Written by Old Bluffer 25th May 2007
Written by the_shakermaker
The Icarus II mission has all gone a bit pear shaped at this point in the movie. Having managed to get the crew down to a small enough number to not run out of oxygen on their mission (not enough to get back but frankly at this point the crew seem happy with what little life they can wrangle), they rather unfortunately find themselves being sabotaged by the deranged God-fearing captain of the Icarus I who is trying to prevent them from undoing God's effort to purge us all by turning off the sun (he says).
Bummer!
One of his little tricks was to pull the 4 computer banks out of the coolant which keeps them running, thus plunging the ship into the stone age. Heroic Mace isn't about to let this stand though, Hell No! So with little regard for his own safety upon finding this situation he proceeds to plunge himself into the tanks to manually release the hydraulics. The extreme cold takes its toll quickly and by the time he gets out of the first tank it's clear that Mace is probably not going to come out of this experience well. However for the sake of humanity and based on the fact that this has become a one way trip anyway, he carries on. Despite the blistering of his skin and the INTENSE cold he manages to get the second computer bank back in without major issues, The third however proves his undoing when after releasing the big heavy computer bank it comes down and traps his leg which begins to bleed profusely into the tank. He is now trapped half in the tank and all he can do is die. It is unclear ultimately whether he dies from a loss of blood or the freezing temperatures, probably a combination of both. He has however with this last act allowed physicist Capa (Cillian Murphy) an outside chance to salvage the mission.....
Play the 'Sunlight' drinking game...
Take a drink whenever:
You see something catch fire or explode,
Make it a double if someone dies in said explosion, or suffers permanent loss of function.
Someone unironically anthropomorphises the sun into a god-head.
Drink a double whenever Physicist-guy is in danger of cutting someone with his cheekbones.
Finish your drink whenever you can recognise a plot element reused from Aliens, Event Horizon or Armageddon.
Finish your drinks twice if you, even remotely, can explain the plot-reason for the ressurection/supernatural-reappearance of the dead captain in terms not involving the words Weir, Doctor, Horizon or Event or if you can see his missing eyes without saying "Where we're going, you won't need eyes to see..."
Finish your drinks twice if, when the crew first hear the tape of the log from the previous Icarus, your first thoughts were 'liberate tute mea, ex inferis' 'save yourselves from hell' - gain if you could swear you ACTUALLY heard those words on the tape
Finish the bottle if you can guess the ending including deaths/survivors names, before quarter of the film has passed...
I haven't actually seen Event Horizon, so maybe I didn't notice that. I will say that Event Horizon probably hasn't entirely cornered the "spooky things in space" sub-genre.
Fair point, fair point and I would actually go so far as to say that makes things worse - if you are going to go 'borrowing' ideas for a film, at least pick out the masters of the genre to start with... however, in the case of this particular film there are far far too many parallels with EH for it to be co-incidence.
I am sure someone else who has seen both will add their opinions... I had a hard time convincing my friends it was a different director for both films when we first saw it and even now one of them mixes the two movies completely when trying to tell the plot to someone else