Should I cover Cosmic Horror in the future as well? Annihilation could be interesting. 👽 *edit* Said Annihilation video is NOW OUT! ua-cam.com/video/YyIMaf4BLzU/v-deo.html
Lovecraft is known for his horror stories, but if his entire collection is read it becomes clear that his focus was more about "the incomprehensible" than the "horrifying". In many cases his stories depict dream like locations and journeys through such dreams. In this context the Sunshine ending on a positive note, would not disqualify it from being Lovecraftian. Lovrcraft have many stories that are simply about something incomprehensibly beautiful.
The thing is, Lovecraft considered those two things to be one and the same. It wasn't about the incomprehensible or horror, it was that the incomprehensible is horrifying.
@@AquaMidget It was a mere stand in for his subconscious and overwhelming misanthropy (which, in turn, was ofc a form of his own self-loathing), in other words projecting, and he used it about as well as anyone could in fiction.
I've always seen it as a movie about how different people respond to the unknown. Some people see horror. Other people see beauty. Some people see how small humans are. Some people see our place in the universe and see worth.
@@bostonpride1717 who cares, it's just something cool someone pointed out about the movie. And every comment and like will bump this video up in the algorithm. So stop disparaging people commenting
@@bostonpride1717 You're comment reads less like "I think some acknowledgment of the good video would be nice," and more like "I think some belittling of the MCU and the people who watch it would be nice." Being rude on the internet is lame and you are lame for it. As am I for participating, but I can acknowledge it at least lol
@Chance57 Almost identical to what happens in the movie, it's one of those dreams where you're falling endlessly. The speed and flashing light gets disorienting, and you can't stop it. The only way it ends is when the sleep paralysis breaks, either waking up to a full body spasm or hyperventilating.
I've had that dream too, but for me, it was a blue sun. It felt like falling into an ocean of plasma, imagine 500m deep in the ocean of endless blue light and still feeling yourself falling and realizing you're falling faster and faster
Bit of a stretch really but since they are dabbling with the nuclear an unpredictable force at best and having the arrogance and limited knowledge to use it's power just for them to realise they bit off more they could chew then yes.
@@Shugg-Goff-HHoffical it is cosmic horror in the sense how your entire life can end in a week, in the most painful and gruesome way with psychological haunting too (radiation sickness makes you feel completely healthy midway through) BY JUST LOOKING AT A CHUNK OF HOT METAL. It’s the fact that you literally don’t make any mistake, simply being in proximity to the radioactive fallout or the reactor itself ruins you in a hellish way. We understand nuclear energy so it’s not horrifying in the general sense but remove that scientific understanding and this is literally cosmic horror manifest
Chernobyl is basically about hubris, similar to Titanic. The ship was considered unsinkable, just like the Soviet RMBK reactor design was considered infallible.
I can see it. Or at least being Eldritch. The scene where the two technicians look over the railing after the explosion to see the interior of the core, the writhing energies and light from the inside of a nuclear reactor, their skin quickly reddening as they're irradiated, the mere act of leaning over to look has killed them before they even know it. It's so far beyond the human experience it's like looking at something we never should look at in nature.
I remember somewhere seeing a fact that if sound could travel through space, the Sun would be the loudest thing on our entire planet. The Sun is 93 million miles away from earth. If that isn’t cosmic, I don’t know what is.
And if Kaneda weren't been in the process of being roasted, he would have answered "I see light" - I always laughed at this dialog because it was obvious what ha was seeing. Asking him that doesn't make any sense. Though it adds a nice dramatic touch.
@@pontram Maybe not. I kind of liken it to the end of the movie The Lighthouse. When Robert Pattinson's character finally gets upstairs and looks at the Light like Willem Dafoe's character did frequently (obsessively) he should've just seen a light, but instead he screamed in horror. And when questioned about it, the directors just said that if the audience had seen what he saw, they would've screamed too.
Sunshine is a movie about "What would you do when nihilism is forced upon you, because the situation is so dire your own life truly does not matter anymore? Do you stop caring about anything, because there is no externally defined framework within which your caring will make a meaningful difference? Or do you start caring about everything, because the absence of an externally defined framework within which your caring will make a meaningful difference means that you have complete freedom to define your own framework of what qualifies as a meaningful difference?" I like it for that reason.
That was definitely one of the best sci-fi movies that's come out in a long time, I've watched it so many times because there is so much to unpack but it's so good, I watched it once then again because I was in awe and hadn't felt that about something sci-fi in soooooo long.❤
The idea of sentient stars is widely explored in one of the atmosphere-heaviest games Sunless Skies (sequel to Sunless Sea). To the point that some people have managed to "dethrone" those stars or create artificial ones (which are fundamentally flawed). If you are fond of reading and experiencing and understanding wild concepts, such as crystallized time that people mine to prolong their life or sunshine that is stored in a box and used as a commodity, i can't recommend those games enough
Sentient stars were also delved into almost a century ago in 1937 with Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker book. He presents them as, paying little to no attention to other forms of life in the cosmos due to their massive forms and incredibly long lives, much like we often don't think about the microscopic life surrounding us. This persists until civilizations reach a similar scale and are harvesting them for energy or moving them out of their natural orbits, and they begin to discuss this annoyance amongst their kind and decide that some of them must perish to protect the others, almost like we would react to a worldwide pandemic or something.
I really don't think interpreting Sunshine as cosmic horror is as much of a reach you portray it as towards at the end of the video. This is a great video, and it made the feelings I had when watching this movie more than a decade ago feel more concrete and justified. I'd even say this might be the movie that got me into cosmic horror for the first time, from pure science-fiction
I always felt the act of Capa deciding to break from the original mission to retrieve the second bomb was an act of hubris... much like the mythical Icarus daring to fly close to the Sun. Had I been a member of the crew, I would have sided with Mace. Once a plan is broken, a new host of unforseen possibilities are opened and the odds of success become uncertain.
Sunshine has the longest, intensiv, slowest action scene i know of. The one where he tips over in the protection suit and stands up again. This scene and the shot from inside the helmet and the brilliant acting just stays in my head :) The hole scene fells like its 5 minutes long!
Kappa is birthing a god. The way he talks about how beautiful it will be supports this, it is akin to how parents in waiting are often talking about birth. He isn't afraid because this is, in a way, his child and the ending is beautiful because it is intended to portrait something beautiful - a new being coming into existence, the creation of life. Sunshine is more than just a story about cosmic horror and the dispair, madness and ruin it brings - this has been done to hell and back - it's a story about the cycle of life on a cosmic scale and how even beings as insignificant as humans can create something that is far greater than they can ever hope to comprehend. This also poses the question of "when does life begin" - if you take the stance that life begins at POTENTIAL then that dream these two have may actually not be their own dream but the dream of the sun embryo they carry with them (who's parents they are in a way), or maybe even the sun embryo trying to communicate with them.
So you took this break down, said none of what the vid is about is correct, and then break it down to a super vanilla "cycle of life" explanation? Aren't a lot of if not most movies about some sort of cycle of life? Your a pseudo intellectual at best and a pretender for sure.
@@randallbesch2424 exactly. humanity can only define things within its its limited knowledge and understanding, and nothing says that that knowledge and understanding is undeniably correct (in most cases). we are not in any position to decide what forms life can or cannot take. The Icarus AI even said that the Payload would produce unknown and immeasurable results, so who is to say that it didn't birth some type of life form inside of the sun? would be very interesting to know the answer but im sure we'll likely never know.
@@Indyawillis85It’s not that freaky. Mind you, they lost the original hell portal orgy scene. But if you played Dead Space it’s pretty much the same thing. Finding something you shouldn’t have and it turning everyone into hellish deformed beings. Okay maybe it’s a little freaky.
Beyond a good analysis, the video reminded me how packed with talent this cast was. Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Mark Strong, Benedict Wong, Rose Byrne, Hiroyuki Sanada. Insane that they were in that point of their career that you could get them all together without ballooning the budget out of proportion.
