Rampant monster-man killing people one-by-one? Boring!
This is the universal complaint against the movie, one that even fans like myself share in. The ending of the movie is definitely botched. No discussion about Sunshine seems to be complete without this debate.
You can't ignore Pinbacker, nor can you separate him from the parts of the movie that are undeniably good. Pinbacker makes the conflict--he IS the movie. Without him there wouldn't have been an Icarus 2. Without Icarus 2 there would be no movie.
If one can look past the aesthetics of Pinbacker (namely, a bad guy from a horror film) and examine who he is, the horror aspect of the film becomes surprisingly irrelevant. He's the captain of the original Icarus, gone mad and condemning humanity to extinction. In the Nietzschian interpretation of the film (my favorite) he represents everything about humanity that the Uberman has to overcome.
Closer to the screen, we can see how the Doctor and even the captain are starting to fall into the same trap as Pinbacker--staring too much into the sun and starting to lose their grip on reality as a consequence. Notice that it's the sunburned Doctor that suggests diverting the mission in the first place, for seemingly good reasons. The sun itself, of course, is in many ways a metaphor for God himself.
Near the end of the film, Pinbacker utters these words:
FOR SEVEN YEARS I SPOKE WITH GOD. HE TOLD ME TO TAKE US ALL TO HEAVEN.
Oh, what he represented I loved. His character and its psychological-descent/Nietzschean-ascent from humanity into something else is wonderful. And yeah, the fact that others are falling into the same trap makes the film for me.
I don't even mind his physical appearance (and the film geek in me is totally enthralled by all the wonky film effects to prevent us from seeing him directly for most of the end). I just couldn't abide the plot elements where he goes through the story hiding in shadows and killing people one by one in dramatically uninteresting, horror-tropey ways. I felt it was a waste of such a fine, fine villain.
I just couldn't abide the plot elements where he goes through the story hiding in shadows and killing people one by one in dramatically uninteresting, horror-tropey ways. I felt it was a waste of such a fine, fine villain.
That we can agree on. Even now, I wonder what Boyle was thinking, and it's sad that such a great film is marred by that sequence. If I'm watching it, I tend to skip that portion and jump to the payload delivery sequence.
It's frustrating to have to do, but I do a similar thing when I watch Spielberg's A.I., which is also incredibly close to being an amazing science fiction film.
This is the universal complaint against the movie, one that even fans like myself share in. The ending of the movie is definitely botched. No discussion about Sunshine seems to be complete without this debate.
You can't ignore Pinbacker, nor can you separate him from the parts of the movie that are undeniably good. Pinbacker makes the conflict--he IS the movie. Without him there wouldn't have been an Icarus 2. Without Icarus 2 there would be no movie.
If one can look past the aesthetics of Pinbacker (namely, a bad guy from a horror film) and examine who he is, the horror aspect of the film becomes surprisingly irrelevant. He's the captain of the original Icarus, gone mad and condemning humanity to extinction. In the Nietzschian interpretation of the film (my favorite) he represents everything about humanity that the Uberman has to overcome.
Closer to the screen, we can see how the Doctor and even the captain are starting to fall into the same trap as Pinbacker--staring too much into the sun and starting to lose their grip on reality as a consequence. Notice that it's the sunburned Doctor that suggests diverting the mission in the first place, for seemingly good reasons. The sun itself, of course, is in many ways a metaphor for God himself.
Near the end of the film, Pinbacker utters these words:
FOR SEVEN YEARS I SPOKE WITH GOD.
HE TOLD ME TO TAKE US ALL TO HEAVEN.
That's Boyle telling us what the movie is about.
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I don't even mind his physical appearance (and the film geek in me is totally enthralled by all the wonky film effects to prevent us from seeing him directly for most of the end). I just couldn't abide the plot elements where he goes through the story hiding in shadows and killing people one by one in dramatically uninteresting, horror-tropey ways. I felt it was a waste of such a fine, fine villain.
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That we can agree on. Even now, I wonder what Boyle was thinking, and it's sad that such a great film is marred by that sequence. If I'm watching it, I tend to skip that portion and jump to the payload delivery sequence.
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