I just found your channel and loved your reaction to what has to be my favorite film of all time. It's tremendous and ridiculously underrated. Many view Sunshine as a spiritual experience. Exploring the interplay between Science and Faith and the symbolic power of the sun (viewed as god). Pinbacker's character serves as an allegory of extreme fundamentalism. Some of the crew of the Icarus 2 also experienced some form of minor obsession with the Sun, with Dr. Searle exhibiting the most extreme form. Wish more reactors would give this a chance. Many don't even know of its existence. Glad you did! You managed to pick up on a lot things that many first time viewers don't. Sunshine is a pretty layered film, so very astute of you! I’ve also worked with a few space psych experts who actually consulted on Sunshine. They always speak to the level effort that was put into every aspect of this film. I break down the film from diff perspectives on my channel if you want a deeper dive into some of the themes/lore. Cheers!
k I saw this in theaters opening day when I was 17 and I was one of only three people in the theater and I've been trying to get people to watch it ever since. Lemme break this down because everyone is wrong about their critiques of the third act of this movie and most people don't understand it. Strap in! this is a long rant. This movie is about the ineffable (indescribable) sense of awe and wonder you feel when looking at something vastly beyond yourself; the feeling you get when looking at the grand canyon, the power and majesty of epic cosmic events and also the terrifying feeling of helpless puny insignificance that comes from being a tiny human speck of stardust. I don't think it's hard to get that theme from this movie BUT the more nuanced part is how we individually respond to that feeling of insignificance with either obedient-selfish-fear or with selfless-and-heroic-determination and how that changes when you stare deep enough into that cosmic void that some of us start to think something sentient is staring back. There is a reason the first shot of the movie, the title sequence, the ship becomes the pupil of a massive "god eye" in the sun. The Sun has been personified as a sentient thing for tens of thousands years, even kappa says the sun is "dying" a very human way to refer to a ball of plasma. Every god in every religion is closely related to or based entirely on the sun. the sun of god, we celebrate the death and resurrection of the sun when it is darkest with longest nights and then it switches to days getting longer and then again on the easter equinox. The year of the sun has 12 disciples... I mean 12 months, it is born again each day, known as the way the truth and the light, coming in the clouds, glorious and terrifying in equal measure. Now, I don't know how religious you are dear reader but I am guessing you know at least one person in your life who has drank the koolaid and went back for seconds and just got a little bit too much into some kind of spirituality or religion. Something like 50 percent of Americans believe that Noah's ark actually happened. That is scary levels of religious indoctrination and group think in this day and age. So when people are confused and don't know why the captain of the first ship went crazy, I'm like... what is confusing? He literally tells you. "When he chooses for us to die, it is not our place to challenge God." that is the line. And I'm sorry but if you believe in God then how much more of a sign do you think you would need that they want humanity dead than by killing the sun? There are cults and religions around now who are down to commit mass un-alive events and our sun isn't even dying. Imagine the world-wide trauma of not knowing if the sun would ever give heat again. And then imagine how your thinking would get twisted if you were the captain of the mission sent to save humanity and you started being enveloped in the warm embrace of apocalyptic religious thinking that comes from an unstable mind in a high pressure environment. I think it's easy to forget that when people say they want Jesus to come back, they are saying they want the world to end. They want demons and fire and pain to purify the earth while they float up to heaven. This is something that everyday people believe. So I don't know why people are confused as to why someone like Pinbacker could go insane and try to end humanity. It's because he actually chose the selfish darkness of obedient servitude to his indifferent God instead of the choice that the others made and sacrificed for, the heroic determination to fix a problem by understanding it and accepting hard truths and choices to give future generations a chance at a better life. And you may think that you would do the right thing and save humanity and still believe in god and be a hero, and I'm not saying that all religious people would try to end humanity. I am however saying and I think this movie is demonstrating how that kind of thinking creates very fertile mental ground for very dangerous apocalyptic ideas to turn into actions that endanger everyone around you. Not all people who believe in god would try to end the world but only someone who believed god wanted to end the world would try to help god along. And I think that's part of the real horror of this movie. You're right the villain isn't an external force like evil aliens, or fantasy monsters, it's not vengeful gods, the horror is the horror of being human and the mistakes that we make because of that and how some of us react selfishly but sometimes we can work to gather and do the right thing. I'll sit next to insanely religious family members around the holidays every year and listen to them talk about politics and just think, damn, this person believes a goat demon and his minions are hiding around every corner and insidiously trying to trick him constantly and they talk about how they can't wait for Jesus to come back. Then I realize, wow, this person would totally end all of us if they thought their god wanted them to. Without a second thought. And I guess it's something this movies asks us to ask ourselves. If you believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that god had appeared before you and spoken to you as clear as day and shown you their power, and then asked you to do something horrifically evil like uh, ending another person or humanity... would you? I wouldn't. Neither did Kappa and as a reward he got to "meet god" at the end. Not literally but as close as you could come to touching something epically cosmic beyond us. That final scene is where space and time become blurred together just like he described earlier in the movie, where things are unquantifiable. He's standing between his star being born behind him and the dying star in front of him as he is enveloped by the light and he again becomes part of the star where every atom in your body also originated. You are literally made of elements that were formed in the heart of our star. He is giving his life to save the sun and therefore humanity. When you look at it like that, some story about a guy who multiplied some fish a couple thousand years ago and still hasn't come back just seems pretty trivial by comparison doesn't it?
Such an underrated and lesser known movie. I LOVE the plot, until the 3rd act where IMO it falls a bit flat. I wish it had remained a bit more science-y and didn't drop into a horror style movie.
11:26 "Is that Chris Evans?" => I often wonder why you reactors rarely look up the movie you're gonna react to. I mean, avoiding spoilers is a good idea, but checking who directed and who acts in the movie isn't a risky move. Entertaining reaction, aside from that. :D Sunshine isn't a perfect movie, but it's visually gorgeous, the CGI are still top-notch, and John Murphy's music is legendary. But why that obsession with aliens...?! Why the need for aliens? Granted, the movie turns into a freakin' slasher in its third act, which is a bit too reminiscent of Event Horizon, but it kinda works. Bringing in aliens would have been silly. And... the movie is very, very INACCURATE scientifically. I mean, I called BS the first time I heard the size of their bomb, back in 2007, and it's not the only inaccuracy. Luckily, Sunshine isn't a documentary. It's a great movie on the idea of sacrifice. Its loneliness.
