10 Terrible Ideas That Became Great Movies

From its logline alone, sci-fi film Sunshine was basically inviting laughter - a group of astronauts take part in a dangerous mission to reignite the dying Sun with a nuke the size of Manhattan.

Without any other information, this sounds like it sits comfortably alongside The Core or any number of Roland Emmerich-directed disaster flicks which are high on digital spectacle but desperately low on brains.

Yet Sunshine is not that movie at all. Directed with taut style by Danny Boyle from a tense, character-driven Alex Garland script, this is a film that manages to make plausible-enough sense out of its undeniably absurd premise, while avoiding the schlocky blockbuster cliches you'd expect.

Though it certainly loses itself a little in the third act - where it turns into a quasi-slasher movie - for the most part Sunshine keeps its wild concept tethered to some semblance of "reality", and crucially ensures you won't be tempted to laugh even once.