If I remember correctly, the decision to warp the picture whenever Pinbacker was onscreen was ultimately due to Danny Boyle hating the final result of the makeup effects. Personally I think the makeup looks great, but it was clear the results were not what Boyle had in mind, and seeing the pages of the screenplay, it's clear he wanted to execute something radically different.
When I had visited Niagara Falls many years ago, I had nightmares from the height, magnificence, and power from the falls. It's funny cause it's just a lot of water falling, but knowing the awe of the falls makes for a new and unreal experience. Amazing what we consider to be greater than us
As a huge fan of this movie (this and Annihilation are tied for my favorite movies ever) I feel like the movie makes more sense from the perspective of sublime cosmic awe, rather than horror. Or rather a mix of the two? Like you said the directors did fight over what the symbolism in the movie actually pushed for. I think the reason Capa ends up having the most "synergy" with the sun out of the entire cast is because he has a hearty respect for the sun, he remains grounded, but he's not afraid. He explicitly says he's not afraid of whats to come when he's testing the bomb with Cassie, while she expresses fear. And I think Kaneda's death also heavily pushes for this theme. That scene for me (along with the final scene before Capa dies) encompasses the movie's spiritual/existential themes in it's most potent form. Don't have the energy to articulate beyond that, but it was a treat to come across a video on this gem when this movie has been out of circulation for quite some time.
IMO, a genre doesn't have to be defined by how it plays out. Like just cause it ends differently, doesn't mean it's not cosmic horror. If anything, I like the change of pace that humanity does succeed and the whole bit of "Hey, you have a cosmic horror story? Well the humans have to lose, or at least win in a way that doesn't matter" feels tired. If anything, Sunshine breaking the continuity is also a good thing since if it followed to closely it'd be too predictable which is a problem in horror movies.
My first reaction to this film when I saw it years ago was to make a comparison to being a variation on 'Event Horizon', a favorite among cosmic horror fans: you've got a small space-crew intercepting the Ghost Ship of an earlier expedition into the Unknown years after its mysterious disappearance, only to find the Ghost Ship's crew weirdly annihilated by their contact with the unknown, while the newer crew begin experiencing hallucinatory mental effects, and the third act breaks down a bit into a comparatively unsatisfying slasher setup as a representative of the Unknown begins killing off the new crew one-by-one.... There's difference enough that the two movies stand on their own individual merit, but enough similarity to make contrast-and-comparison interesting - substituting a dying sun promising to take everyone to a heaven of cosmic horror, for a malfunctioning warp drive promising to take everyone to hell of cosmic horror, weirdly kind of works for me. But, at the same time, the shift in genre from "Haunted House in Space" to "Slasher Movie in Space" never really sold me in either case (it works well enough in 'Alien', another scifi/horror favorite among cosmic horror enthusiasts, but 'Alien' was a somewhat different animal from 'Sunshine' and 'Event Horizon'!) The endings for both 'Sunshine' and 'Event Horizon' might, I suspect, have benefited from a bit more inspiration from the comparatively restrained menaces from the '60s film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's 'The Haunting' or Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's 'The Shining' or the '80s 'Poltergeist', than from, say, William Castle's 'House on Haunted Hill' or 'Thirteen Ghosts' (which, beneath their haunted house trappings, ended up - spoilers - shifting their menace from the haunting, to killers....) I think that, at the end of the day, 'Event Horizon' sticks with me longer than 'Sunshine', and I mostly prefer the first two thirds of 'Event Horizon' to the first two thirds of 'Sunshine', but 'Sunshine' is certainly worth checking out for fans of this sort of thing. I think it's absolutely fair to consider it a variation on Cosmic Horror, even if the final act and conclusion arguably muddle away from that foundation a bit!
excellent video essay. this is one of my favorite scifi movies. I always interpreted the ending as accention. he for lack of a better word becomes the sun. burning away his humanity but becoming the light for the world
The sun being this unknowing “antagonist,” and having horrible effects on people makes me think of the horror stories of SCP’s “When Day Breaks.” Where the sun essentially turns against humanity and every anomalous entity of Earth. Turning everything to a blob of flesh that acts as a hivemind and wants to spread itself to everything that hasn’t been absorbed.
Hey, thanks for giving me a good scare with those hidden images ( example 15:50 ) in Sunshine. For a while there, I thought I was losing my mind! Turns out the director did it on purpose, according to some Easter egg website.
i love this!! makes the third act so much better and more acceptable. instead of a thoughtful scifi suddenly turning into a slasher, it's a cosmic horror movie that slow burned its way to the terror portion of the story. explains the weird distortions that make the final fight almost unwatchable, as well as the overall surreal look of that flight. also makes the ending make a lot more thematic sense - instead of kapa beating the boogeyman and saving the sun, it's kapa defeating the prime acolyte of an unknowable god, and then meeting that god.
I spent years in college studying the sciences. What fascinates me most about Sunshine - and what I consider its most unlikely feature - is how good looking everybody is.
Maybe, maybe, when kappa finally experience the real power of the sun, the sun is thanking him with that feeling of heat, allowing him to see what the human eye can’t see and allows him one last breathe in the verge of the new dawn of humanity and the sun
Hmm, good point. Like even if the Sun is an unknowable entity it is still alive, and therefore might know that it's life was coming to an end. If it was aware that these tiny specks of life called humans on a fragile ship gave it more life then I could see it being thankful. These tiny creatures so far below it sacrificed themselves so that the Sun could live.
i personally thin its just the physocs breaking down at that scale. afterall he does say he has no idea exactly what will happen. the mass involved is just warping spacetime or something like that.
A friend of my parents got this movie on dvd when she was babysitting me. I was ten or so. This movie terrified the fuck out of me, but I couldn’t really say why. Now after you brought it up, I think it might have been my first exposure to the idea of cosmic horror. And I couldn’t really comprehend why it felt so scary and uncomfortable. Now as an adult, I love cosmic horror.
Ngl, you might wanna check out Pandorum. It doesn’t have a truly Lovecraftian entity, but it also has this deep level of hopelessness and insignificance. Also, for another incident of Lovecraft characters defeating entities would be that time when the military wiped out a deep one colony using a sub.
The thing I love the most about the Sun is how the Sun itself is the closest thing to a real life cosmic horror than anything else possible. I wanna reiterate a few things about it too: 1. The Sun both does and doesn't have intentions of its own. It has no thoughts, no feelings, no life, but it alone imposes so much importance both physically towards life on Earth and to our interpretation of the world around us that almost every culture on Earth across thousands of years have worshipped the Sun, both for it's beauty and generous warmth, and for fear of its almost inevitable destruction against all life on Earth alone. And even today, whilst we know now more than ever the importance of the Sun as is, we still don't know the prevalence of the Sun in our ancient history as our collective knowledge of the Sun itself changed overtime. 2. The Sun both physically is tangible and is also not physically tangible too. It's such a giant ball of plasma that the "surface" of the Sun is nothing but violent winds so strong and so hot that it could atomically destroy your entire body within less than a fraction of a second. And even then, the actual surface of the Sun is not physical in nature, but rather atmospherically dense so as to float at a given depth down. The sheer size of the Sun alone simply mimics the physical look it has, that being so massive that our entire planet alone is like a lone freckle on it's surface 3. The Sun pretty much *is* everything we've discovered on Earth and in our solar system. Its what gave birth to all of our planets and their orbits, altering the minerals and metals our solar systems planets possess. Those various minerals and metals wouldn't be possible without the Sun first being born. The Sun itself also emits light in all directions across space. Light has every color that can possibly exist, only limited by both what colors our eyes can perceive and by what colors the objects that touch it simply can't absorb and instead reflect back. By staring into the Sun, you force your eyes to stare into the source of all colors and at the birth of all the things you can conceive around you, and are subsequently threatened with painful blindness for doing so. 4. The Sun is a near unknowable threat. We can predict pretty much every natural disaster on Earth, even in regards to meteors and comets. we have many ways to recover from these disasters, no matter how individualistic or societal they are. The Sun itself poses such unknowable threats that they challenge humanity's technological progression as a whole. Solar flares alone are enough to disrupt our current electronics severely in their efficiency in weak amounts. Major solar flares are predicted to wipe out major electrical infrastructures around the globe at one go. Not to forget about the fact that the Sun's rays alone can cause severe skin cancer, which can easily metastasize and course through your blood if not treated right away. And that is all without any effort made on the Sun's behalf at all. It took humanity eras to figure that out, often left to centuries worth of scientific debate and philosophical squabble to figure out. And all of this is done without any effort, any thought, any breath of life whatsoever, and yet in contrast, feels and looks like such an imposing lifeform that it feels almost impossible to ignore it as anything but such. And the best part of it all? It's only one star out of a near infinite amount of stars in the entire universe, many of which are so incomprehensibly bigger than ours that it makes our Sun look like mere dust in the wind.
