10 Near-Classic Movies Ruined By Terrible Endings

2. Sunshine

Danny Boyle almost delivers another classic addition to his body of work with Sunshine, a mostly thrilling science-fiction film about a team of scientists sent to fire a nuclear payload into the sun to "reignite" it; if they fail, the sun dies, and humanity is facing extinction. It's not so much that any one scene of Sunshine is what ends up derailing it, but an eventual shift in tone over the course of the third act, where the central mission takes a back-seat to a poorly-envisioned slasher film scenario, as the ship's crew face down a murderous stowaway named Pinbacker. Though the eventual firing of the nuke and saving the world is all well-executed, it's everything leading up to it that is problematic; the result is that the latter portion of the film feels like it's come from somewhere else. The end of the world scenario should be enough for the film, but it instead distracts us with this wholly redundant, generic diversion.