5 Reasons Why Danny Boyle's Sunshine Is Still A Stellar Film

5. The Human Condition The brilliant thing about science fiction films is that we, as the audience, get a sneak peek into the minds of individuals of humanity and discover what breaks them down and at what cost. When presented with a difficult situation where there will undoubtedly be consequences or certain death, the gates to the human mind are pulled open, like the latches of the floodgates unlocked, ready for the inevitable flood to pour out. After so much pressure, those latches eventually snap and collapse, and after that.....anything can happen. Such is the human mind, as fragile as it can be in "Sunshine". A central figure of the plot involves a crew of eight teammates in constant contact with one another, locked inside a ship known as the Icarus II for a number of years, on a voyage to restore the sun's power with a massive collection of nukes and creating a new star in its place and save mankind from a dark extinction. So already, there is weight on their shoulders, as they are responsible for our continuation as a species. With a burden of high consequence such as that, the human mind could be pulled in any number of different directions. But, to keep the crew members calm and secure, they have what is known as an Earth Room to help them remember what they are fighting for, to help keep their minds focused on the task at hand. Now speaking off the record here, having the fate of every single human life in the palm of my hands would be, unequivocally, all that I care about. I wouldn't sleep, eat, or make start fights with the other crew members; I would simply be glued to my chair/desk/lab, trying in every way I know to come up with the best possible solution to ease that burden off my shoulders, knowing I could save them. But the question is: would that alone put the rest of my team at risk? Would a lack of communication and going solo drive me crazy? Would it drive others crazy, giving them the impression that I went off the deep end? Or would I begin doubting myself over the course of several months or years after trying out every possible scenario, knowing I couldn't complete my goal and save the human race? That's just me and what would happen if I were in Capa's shoes. Personally, I'd probably muff up somewhere down the line and bring the apocalypse with the smallest of slip-ups. In so many ways we see the crew of the Icarus II ask the questions to which they don't always have the answers to. Are they the team to pull this massive exodus off? Are their calculations scientifically proven (at least in their fictional world) to deliver their payload? Can they trust one another? Better yet, if one of the teammates died saving the others from frying to death because one of the others made a slight miscalculation in shift velocity, would he/she be able to live with it? All these questions and more are presented in very dread and dark fashion to where we, as the audience, start to wonder if they can even save us and make it back in one piece. One such teammate named Harvey goes through a dramatic change in emotion simply because he is caught in win/lose situation outside of saving the human race, to where his own life is on the line. When the crew discovers the remains of the Icarus I, the first ship to attempt the salvation of mankind, they board and find out what happened only to suffer an airlock malfunction (or so we think), trapping four of the teammates (Mace, Capa, Searle, and Harvey) on board the Icarus I. In order to successfully make it back to the Icarus II, they must jump into the outer reaches of space and land inside the docking platform of their own ship, with only one spacesuit to work with. One decides to stay behind (Searle), while the other two are wrapped in enough material to protect them from the exposure of space. Capa gets the spacesuit as he is the only one who knows how to operate the payload delivery, so Mace and Harvey take to the wrapping materials, against Harvey's wishes. The small but brief segment of Harvey arguing with Mace reveals to the audience how terrified this man is. After the loss of Kaneda, Harvey was promoted to Captain, so he believes he should be given the right to live since he's in charge, not giving a care in the world that the one person who can save the human race is right in front of him. In the face of certain death, of being lost in space forever, a man can break down and suffer from his own undoing from within. It's a powerful statement knowing that you can lose your life in such circumstances yet still be the person you are. Eventually Harvey agrees to take the material over the suit, but unfortunately suffers when they bump into the side of the Icarus II airlock, sending Harvey out in the the vacuum of space, ultimately freezing from lack of oxygen and meeting his true end by the rays of the sun. "Sunshine" goes further than this in some scenes, but it's Harvey's change in character that shows that when the human mind is met with a situation in which he knows he can easily be picked off for the better part of mankind, even he would rather live than die for the sake of the mission. Like Spock always said, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."