Sunshine is one of those movies I always forget about and take a minute to remember by name but always ends up with me talking about how good that movie is
Fantastic take and i agree with you completely. As a horror fan ans especially a fan of Eldritch horror Sunshine stuck with me because of the elements you described here. Its essentially a more cerebral Event Horizon.
I love this movie. Yeah, it ends more hopefully than any cosmic horror, but all things concidered- the hopeless ending of these fictions was reserved for the crew of the ship, not the whole humanity. Icarus 2 fed the god, but this was a one way trip. As much as most people ragg that Cosmic Horror supposed to be hopeless, it does not need to be at least in my opinion. Dread can be built in many ways- like the fact that you are not alone in a universe, that there are gods, that life is stranger than you would believe etc. Horror can come from more than just loosing hope, it can come from standard fear that there is something where you expected to be nothing, the dread that a fundament on which you stood moved to remind you that universe lives in far more ways than one.
Good video covering one of the best films of all time. In truth, the core takeaway is that a film's themes can embody multiple things at once. Sunshine isn't wholly cosmic horror, but for sure is inspired by it and wears many of its facets proudly. So, even if it's only "kinda cosmic", that's good enough for me.
I have always championed sunshine... A random movie I picked up from a blockbuster sale rack and watched. I shared it with every friend I had who I knew would appreciate it.
Excellent essay! Viable reading for cosmic horror and the points you make as connections between the movie and the genre are feasible and sturdy. Enjoyed the video! For the record, I think the distortion effect on Brecker is kind of dope…
This is one of my favorite movies and you've definitely made me see it in a different way and love it even more. I'm shocked to see a video essay on it that came out only 5 days ago. Thanks for this!
You know the world is sick when in order to understand the symbolic meaning of the sun they resort to hidrogen insted of Plotinus, Dante and Plato. The sun represents that that can not be seen directly, that that can never be attained, the absolute necessity to which we all belong but cannot withstand. All is explained by the sun and we all are owed to the sun.
Recently watched this again and it’s still a fantastic movie. I think at the time everyone didn’t know what to make of it. Was it horror? Disaster movie? Sci fi? Philosophical movie?Shame as it’s all 3, same as Solaris which is another amazing movie.
Part of the craziness and "breaking down" at the end is also because they are tumbling into the core of the Sun and the laws of Physics are getting pushed aside. Things are out of sync
One thing I like to look for are horror movies or stories that also include a sense of wonder or awe. Cosmic Horror or Fantasy Horror seems to be the best genres for this.
I loved sunshine. It's a rare movie I felt the intent of and thus felt an emotional impact but never fully understood. To me it felt oddly profound in a deeply incomprehensible way. Which I found really appropriate.
Cosmic horror or not this movie has always been on the top of my favorite movie lists ever since I watched it. Whenever the samey question comes up in conversation about which are your top whatever movies, I mention this one and very rarely anyone knows about it at all.
It's all about the eternal question, "Is humanity worth saving?" The Captain of the first ship is the nihilist view of the value of humanity. His mission is understandable, even noble, through his eyes.
My immigrant family didnt own a tv until 2011. We did however have a projector my dad got at the local Goodwill. One of the first movies we rented from Blockbuster/red box was this one. We had it playing on the wall of our living room. We laid blankets on the floor and watched this and a barbie animated movie for my little sister back to back with the barbie one first and this last. My dad was visibly bored watching barbie, but was engaged when this was playing. When the part of the film were there are frames of the Crew Christmas pics spliced into the movie, my dad was got sad/frustrated thinking that someone taped over the DVD. My brothers kept trying to pause it right on the pics to see what they were. We probably spent an hour pausing and my dad cursing that his 1 day off is ruined (he worked 6 days a week and literally only ever wanted to snack and watch movies on his projector on his days off). Anyway, i was like 8, didnt really understand this movie back then, but ive watched it multiple times in my adulthood just to remember that day.
It's interesting that Alex Garland wrote Sunshine and later wrote and directed Annihilation. Also, his film 'Men' is also very cosmic horror-ish. He likes to play around these themes of huge, unknown forces impacting humans, same with AI in Ex Machina and many-worlds in DEVS.
I remember watching this movie in the cinema when it came out. There was nobody in the cinema but myself, my friends, and 3 girls sitting far away from us. When everything started going a bit wild in the third act, one of the girls got a phonecall, she answered, her voice was trembling with fear and she said... 'Yeah... we decided to watch sunshine because it had a pretty name... its not what we thought im absolutely terrified" Haha, always remember that when thinking about this movie, i really enjoyed it and how wild it got!
I used to really love this movie around its release but always felt something off about its tone. An inconsistency. As a Lovecraft fan myself I agree with much of your analysis and saw many of the same parallels, particularly the indoctrination angle. I never really could sell myself on it entirely though, mostly due to the ending. I concluded it was simply Lovecraft inspired. The Sun is indeed an unknowable God or godlike entity. I think it (the film) is even more consistent in that regard than Lovecraft himself was as though Lovecraft's quote you site is apt, it often seems his writings result in the cosmic entity having a decidedly negative will towards or effect on human kind. We are supposed to be insignifigant in Lovecraft's work, yet I can't help feeling like we are despised by his cosmic deities. I think in this film its a little more neutral. A little more like a classical God. It's weighing humanity and those that fall to indoctrination succumb to that lust to know the power of God, they succumb to evil, to sin. They are unworthy of God's light. Capa through sheer will, sacrifice and selflessness proves himself "worthy" and is rewarded with the privilege of glimpsing the true face of God. By Capa's act, and his sacrifice, God graces humanity with a second chance. Cheesy, no doubt, but it was my analysis at the time.
in my view, the elder gods are more neutral to us in general, like we aren't even worth their time. Do you take the time to count every ant or bug you might mindlessly crush while going about your day? Now imagine you're dying of hunger, and a random ass ant carries over some food and gives it to you, uncaring about the fact you might eat it in the process. Of course you're going to be grateful to it.
If I had a nickel for every sci-fi movie that is basically cosmic horror, has a very odd third act, and a naked man fight seen at the end then I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice
I always thought the ending of this film was a weird left turn, but maybe your cosmic horror interpretation explains it: Maybe the final ecstasy Capa experiences is his perspective after being fully indoctrinated. Maybe that is how Pinbacker also perceives the universe. Maybe that ecstasy is his motivation to bring everyone else to "heaven".
I also think theres something to be thought about with the idea of pinbecker eminating distortion and the idea that when radioactive material is filmed, it distorts camera and film. Maybe pinbecker was emanating an extreme amount of radiation
To be fair, even IRL the sun is pretty "unknowable": It's a thermonuclear explosion so incomprehensibly big that its own huge gravity fight against the expansion and keeps it toghether. It's a huge and complex system about which we can only make what are basically very good guesses. Nobody knows how the sun actually works. We are mostly sure there won't be a civilization ending solar eruption tomorrow, but just mostly. We "know" it only because we take it for granted as the bright ball in the sky that should appear every morning warming and lighting the day.
