It is also perhaps here that the film’s stringent budget shows - apart from solar panels and a few fancy gadgets, the remaining street setting looks exactly like China does today. Helios’ presence suggests a more capitalist image of China, a country transformed by an entrepreneur as opposed to a central authority. Helios logos are everywhere, and a company ad broadcasts the imminent development of District 4 - the latest part of China to be fully powered by the sun.
When Sun Yang takes a break from his work and heads outside, we observe buildings covered by strips of solar panels. ILSA reminds him, however, that such a deduction would violate the conservation of energy. Even more troubling, the sun’s recent behavior shares a 96% correlation with that of KIC 846’s before its demise. Staring at his charts, he’s certain that a star - KIC 846 - had mysteriously disappeared. The otherwise starkness of his room suggests that he’s somewhat of a loner. Sun is something of an amateur astronomer - his apartment walls are covered by analysis of astronomical data. Central to this historical transition is a man named Wang Yun, a national hero whose company Helios has single-handedly converted three-fourths of China into being solar powered.Īt the beginning of the film, we are introduced to the protagonist, Sun Yang, being awoken by his AI named ILSA (think Samantha from Her ). The story takes place in a future where China is almost fully powered by solar energy. It may not be the colorful spectacle that exemplifies most sci-fi films, but the Last Sunrise finds its own balance, and shows the range of storytelling possible in China’s burgeoning science fiction landscape. However, Director Wen Ren deftly utilizes every ounce of resource to deliver an extremely thoughtful and touching narrative about two people trying to survive the end of the world. For a genre defined by imaginative high-tech machinery and futuristic set pieces, a six-figure budget appears especially limiting. In contrast, Last Sunrise was made on a budget of under US$250,000 and shot in a total of 14 days. Earlier this year, Chinese studios released The Wandering Earth, the first sci-fi blockbuster in Chinese cinematic history with a budget of US$50 million. 2019 seems to be the breakthrough year for science fiction in Chinese cinema, a genre that has largely remained untapped in the country.
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