The Film
- Alternate Character Interpretation:
- Word of God is that Mace dreams of Cassie, hinting at a previous relationship between them. Is the tension between him and Capa at least partially due to the bond between him and Cassie?
- Word of God also reveals that Cassie aborted a pregnancy before the mission, while in low Earth orbit. So is her attitude more of a Stepford Smiler deal?
- How much of a coward is Harvey? He selfishly demands the last spacesuit...but then again, it doesn't take more than a minute of arguing for him to back down and let have Capa have it, even if he's not particularly pleasant about it.
- Awesome Music:
- John Murphy outdoes himself with an absolutely beautiful main theme, and various other great tracks.
- Sunshine (Adagio in D Minor).
Why yes. Yes, you have heard this song everywhere and for damn good reason. The fact it was remixed for Kick-Ass is testament to the original. - Underworld's uplifting ambient track "To Heal," is used to wonderful effect in the finale when Capa comes face-to-face with the sun and dies knowing he has succeeded. On the soundtrack the song has rather fittingly been re-titled "Capa Meets The Sun."
- Broken Base:
- The major divide seems to be between people who wanted the entire film to be like the philosophical first half, and people who wanted the whole film to be more like the more action-packed second half with the violent elements. It didn't help that the marketing sold it as action-based.
- There are debates about whether Mace calling Capa out towards the end of the second act is a huge dick move or completely justified. Capa is of course bound to be feeling guilt about the fact that he's caused certain death for all of them and it is almost needlessly cruel of Mace to remind him of that. On the other, Capa is entirely responsible for everything that went wrong and ended up nearly jeopardising the mission out of paranoia.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: It's widely agreed that Chris Evans walks away with this movie.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Never fall back.
- Also, there was Ali G's poignant question to Buzz Aldrin, posed back in 2003:
"Do you think that mankind will ever land...on the sun?"- "Our purpose? To create a star within a star." Cue Inception, starring Cillian Murphy, and its myriad of "X within an X" jokes...
- Hey, Captain America/Curtis from Snowpiercer/Human Torch just froze to death.
- A forgotten 1990 film (directed by the legendary Alan Smithee) called Solar Crisis had a similar premise as Sunshine.
- Searle's obsession with the sun makes sense since he becomes a fire lord.
- Cillian Murphy goes from a physicist determined to set off a nuclear bomb the size of Manhattan into an actual scientist working on Project Manhattan in his role as Julius Oppenheimer.
- Trey, the computer specialist and math genius, later became Wong who gets promoted to Sorcerer Supreme
- Never fall back
- Retroactive Recognition: In actual fact he's so hidden by make-up and freaky camerawork that you're unlikely to recognise him, but Mark Strong's name turning up in the closing credits has retroactively become a "Wait, what!?" moment. We do see of his video logs at the beginning though, out of the makeup.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: A lot of character backstories are only there in the manual, and are very interesting but the movie doesn't touch on them.
- Cassie aborted a pregnancy right before the mission, something Searle (as her doctor) knew but nobody else. It wasn't mentioned who the father was, only that he never knew of the pregnancy.
- Harvey is desperate to get home to his wife, which explains some of his actions.
- Mace dreams of Cassie, something which would surprise him if he knew, according to the character backstories. In an earlier script, Capa and Cassie were lovers. In another earlier draft, Mace and Cassie were also lovers, and Capa watches them have sex. This would have added a deeper layer to the tension between Capa and Mace.
- Kaneda is the only one of the team who has met Pinbacker personally.
- Capa is explained to have been a teen genius at the time of the first mission, who actually came up with the idea of the bomb. He was too young back then to go on the Icarus I mission, but by the time the Icarus II came, he could join.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
- If one looks at the backstory for Trey, it makes him a little less sympathetic when it comes to messing up the recaculations. Basically it's a job that Icarus herself could do, but he does it personally because he's a Control Freak who prefers to do everything himself. So he got Kaneda killed and the oxygen garden destroyed because he didn't feel like trusting a machine.
- Harvey's backstory is that he misses his wife and just wants to get back home to her. That's never mentioned once in the film and he comes across like a Dirty Coward - never once explaining himself or apologising.
- Visual Effects of Awesome: The detonation is a beautiful sight to behold. Also, the many shots of the Sun, and of Mercury.
