Dr. Brian Cox: There’s a beautiful shot where for the only time in the film, you see a picture of Icarus on the shield, there, absolutely beautiful. You might wonder why the spacecraft was called Icarus actually, it might sound- if you know about the myth, a bit of a silly thing to call it, but actually if you think about the Icarus myth, it’s about Daedalus, Icarus’s father, building him some wings to escape from Crete, and he tells Icarus exactly how to use them. He says “look, these wings, will get you out of Crete, they’ll get the job done, but if you fly too close to the sun, then the wax in the wings will melt, and you will die.” So, you could read the Icarus myth as being a comment on science, and hubris, and the way that humans use technology. What science does is it delivers this technology to you, it doesn’t give you the wisdom to use it properly, but if Icarus had listened to his father, had listened to the scientist, then the wings would have done the job. So in a way, I think that Icarus is a great thing to call the spaceship, because it reminds the crew, that they really should do the job and not get too carried away and not get to hypnotized, by the sun in both cases, in the myth and in the film.
Love, love, love this movie.
One of the best sci-fi movies ever. EVER.
Absolutely.
