Did they they wipe away your tears and give you a juice box?

Next time respond with violence!

I'm on record somewhere on TFN with what I didn't like about this one. 

Listening to the first 20 minutes of the commentary today, I had a thought:
I wished for //hard// sci-fi, so what if the mysterious sun-killing thingy had been the antagonist, and we learned enough about that thing when we reach the Icarus 1 to hatch a plan to beat it...?

I am so turned on.

Howbout a version where Capa chooses not to visit Icarus 1, and Searle goes nuts?

Searle takes very careful tabs on everyone, and having picked up on the captain's sunburn and peeling skin in the captain's logs, spends way too much time on the observation deck as research. Much of the first and a half acts remain unchanged.

As Icarus II comes up behind Mercury, they briefly link up with Icarus I's almost completely destroyed computer, and pull down fragments of their records and the rest of the lost Pinbacker logs, which come through in staggered fragments. Pinbacker, still floating on the other ship, makes some convincing communications with the Icarus II crew, and they conflict over whether or not to go pick him up. They decide against it while compiling his logs, which deteriorate into crazy space gospel describing humans and the planet Earth as a rude accident that should be exterminated if the universe wants them to.

Searle, the only member of the crew that's been exposing himself to the sun for as long as Pinbacker had, manages to set up a secure line of conversation with the old captain for some more psychological insight, speaking with Pinbacker accelerates the sun god complex, catalyzing Searle to use his advanced psychological comprehension of the entire crew and brute murdery force to try and unravel the mission.

You end up with this lovely double Icarus metaphor where a member of II flys too close to the insane guy left from the original Icarus, which again ends up being their (almost) downfall.

Note on smeary baddie: In the commentary they mention that the smeary effect was supposed to be practical, shot through a diopter and manipulated by an AC on set. There are some offlines in the deleted scenes, where it looks like it wasn't satisfactorily successful in the footage, so from there was sent to the smeary liquified place it stands now.

It completely slipped my mind during the commentary that the Japanese currently have a probe called IKAROS.

Slightly more fittingly than Sunshine's ship, it's testing solar sail technology, which uses the sun's light as propulsion.

At least the fate of humanity doesn't rest on the success of it.

If you're George Lucas (and have a lick of sense about your movie), you have that option. When you're still new blood to a studio that's gambling with you, there comes a point where they say "we know we can sell this, put a logo on the fucker and stop wasting our money."

Frankly, I'm stunned and happy that he put it in those words.

Bear in mind, though, this is the same duo that brought 'going to the mansion' into the popular vernacular.

If the script says that a crazy survivor emerges from Icarus I and starts killing them all, I can't see how the finished film could have done it in any other way that what we saw in the final film - without changing the story completely. I can't see how having too much money made them opt for a shitty lens tilt effect.

I think this is just a case of Garland not quite realising what was wrong with the third act of Sunshine. The problem isn't that it's 'meaningless', the problem is that a promising Apollo 13-that-hasn't-happened-yet film suddenly takes a detour into slasher territory. The problem isn't that they built a massive set at the end, it's that they had shitty blurry vision whenever this supernatural killer appeared on the screen... leading most in the audience to suspect an atrocious make-up job.