What’s strange to me is as a child I remember sometimes staring into the sun and other bright lights until my eyes would water yet I’m pretty sure now at 21 I still have great eye sight I mean I can read the bottom of the eye test
I saw this in the theater and loved it. It was filmed beautifully. Yeah it was flawed but it was so visually fun I couldn't believe the camera shots. And yeah... The Sun is a God. A God of our forefathers. It brings a smile and awe at the same time. Not too many things in life can.
Lol a tad bit ignorant to say "we know almost everything about the sun" because it's like saying I know almost everything about a place I've never been, just observed from a distance. I doubt that I would know more about another country than the country & its residents itself. The wisest know that the more you know the less you know. Nonetheless, me nitpicking can't ever take away from such a well presented video breakdown. You have now added another movie to my list of movies to watch, much appreciated. Looking forward to seeing more of your videos
This is one of my favorite sci-fi movies of all time. I think it is absolutely beautiful and it conveys its message. I also agree that the distortion visually is supposed to convey the distortion of time as they get closer to the gravity of the Sun. A gravity that Pennbacker carries with him. His sanity was lost, like Icarus he got too close.
I don't think the line about dust being 80% human skin was a general one. I think it meant something like "80% of THIS dust is human skin", meaning the crew of Lazarus-1 was somehow disintegrated into that fine dust.
I watched Sunshine at the theatre back when it first came out, and it definitely left me feeling this cosmic horror dread. The thing that always frustrated me about it, though, is just how conventional the third act is. I feel like it doesn't deliver on the uniqueness of the word setup at all. To me, it would be much more interesting if Pinbacker himself had become a cosmic entity of sorts (which I think was already the general idea). Instead of having this superhuman strength, I would make him completely disabled; inexplicably alive inside a body that shouldn't be. Just talking to him, however, would be enough to make the crew members kill themselves, kill each other, and sabotage the ship, preferably all in sun-related ways. At this point, it wouldn't even matter if he's a real person or not; just the idea of him would be enough to cause their minds to unravel. Then, the final struggle of the protagonist wouldn't be about defeating Pinbacker, but about resisting the death drive long enough to complete his mission. If we want to sink into existential dread, we could allow him to complete his mission, only to reveal that it was all futile. This little man-made artifact was never going to be powerful enough to restart the sun. Then again, I don't think cosmic horror needs to be bleak and hopeless 100% of the time. Even Lovecraft himself allowed humanity to win a few times, even if just for a little while.
Ah Another Sunshine Enjoyer. We grow stronger! Upon release the reviews were actually fairly positive. It just got lost in the shuffle as you suggested because tons of other great movies came out that year. Anyways, great analysis. I cover the film myself if you're interested.
I watched this movie in the beach with my parents when I was 11, it has been iching my mind since then while I tried to make sense of it, thanks for the explanation it makes way more sence in the cosmic horror cathegory
This was an amazing read/watch. Never thought of the movie as anything but sci-fi but i do agree that it does benefit so much more (in my opinion at least) when being viewed as from cosmic horror angle. The one thing that amazes me is how almost every time, in the face of overwhelming power/uncertainty, when their beliefs and fundamental understanding shattered, driven into fear and insanity so much so that they view the unknown as godly beings, in this case, the sun. The fear of the unknown.
My favorite element of lovecraftian horror is that no amount of religious idolization, insurmountable effort, and combined human knowledge (yk the things that make humans... human) can stop nor is even considered by the massive being who genuinely has 0 active thought about the existence of our entire existence.
This video reminded me a lot of the Fallen London series, does a really good job at portraying celestial bodies with cosmic horror. Especially with The Dawn Machine, Clockwork Sun, and other judgements. The incomprehensibility of them from the human perspective is super interesting. If you liked the idea of a cosmic horror sun you should check out the series!
I knew this was a true hidden gem after watching it as a kid, that soundtrack, and everything around the movie wrapped around my mind like thw burning light of the sun.
One thing to consider is that the sun is operating on a cosmic scale. A cosmic timeframe. So, the idea that it might require a new sacrifice "anytime soon" as you put it could still be very true. Just, that it's "soon" for the sun, not soon for something as small and insignificant as a human. A million years can be very quick for a star but not for us.
Icarus is a poor choice for the name of a ship whose job is to fly close to the sun. That would be like an arctic expedition naming it's boat the Titanic.
watched this film quite some time ago and rewatched it for the first time this year, back when I first watched it I didn't know what cosmic horror is but this time I knew and I did kinda get a cosmic horror vibe from it
I've interpreted Capa's sacrifice as something akin to what the Aztecs did-sacrifices to appease a god. If the god finds the sacrifice worthy, he will bestow his blessings once more.
In our hubris, we believe the small lump of matter between our ears is singular in its capacity to articulate existence despite constant evidence to the contrary all around us.
Why do you think it is Evil? why do you think it has to be ugly? why do you think it has to be supernatural? Any Hard sci fi that properly explores the scale of the cosmos and our place in it will inspire horror for those proud and fascination for those humble.
Should I cover Cosmic Horror in the future as well? Annihilation could be interesting. 👽
*edit* Said Annihilation video is NOW OUT! ua-cam.com/video/YyIMaf4BLzU/v-deo.html
Gimme more
Definitely. Annihilation is a great movie!
You seem to have a good grasp on the genre, I look forward to seeing you cover more of it.
Yeah
Please do. From Beyond would be cool too.
Lovecraft is known for his horror stories, but if his entire collection is read it becomes clear that his focus was more about "the incomprehensible" than the "horrifying". In many cases his stories depict dream like locations and journeys through such dreams. In this context the Sunshine ending on a positive note, would not disqualify it from being Lovecraftian. Lovrcraft have many stories that are simply about something incomprehensibly beautiful.
The thing is, Lovecraft considered those two things to be one and the same. It wasn't about the incomprehensible or horror, it was that the incomprehensible is horrifying.
@@AquaMidget It was a mere stand in for his subconscious and overwhelming misanthropy (which, in turn, was ofc a form of his own self-loathing), in other words projecting, and he used it about as well as anyone could in fiction.
That’s an excellent point.
Well, incomprehensible to him..... COLORS!
Why are comments being deleted so much?
I've always seen it as a movie about how different people respond to the unknown. Some people see horror. Other people see beauty. Some people see how small humans are. Some people see our place in the universe and see worth.
How about those who see nothing? What u make of it?
Please respond. Thank you and have a nice day
“I see nothing.”
“Because you’re so deep and see the universe for what it truly is?”
“No, stupid. I’m blind.”
what a viewpoint. thanks for sharing
That's kind of a variation on the take of "how small humans are"@@visitante-pc5zc
I just realized that this movie had 2 Oscar winners, two MCU actors and a John Wick actor, whoever casted this film had foresight
@@bostonpride1717 not everything is offensive dear, get a chill pill
@@josephhenryreyes8205women, huh?
@@bostonpride1717 not everything needs your snark and pessimism, take a chill pill dear
@@bostonpride1717 who cares, it's just something cool someone pointed out about the movie. And every comment and like will bump this video up in the algorithm. So stop disparaging people commenting
@@bostonpride1717 You're comment reads less like "I think some acknowledgment of the good video would be nice," and more like "I think some belittling of the MCU and the people who watch it would be nice." Being rude on the internet is lame and you are lame for it. As am I for participating, but I can acknowledge it at least lol
The nightmare of falling into the sun is one I've had myself. It's haunting.
Can you detail your nightmare? If it's not too much to ask.
@Chance57 Almost identical to what happens in the movie, it's one of those dreams where you're falling endlessly. The speed and flashing light gets disorienting, and you can't stop it. The only way it ends is when the sleep paralysis breaks, either waking up to a full body spasm or hyperventilating.
Do you ever reach the middle?
@@MagashiSaizen Hard to tell.
