re: Truly almost great movies that just missed the ending

I Am Legend

The Number 23

Perfect Stranger

Secret Window

The Dark Knight Rises

How does something like that get thru the editing process?

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How does something like that get thru the editing process?

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And how does a professional actress do a take that bad

In Titanic, the old lady should have jumped overboard with the necklace.

Here's mine:



Could've been an all-time classic, if they'd only stayed true to historical fact: all the actors and crew that Schreck kills off in the ending went on to many more screen credits IRL...even Schreck himself, contrary to legend, made films until his death in the mid-30s.

A much better ending would have been - he turns them ALL into vampires, dooming them to eternal night (not necessarily a major impediment to a cinematic career).

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I do like your assessment of the shift in Sunshine, but I just think they did a poor job connecting the dots. Probably looks better in a bullet-pointed script outline, but they missed the landing onscreen. I feel like if they did a better job preparing us for such a conclusion, the outlook would be different. It's been awhile since I've watched it, so maybe they did drop some hints for all I know, but I don't recall anything that made me think "oh, they really might go there, huh?"....

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Practically-speaking, that certainly would have helped. I do want to emphasize that I agree with the substance of peoples' discontentment regarding the tonal shift. The fact that happened isn't really up for debate, so it would be silly of me to try to argue that.

Though now you've got me actually thinking about the potential for foreshadowing and I'm kind of at a loss as to how they could have done it smoothly. The occasional flashes of that photo of the crew of the Icarus I was were super-creepy but not really helpful in teasing the 3rd act. By the time they reach the Icarus I, we're basically at a point where nobody knows what happened. That's the mystery being presented to the crew already -- why did the Icarus I fail, and is the Icarus II in the same danger? Other than making that a bigger aspect of the film leading up to that moment (via dialogue, I guess?) I can't really see how to integrate "Captain went mad and killed everyone" seamlessly. They reach the Icarus I, and determine, in steps,that the problem wasn't structural, it wasn't computational, it wasn't an issue with the bomb, and it wasn't a loss of food and oxygen, so they're in the same boat as the audience until Pinbacker makes himself known.

The possible solution to this problem that I think I can run with is emphasizing the mystery aspect more prior to discovering the Icarus I is still extant and holding position just short of the point where they were to drop the payload...but they'd need to do it in such a way that doesn't scream "TWIST COMING!" because the writing on "Sunshine" is excellent and ditching subtlety would do the movie a huge disservice.

Edit: you know, I'm glad this thread spurred me to think about the third act again, because I just realized one other thing I find interesting -- the idea that the surviving crew, right down to Capa and Cassie at the very end, had to fight tooth and nail, and sacrifice themselves to ensure that there was a chance (and it was still just a 'chance' to them) they could save Earth. Then you have that final monologue and the people in Sydney looking up as the sun brightens as a counterpoint to the events aboard the Icarus II at the end...and that emphasizes the fact that the people on Earth will never know exactly how hard their saviors fought, right up to the very end, to save them. All they know is that the mission worked. It's actually kind of moving to see the end of the movie through that lens. (And a bit depressing to realize that Pinbacker will likely be hailed alongside the rest of the crews as a hero who sacrificed himself.)