dying in the near future, leaving the Earth in a "solar winter", a condition caused by the depleted level of sunlight reaching the Earth, and threatening all life on the planet. The situation compels humanity to send a spacecraft to the Sun in 2050, the Icarus I, which carries a massive payload, an experimental nuclear bomb, intended to reignite the Sun. The Icarus I mission is led by Captain Pinbacker (Mark Strong), a devoutly religious man who is psychologically unstable. The Icarus I however disappears without a trace and its vital mission is never completed.
Seven years later, a second spacecraft with a new stellar bomb, the Icarus II, is dispatched in a final attempt to reignite the Sun. The stellar bomb of the Icarus II has the same mass as Manhattan and all hope for the future now rests on this mission; all of Earth's fissile material having been mined for the bomb. When the Icarus II circles Mercury on its way to the sun, communications officer Harvey (Troy Garity) discovers the distress beacon of Icarus I. Physicist Robert Capa (Cillian Murphy) is asked by Captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada) to decide whether to change course and approach Icarus I. After a risk assessment, Capa decides to rendezvous with the stricken vessel in order to acquire another payload and double their chances of success, since all simulations of the explosion end with uncertain results. In planning the new course, navigator Trey (Benedict Wong) forgets to realign the massive heat shield at the front of the vessel to match the new trajectory, which results in part of the ship becoming dangerously exposed to extreme heat from the sun and putting the entire mission at risk.
Kaneda and Capa embark on a spacewalk to manually repair some damaged panels, and an unintended automatic override by the ship's computer puts the two men at risk of fatal solar exposure. Kaneda orders Capa to return to the ship because of Capa's important position as operator of the stellar bomb. Kaneda chooses to sacrifice himself to complete the vital repairs. The incident that caused the override was a fire in the ship's "Oxygen Garden", an artificial bio-dome which creates oxygen for the crew and where plants are grown as a source of food and oxygen. The fire was started because molten debris from an exposed communications tower reflected sunlight into the garden, and the fire dangerously depletes oxygen levels and makes a return trip to Earth impossible. Trey blames himself for his neglect, and psychiatrist Searle (Cliff Curtis) sedates him, diagnosing him as a suicide risk.
The Icarus II rendezvous with the Icarus I, and the lost spacecraft is explored by four of the crew: Harvey, Capa, Searle, and engineer Mace (Chris Evans). While the Icarus I has a thriving oxygen garden, with the growth of the plants left unchecked for the past several years, the ship's operational computer is found to be sabotaged, rendering delivery of the payload impossible. Mace finds a video left behind by Captain Pinbacker, who states the mission was abandoned, thinking it was the "will of God" that humanity should die. The crew of Icarus I are found dead in the observation room, having seemingly immolated themselves by fully opening the observation portal thus exposing themselves to the sun's extreme heat.
During the group's exploration, the airlocks inexplicably decouple from each other, causing massive damage and the two ships start to drift away, stranding the crew members on the Icarus I. The group gives Capa the only spacesuit, as he is the only one who knows how to operate the payload, but Mace makes the suggestion that they will be able to jettison the rest out if they can keep themselves warm enough; he begins tearing insulation off the walls and wrapping it around himself. Due to the lack of an operational computer, Searle volunteers to stay behind to manually jettison the three men using the force from the depressurization of the Icarus I airlock to propel them to the airlock of the Icarus II. While Capa and Mace successfully launched into the Icarus II's airlock, Harvey is knocked into the shadow of the vessels and freezes to death in space. Searle, trapped on the Icarus I and unwilling to wait to die by asphyxiation as the air seeps out, submits himself to the same fate as the original crew in the observation room and exposes himself to the Sun.
Five remain on the Icarus II: Capa, Mace, Trey, Cassie (Rose Byrne), and Corazon (Michelle Yeoh). The survivors check the Icarus activity file and discover that someone must have manually decoupled the airlock as there was no hardware failure. While Trey—now the prime suspect for sabotaging the airlock—is elsewhere, the four other crew members discuss the fact that the remaining oxygen reserves will allow them to reach the Sun to deliver the payload if there were only four people. Everyone except Cassie decides Trey must be killed, but they find he has apparently committed suicide.[fn 1] During a final inspection some 19 hours before the delivery point, Capa discovers that even without Trey, the reserves would not last because of an unaccounted-for fifth person on the spacecraft.
Capa discovers that Pinbacker is still alive and had made his way onto the Icarus II observation room. Pinbacker has terrible full-body scarring from severe burns, a result of repeatedly exposing himself to non-lethal levels of the sun's light, and has been driven insane. Pinbacker has believed that during his entire seven year solitude that he is the last man alive, and also that he has been talking directly to God who is in the sun. Pinbacker attacks Capa, wounding him in the chest, and although Capa escapes he is trapped in the airlock. Pinbacker kills Corazon in the oxygen garden, and then attempts to sabotage the spacecraft and the mission, removing the computer from its cooling system. Mace attempts to undo Pinbacker's sabotage, but is trapped in the coolant reservoir and freezes to death there. In his last words via microphone, he begs Capa to complete the mission.
Capa manages to manually uncouple the bomb from the rest of the spacecraft and travels to it via spacesuit shortly before the bomb's booster rockets are activated, taking it out of solar orbit, plunging it to the Sun's surface. He finds a badly wounded Cassie in the payload section, having been pursued there by Pinbacker who attacks Capa again. Capa is saved by Cassie who tears the burnt flesh from Pinbacker's arm, enabling Capa to escape to the control room and detonate the bomb in time to reignite the Sun. The reaction starts, but then the sun breaks through one side of the control room. It advances toward Capa, but then halts just in front of him. Capa watches the surreal light show of the explosion occurring around him, with the surface of the sun on the other side of the room. He reaches out and touches the surface of the Sun with his hand as he dies. Later, on Earth, Capa's sister reviews a video message her brother had sent her earlier while he was en route to the sun, while her children build snowmen near the Sydney Opera House. Suddenly, the sky brightens, indicating the mission's success.