I've had that dream too, but for me, it was a blue sun. It felt like falling into an ocean of plasma, imagine 500m deep in the ocean of endless blue light and still feeling yourself falling and realizing you're falling faster and faster
The sun as cosmic horror is also in the game "Sunless Sea" or "Sunless Skies" if you're interested in them :)
HE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE S
Oh, man, I didn't even know _Sunless Skies_ existed, thank you!
@@matthew1882 Nah, that's the man-made one. So technically not "cosmic" )
@@delivererofdarknessshoguno1133 don't question the divinity of the Dawn Machine
@@matthew1882 More like jammed machine.
I heard an essayist talk about, "Chernobyl," as cosmic horror, and that's been itching around in my mind for a while now
Bit of a stretch really but since they are dabbling with the nuclear an unpredictable force at best and having the arrogance and limited knowledge to use it's power just for them to realise they bit off more they could chew then yes.
@@Shugg-Goff-HHoffical it is cosmic horror in the sense how your entire life can end in a week, in the most painful and gruesome way with psychological haunting too (radiation sickness makes you feel completely healthy midway through) BY JUST LOOKING AT A CHUNK OF HOT METAL. It’s the fact that you literally don’t make any mistake, simply being in proximity to the radioactive fallout or the reactor itself ruins you in a hellish way.
We understand nuclear energy so it’s not horrifying in the general sense but remove that scientific understanding and this is literally cosmic horror manifest
Chernobyl is basically about hubris, similar to Titanic.
The ship was considered unsinkable, just like the Soviet RMBK reactor design was considered infallible.
Definitely is somewhere in the vicinity. I still remember some of the POVs of the reactor failure in the first episode.
I can see it. Or at least being Eldritch. The scene where the two technicians look over the railing after the explosion to see the interior of the core, the writhing energies and light from the inside of a nuclear reactor, their skin quickly reddening as they're irradiated, the mere act of leaning over to look has killed them before they even know it.
It's so far beyond the human experience it's like looking at something we never should look at in nature.
I remember somewhere seeing a fact that if sound could travel through space, the Sun would be the loudest thing on our entire planet. The Sun is 93 million miles away from earth. If that isn’t cosmic, I don’t know what is.
That reminds me of the screaming sun planet from Rick and Morty lol.
I saw the same statistic, it would sound like standing next to a moving train with it horn going off, indefinitely
@@Indyawillis85 It reminds me of a short green text the screaming stars
It would be as loud as a jackhammer, so I heard at least
@@trevor4175 Yeah, im good off that, i need my sleep. i'd be eternally pissed off if i had to deal with that bs
"KANEDA! WHAT DO YOU SEE?!"
This line was unexpected and made me like the movie so much more
And if Kaneda weren't been in the process of being roasted, he would have answered "I see light" - I always laughed at this dialog because it was obvious what ha was seeing. Asking him that doesn't make any sense. Though it adds a nice dramatic touch.
It scares something deep inside me! That line, I don’t want to know what Kaneda can see😢
@@pontram Maybe not. I kind of liken it to the end of the movie The Lighthouse. When Robert Pattinson's character finally gets upstairs and looks at the Light like Willem Dafoe's character did frequently (obsessively) he should've just seen a light, but instead he screamed in horror. And when questioned about it, the directors just said that if the audience had seen what he saw, they would've screamed too.
Sunshine is a movie about "What would you do when nihilism is forced upon you, because the situation is so dire your own life truly does not matter anymore? Do you stop caring about anything, because there is no externally defined framework within which your caring will make a meaningful difference? Or do you start caring about everything, because the absence of an externally defined framework within which your caring will make a meaningful difference means that you have complete freedom to define your own framework of what qualifies as a meaningful difference?" I like it for that reason.
Very good explanation about the “nihilistic dilemma".
I enjoyed your analysis of Sunshine. Annihilation should get the same treatment. I love both.
Subscribed!
That was definitely one of the best sci-fi movies that's come out in a long time, I've watched it so many times because there is so much to unpack but it's so good, I watched it once then again because I was in awe and hadn't felt that about something sci-fi in soooooo long.❤
The idea of sentient stars is widely explored in one of the atmosphere-heaviest games Sunless Skies (sequel to Sunless Sea). To the point that some people have managed to "dethrone" those stars or create artificial ones (which are fundamentally flawed). If you are fond of reading and experiencing and understanding wild concepts, such as crystallized time that people mine to prolong their life or sunshine that is stored in a box and used as a commodity, i can't recommend those games enough
Hmmm.. I am sold! Do you take bits of cosmic pocket lint as payment?
Sentient stars were also delved into almost a century ago in 1937 with Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker book. He presents them as, paying little to no attention to other forms of life in the cosmos due to their massive forms and incredibly long lives, much like we often don't think about the microscopic life surrounding us. This persists until civilizations reach a similar scale and are harvesting them for energy or moving them out of their natural orbits, and they begin to discuss this annoyance amongst their kind and decide that some of them must perish to protect the others, almost like we would react to a worldwide pandemic or something.
Olaf Stapledon was a cosmic-level genius.
I really don't think interpreting Sunshine as cosmic horror is as much of a reach you portray it as towards at the end of the video. This is a great video, and it made the feelings I had when watching this movie more than a decade ago feel more concrete and justified. I'd even say this might be the movie that got me into cosmic horror for the first time, from pure science-fiction
I always felt the act of Capa deciding to break from the original mission to retrieve the second bomb was an act of hubris... much like the mythical Icarus daring to fly close to the Sun. Had I been a member of the crew, I would have sided with Mace. Once a plan is broken, a new host of unforseen possibilities are opened and the odds of success become uncertain.
Sunshine has the longest, intensiv, slowest action scene i know of. The one where he tips over in the protection suit and stands up again.
This scene and the shot from inside the helmet and the brilliant acting just stays in my head :)
The hole scene fells like its 5 minutes long!
Kappa is birthing a god. The way he talks about how beautiful it will be supports this, it is akin to how parents in waiting are often talking about birth. He isn't afraid because this is, in a way, his child and the ending is beautiful because it is intended to portrait something beautiful - a new being coming into existence, the creation of life.
Sunshine is more than just a story about cosmic horror and the dispair, madness and ruin it brings - this has been done to hell and back - it's a story about the cycle of life on a cosmic scale and how even beings as insignificant as humans can create something that is far greater than they can ever hope to comprehend.
This also poses the question of "when does life begin" - if you take the stance that life begins at POTENTIAL then that dream these two have may actually not be their own dream but the dream of the sun embryo they carry with them (who's parents they are in a way), or maybe even the sun embryo trying to communicate with them.
What defines life?
So you took this break down, said none of what the vid is about is correct, and then break it down to a super vanilla "cycle of life" explanation? Aren't a lot of if not most movies about some sort of cycle of life? Your a pseudo intellectual at best and a pretender for sure.
@@randallbesch2424 exactly. humanity can only define things within its its limited knowledge and understanding, and nothing says that that knowledge and understanding is undeniably correct (in most cases). we are not in any position to decide what forms life can or cannot take. The Icarus AI even said that the Payload would produce unknown and immeasurable results, so who is to say that it didn't birth some type of life form inside of the sun? would be very interesting to know the answer but im sure we'll likely never know.
Of Course Oppenheimer has designed a nuke.
Of course the Fire Lord Ozai is obssessed with the Sun.
Sunshine is one of my most favorite along with Event Horizon.
I can't fuck with Event Horizon. That movie has always freaked me out so I pretty much just avoid it at all costs lol.
Sunshine and Event Horizon have formed an inseparable bond in my mind over the years even though they came out 10 years apart.
@@Indyawillis85It’s not that freaky. Mind you, they lost the original hell portal orgy scene. But if you played Dead Space it’s pretty much the same thing. Finding something you shouldn’t have and it turning everyone into hellish deformed beings. Okay maybe it’s a little freaky.
Sunshine & NOPE have something in common:
Spectacle
The longer you look at it, the more caught up get into.
id throw event horizon into that bag.
Beyond a good analysis, the video reminded me how packed with talent this cast was. Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Mark Strong, Benedict Wong, Rose Byrne, Hiroyuki Sanada. Insane that they were in that point of their career that you could get them all together without ballooning the budget out of proportion.
If I remember correctly, the decision to warp the picture whenever Pinbacker was onscreen was ultimately due to Danny Boyle hating the final result of the makeup effects. Personally I think the makeup looks great, but it was clear the results were not what Boyle had in mind, and seeing the pages of the screenplay, it's clear he wanted to execute something radically different.
When I had visited Niagara Falls many years ago, I had nightmares from the height, magnificence, and power from the falls. It's funny cause it's just a lot of water falling, but knowing the awe of the falls makes for a new and unreal experience. Amazing what we consider to be greater than us
As a huge fan of this movie (this and Annihilation are tied for my favorite movies ever) I feel like the movie makes more sense from the perspective of sublime cosmic awe, rather than horror. Or rather a mix of the two? Like you said the directors did fight over what the symbolism in the movie actually pushed for. I think the reason Capa ends up having the most "synergy" with the sun out of the entire cast is because he has a hearty respect for the sun, he remains grounded, but he's not afraid. He explicitly says he's not afraid of whats to come when he's testing the bomb with Cassie, while she expresses fear. And I think Kaneda's death also heavily pushes for this theme. That scene for me (along with the final scene before Capa dies) encompasses the movie's spiritual/existential themes in it's most potent form. Don't have the energy to articulate beyond that, but it was a treat to come across a video on this gem when this movie has been out of circulation for quite some time.
IMO, a genre doesn't have to be defined by how it plays out. Like just cause it ends differently, doesn't mean it's not cosmic horror. If anything, I like the change of pace that humanity does succeed and the whole bit of "Hey, you have a cosmic horror story? Well the humans have to lose, or at least win in a way that doesn't matter" feels tired. If anything, Sunshine breaking the continuity is also a good thing since if it followed to closely it'd be too predictable which is a problem in horror movies.
Never seen any of the movies you highlighted as being up against Sunshine. But I _love_ Sunshine. Extremely underrated.
My first reaction to this film when I saw it years ago was to make a comparison to being a variation on 'Event Horizon', a favorite among cosmic horror fans: you've got a small space-crew intercepting the Ghost Ship of an earlier expedition into the Unknown years after its mysterious disappearance, only to find the Ghost Ship's crew weirdly annihilated by their contact with the unknown, while the newer crew begin experiencing hallucinatory mental effects, and the third act breaks down a bit into a comparatively unsatisfying slasher setup as a representative of the Unknown begins killing off the new crew one-by-one....
There's difference enough that the two movies stand on their own individual merit, but enough similarity to make contrast-and-comparison interesting - substituting a dying sun promising to take everyone to a heaven of cosmic horror, for a malfunctioning warp drive promising to take everyone to hell of cosmic horror, weirdly kind of works for me.
But, at the same time, the shift in genre from "Haunted House in Space" to "Slasher Movie in Space" never really sold me in either case (it works well enough in 'Alien', another scifi/horror favorite among cosmic horror enthusiasts, but 'Alien' was a somewhat different animal from 'Sunshine' and 'Event Horizon'!) The endings for both 'Sunshine' and 'Event Horizon' might, I suspect, have benefited from a bit more inspiration from the comparatively restrained menaces from the '60s film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's 'The Haunting' or Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's 'The Shining' or the '80s 'Poltergeist', than from, say, William Castle's 'House on Haunted Hill' or 'Thirteen Ghosts' (which, beneath their haunted house trappings, ended up - spoilers - shifting their menace from the haunting, to killers....)
I think that, at the end of the day, 'Event Horizon' sticks with me longer than 'Sunshine', and I mostly prefer the first two thirds of 'Event Horizon' to the first two thirds of 'Sunshine', but 'Sunshine' is certainly worth checking out for fans of this sort of thing. I think it's absolutely fair to consider it a variation on Cosmic Horror, even if the final act and conclusion arguably muddle away from that foundation a bit!
Not forgetting that Event Horizon is also set in the Warhammer 'verse
Sunshine is my favorite scifi movie and these Lovecraftian elements you describe are one of the reasons
excellent video essay. this is one of my favorite scifi movies. I always interpreted the ending as accention. he for lack of a better word becomes the sun. burning away his humanity but becoming the light for the world
This has the quality of someone with hundreds of thousands of subscribers! Great content
The sun being this unknowing “antagonist,” and having horrible effects on people makes me think of the horror stories of SCP’s “When Day Breaks.” Where the sun essentially turns against humanity and every anomalous entity of Earth. Turning everything to a blob of flesh that acts as a hivemind and wants to spread itself to everything that hasn’t been absorbed.
Hey, thanks for giving me a good scare with those hidden images ( example 15:50 ) in Sunshine. For a while there, I thought I was losing my mind! Turns out the director did it on purpose, according to some Easter egg website.
@@HembachEntertainment yeah, those are pictures of the crew of Icarus 1!
i love this!! makes the third act so much better and more acceptable. instead of a thoughtful scifi suddenly turning into a slasher, it's a cosmic horror movie that slow burned its way to the terror portion of the story. explains the weird distortions that make the final fight almost unwatchable, as well as the overall surreal look of that flight.
also makes the ending make a lot more thematic sense - instead of kapa beating the boogeyman and saving the sun, it's kapa defeating the prime acolyte of an unknowable god, and then meeting that god.
It took me a sec to click the notification, but I remembered I love your analysis content.
this is definitely the fastest comment I've ever received on a video!
@@criticalcoffee I literally have been waiting for your next upload. Love your content mate!
@@PenelopeNaomi thanks a bunch for the support!
I spent years in college studying the sciences. What fascinates me most about Sunshine - and what I consider its most unlikely feature - is how good looking everybody is.
😂😊
Maybe, maybe, when kappa finally experience the real power of the sun, the sun is thanking him with that feeling of heat, allowing him to see what the human eye can’t see and allows him one last breathe in the verge of the new dawn of humanity and the sun
Hmm, good point. Like even if the Sun is an unknowable entity it is still alive, and therefore might know that it's life was coming to an end. If it was aware that these tiny specks of life called humans on a fragile ship gave it more life then I could see it being thankful. These tiny creatures so far below it sacrificed themselves so that the Sun could live.
i personally thin its just the physocs breaking down at that scale. afterall he does say he has no idea exactly what will happen. the mass involved is just warping spacetime or something like that.
The cast of this movie always blows me away. Almost all of them are instantly recognizable stars today
A friend of my parents got this movie on dvd when she was babysitting me. I was ten or so. This movie terrified the fuck out of me, but I couldn’t really say why. Now after you brought it up, I think it might have been my first exposure to the idea of cosmic horror. And I couldn’t really comprehend why it felt so scary and uncomfortable. Now as an adult, I love cosmic horror.
The structure of the Icarus from a side view is very reminiscent of an eye and its optic nerve coming from back of it
Ngl, you might wanna check out Pandorum. It doesn’t have a truly Lovecraftian entity, but it also has this deep level of hopelessness and insignificance.
Also, for another incident of Lovecraft characters defeating entities would be that time when the military wiped out a deep one colony using a sub.
I saw Pandorum when it came out but don't honestly recall much from it! Should rewatch
Pandorum is underrated. I hope it picks up as a “cult classic”.
The thing I love the most about the Sun is how the Sun itself is the closest thing to a real life cosmic horror than anything else possible. I wanna reiterate a few things about it too:
1. The Sun both does and doesn't have intentions of its own. It has no thoughts, no feelings, no life, but it alone imposes so much importance both physically towards life on Earth and to our interpretation of the world around us that almost every culture on Earth across thousands of years have worshipped the Sun, both for it's beauty and generous warmth, and for fear of its almost inevitable destruction against all life on Earth alone. And even today, whilst we know now more than ever the importance of the Sun as is, we still don't know the prevalence of the Sun in our ancient history as our collective knowledge of the Sun itself changed overtime.
2. The Sun both physically is tangible and is also not physically tangible too. It's such a giant ball of plasma that the "surface" of the Sun is nothing but violent winds so strong and so hot that it could atomically destroy your entire body within less than a fraction of a second. And even then, the actual surface of the Sun is not physical in nature, but rather atmospherically dense so as to float at a given depth down. The sheer size of the Sun alone simply mimics the physical look it has, that being so massive that our entire planet alone is like a lone freckle on it's surface
3. The Sun pretty much *is* everything we've discovered on Earth and in our solar system. Its what gave birth to all of our planets and their orbits, altering the minerals and metals our solar systems planets possess. Those various minerals and metals wouldn't be possible without the Sun first being born. The Sun itself also emits light in all directions across space. Light has every color that can possibly exist, only limited by both what colors our eyes can perceive and by what colors the objects that touch it simply can't absorb and instead reflect back. By staring into the Sun, you force your eyes to stare into the source of all colors and at the birth of all the things you can conceive around you, and are subsequently threatened with painful blindness for doing so.
4. The Sun is a near unknowable threat. We can predict pretty much every natural disaster on Earth, even in regards to meteors and comets. we have many ways to recover from these disasters, no matter how individualistic or societal they are. The Sun itself poses such unknowable threats that they challenge humanity's technological progression as a whole. Solar flares alone are enough to disrupt our current electronics severely in their efficiency in weak amounts. Major solar flares are predicted to wipe out major electrical infrastructures around the globe at one go. Not to forget about the fact that the Sun's rays alone can cause severe skin cancer, which can easily metastasize and course through your blood if not treated right away. And that is all without any effort made on the Sun's behalf at all. It took humanity eras to figure that out, often left to centuries worth of scientific debate and philosophical squabble to figure out.
And all of this is done without any effort, any thought, any breath of life whatsoever, and yet in contrast, feels and looks like such an imposing lifeform that it feels almost impossible to ignore it as anything but such. And the best part of it all? It's only one star out of a near infinite amount of stars in the entire universe, many of which are so incomprehensibly bigger than ours that it makes our Sun look like mere dust in the wind.
I love your comment 😮
Such an underrated film. I remember being so disturbed while watching it
Sunshine is one of those movies I always forget about and take a minute to remember by name but always ends up with me talking about how good that movie is
Fantastic take and i agree with you completely. As a horror fan ans especially a fan of Eldritch horror Sunshine stuck with me because of the elements you described here. Its essentially a more cerebral Event Horizon.
I love this movie.
Yeah, it ends more hopefully than any cosmic horror, but all things concidered- the hopeless ending of these fictions was reserved for the crew of the ship, not the whole humanity.
Icarus 2 fed the god, but this was a one way trip.
As much as most people ragg that Cosmic Horror supposed to be hopeless, it does not need to be at least in my opinion. Dread can be built in many ways- like the fact that you are not alone in a universe, that there are gods, that life is stranger than you would believe etc. Horror can come from more than just loosing hope, it can come from standard fear that there is something where you expected to be nothing, the dread that a fundament on which you stood moved to remind you that universe lives in far more ways than one.
Good video covering one of the best films of all time. In truth, the core takeaway is that a film's themes can embody multiple things at once. Sunshine isn't wholly cosmic horror, but for sure is inspired by it and wears many of its facets proudly. So, even if it's only "kinda cosmic", that's good enough for me.
I have always championed sunshine... A random movie I picked up from a blockbuster sale rack and watched. I shared it with every friend I had who I knew would appreciate it.
Excellent essay! Viable reading for cosmic horror and the points you make as connections between the movie and the genre are feasible and sturdy. Enjoyed the video! For the record, I think the distortion effect on Brecker is kind of dope…
This is exactly why mr burns was ahead of time with the sun locker thing
maggie being kang's daughter makes more sense now
But who Shot Mr.Burns though
This is one of my favorite movies and you've definitely made me see it in a different way and love it even more. I'm shocked to see a video essay on it that came out only 5 days ago. Thanks for this!
I actually love just how close it gets to making the sun supernatural. It's so interesting.
You know the world is sick when in order to understand the symbolic meaning of the sun they resort to hidrogen insted of Plotinus, Dante and Plato. The sun represents that that can not be seen directly, that that can never be attained, the absolute necessity to which we all belong but cannot withstand. All is explained by the sun and we all are owed to the sun.
Recently watched this again and it’s still a fantastic movie. I think at the time everyone didn’t know what to make of it. Was it horror? Disaster movie? Sci fi? Philosophical movie?Shame as it’s all 3, same as Solaris which is another amazing movie.
Part of the craziness and "breaking down" at the end is also because they are tumbling into the core of the Sun and the laws of Physics are getting pushed aside. Things are out of sync
As another finn I really feel that joke. Nice video, I believe you're gonna go far
One thing I like to look for are horror movies or stories that also include a sense of wonder or awe. Cosmic Horror or Fantasy
Horror seems to be the best genres for this.
I loved sunshine. It's a rare movie I felt the intent of and thus felt an emotional impact but never fully understood. To me it felt oddly profound in a deeply incomprehensible way. Which I found really appropriate.
Cosmic horror or not this movie has always been on the top of my favorite movie lists ever since I watched it. Whenever the samey question comes up in conversation about which are your top whatever movies, I mention this one and very rarely anyone knows about it at all.
Hey what do you think about "the core"?
Cosmic Horror is the feeling people get when trying to explain what Cosmic Horror is to other people.
It's all about the eternal question, "Is humanity worth saving?"
The Captain of the first ship is the nihilist view of the value of humanity. His mission is understandable, even noble, through his eyes.
My immigrant family didnt own a tv until 2011. We did however have a projector my dad got at the local Goodwill. One of the first movies we rented from Blockbuster/red box was this one. We had it playing on the wall of our living room. We laid blankets on the floor and watched this and a barbie animated movie for my little sister back to back with the barbie one first and this last. My dad was visibly bored watching barbie, but was engaged when this was playing. When the part of the film were there are frames of the Crew Christmas pics spliced into the movie, my dad was got sad/frustrated thinking that someone taped over the DVD. My brothers kept trying to pause it right on the pics to see what they were. We probably spent an hour pausing and my dad cursing that his 1 day off is ruined (he worked 6 days a week and literally only ever wanted to snack and watch movies on his projector on his days off).
Anyway, i was like 8, didnt really understand this movie back then, but ive watched it multiple times in my adulthood just to remember that day.
It's interesting that Alex Garland wrote Sunshine and later wrote and directed Annihilation. Also, his film 'Men' is also very cosmic horror-ish. He likes to play around these themes of huge, unknown forces impacting humans, same with AI in Ex Machina and many-worlds in DEVS.
OMG, I never really heard about this film, but just seeing who was in the cast, it's STACKED.
Thank you for talking about this film.
Such a gorgeous movie. I'm always thinking about those scenes in the oxygen farm and the observation deck. The colors are so rich and saturated
I remember watching this movie in the cinema when it came out. There was nobody in the cinema but myself, my friends, and 3 girls sitting far away from us.
When everything started going a bit wild in the third act, one of the girls got a phonecall, she answered, her voice was trembling with fear and she said...
'Yeah... we decided to watch sunshine because it had a pretty name... its not what we thought im absolutely terrified"
Haha, always remember that when thinking about this movie, i really enjoyed it and how wild it got!
Penbecker: "PRAISE THE SUN!"
Solaire: "Yes brother, Praise the Sun!"
“The endless “is a great example of Eldridge Lovecraft horror
I used to really love this movie around its release but always felt something off about its tone. An inconsistency. As a Lovecraft fan myself I agree with much of your analysis and saw many of the same parallels, particularly the indoctrination angle. I never really could sell myself on it entirely though, mostly due to the ending. I concluded it was simply Lovecraft inspired.
The Sun is indeed an unknowable God or godlike entity. I think it (the film) is even more consistent in that regard than Lovecraft himself was as though Lovecraft's quote you site is apt, it often seems his writings result in the cosmic entity having a decidedly negative will towards or effect on human kind. We are supposed to be insignifigant in Lovecraft's work, yet I can't help feeling like we are despised by his cosmic deities.
I think in this film its a little more neutral. A little more like a classical God. It's weighing humanity and those that fall to indoctrination succumb to that lust to know the power of God, they succumb to evil, to sin. They are unworthy of God's light. Capa through sheer will, sacrifice and selflessness proves himself "worthy" and is rewarded with the privilege of glimpsing the true face of God. By Capa's act, and his sacrifice, God graces humanity with a second chance.
Cheesy, no doubt, but it was my analysis at the time.
in my view, the elder gods are more neutral to us in general, like we aren't even worth their time.
Do you take the time to count every ant or bug you might mindlessly crush while going about your day?
Now imagine you're dying of hunger, and a random ass ant carries over some food and gives it to you, uncaring about the fact you might eat it in the process. Of course you're going to be grateful to it.
I love your comment
If I had a nickel for every sci-fi movie that is basically cosmic horror, has a very odd third act, and a naked man fight seen at the end then I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice
I always thought the ending of this film was a weird left turn, but maybe your cosmic horror interpretation explains it: Maybe the final ecstasy Capa experiences is his perspective after being fully indoctrinated. Maybe that is how Pinbacker also perceives the universe. Maybe that ecstasy is his motivation to bring everyone else to "heaven".
I also think theres something to be thought about with the idea of pinbecker eminating distortion and the idea that when radioactive material is filmed, it distorts camera and film. Maybe pinbecker was emanating an extreme amount of radiation
To be fair, even IRL the sun is pretty "unknowable":
It's a thermonuclear explosion so incomprehensibly big that its own huge gravity fight against the expansion and keeps it toghether.
It's a huge and complex system about which we can only make what are basically very good guesses.
Nobody knows how the sun actually works. We are mostly sure there won't be a civilization ending solar eruption tomorrow, but just mostly.
We "know" it only because we take it for granted as the bright ball in the sky that should appear every morning warming and lighting the day.
why is there a random dude at 15:16
What’s strange to me is as a child I remember sometimes staring into the sun and other bright lights until my eyes would water yet I’m pretty sure now at 21 I still have great eye sight I mean I can read the bottom of the eye test
I saw this in the theater and loved it. It was filmed beautifully. Yeah it was flawed but it was so visually fun I couldn't believe the camera shots.
And yeah... The Sun is a God. A God of our forefathers. It brings a smile and awe at the same time. Not too many things in life can.
I love me some cosmic horror. Sunshine, cosmic horror or not, is a good ass movie. Great analysis!
Lol a tad bit ignorant to say "we know almost everything about the sun" because it's like saying I know almost everything about a place I've never been, just observed from a distance. I doubt that I would know more about another country than the country & its residents itself.
The wisest know that the more you know the less you know.
Nonetheless, me nitpicking can't ever take away from such a well presented video breakdown. You have now added another movie to my list of movies to watch, much appreciated. Looking forward to seeing more of your videos
This is one of my favorite sci-fi movies of all time. I think it is absolutely beautiful and it conveys its message. I also agree that the distortion visually is supposed to convey the distortion of time as they get closer to the gravity of the Sun. A gravity that Pennbacker carries with him. His sanity was lost, like Icarus he got too close.
I don't think the line about dust being 80% human skin was a general one. I think it meant something like "80% of THIS dust is human skin", meaning the crew of Lazarus-1 was somehow disintegrated into that fine dust.
I watched Sunshine at the theatre back when it first came out, and it definitely left me feeling this cosmic horror dread. The thing that always frustrated me about it, though, is just how conventional the third act is. I feel like it doesn't deliver on the uniqueness of the word setup at all.
To me, it would be much more interesting if Pinbacker himself had become a cosmic entity of sorts (which I think was already the general idea). Instead of having this superhuman strength, I would make him completely disabled; inexplicably alive inside a body that shouldn't be. Just talking to him, however, would be enough to make the crew members kill themselves, kill each other, and sabotage the ship, preferably all in sun-related ways. At this point, it wouldn't even matter if he's a real person or not; just the idea of him would be enough to cause their minds to unravel. Then, the final struggle of the protagonist wouldn't be about defeating Pinbacker, but about resisting the death drive long enough to complete his mission. If we want to sink into existential dread, we could allow him to complete his mission, only to reveal that it was all futile. This little man-made artifact was never going to be powerful enough to restart the sun. Then again, I don't think cosmic horror needs to be bleak and hopeless 100% of the time. Even Lovecraft himself allowed humanity to win a few times, even if just for a little while.
Ah Another Sunshine Enjoyer. We grow stronger! Upon release the reviews were actually fairly positive. It just got lost in the shuffle as you suggested because tons of other great movies came out that year. Anyways, great analysis. I cover the film myself if you're interested.
I watched this movie in the beach with my parents when I was 11, it has been iching my mind since then while I tried to make sense of it, thanks for the explanation it makes way more sence in the cosmic horror cathegory
This was an amazing read/watch. Never thought of the movie as anything but sci-fi but i do agree that it does benefit so much more (in my opinion at least) when being viewed as from cosmic horror angle.
The one thing that amazes me is how almost every time, in the face of overwhelming power/uncertainty, when their beliefs and fundamental understanding shattered, driven into fear and insanity so much so that they view the unknown as godly beings, in this case, the sun. The fear of the unknown.
My favorite element of lovecraftian horror is that no amount of religious idolization, insurmountable effort, and combined human knowledge (yk the things that make humans... human) can stop nor is even considered by the massive being who genuinely has 0 active thought about the existence of our entire existence.
I was pretty cosmically horrified tbh
This video reminded me a lot of the Fallen London series, does a really good job at portraying celestial bodies with cosmic horror. Especially with The Dawn Machine, Clockwork Sun, and other judgements. The incomprehensibility of them from the human perspective is super interesting. If you liked the idea of a cosmic horror sun you should check out the series!
Woah. I didn't know people still talked about this movie.
I knew this was a true hidden gem after watching it as a kid, that soundtrack, and everything around the movie wrapped around my mind like thw burning light of the sun.
One of the most underrated films of all time!
One thing to consider is that the sun is operating on a cosmic scale. A cosmic timeframe. So, the idea that it might require a new sacrifice "anytime soon" as you put it could still be very true. Just, that it's "soon" for the sun, not soon for something as small and insignificant as a human. A million years can be very quick for a star but not for us.
Icarus is a poor choice for the name of a ship whose job is to fly close to the sun. That would be like an arctic expedition naming it's boat the Titanic.
True
watched this film quite some time ago and rewatched it for the first time this year, back when I first watched it I didn't know what cosmic horror is but this time I knew and I did kinda get a cosmic horror vibe from it
I've interpreted Capa's sacrifice as something akin to what the Aztecs did-sacrifices to appease a god. If the god finds the sacrifice worthy, he will bestow his blessings once more.
No need to apologise for the Lava Lamp background, as an aging hippy I rather enjoyed it!
In our hubris, we believe the small lump of matter between our ears is singular in its capacity to articulate existence despite constant evidence to the contrary all around us.
I always rated the story as just "a guy goes crazy in space" but you're absolutely right, upon reflection it follows the cosmic horror formula.
Great essay, deep analysis of epic movie next pls
Why do you think it is Evil? why do you think it has to be ugly? why do you think it has to be supernatural? Any Hard sci fi that properly explores the scale of the cosmos and our place in it will inspire horror for those proud and fascination for those humble.
love the use of the Signalis OST so so good
Beautifully Written! I love this movie!