New sci-fi film The Europa Report

[Falcon H]

This reminds me of that movie Apollo 18 (shudders) I hated that movie, how can they take something as great as the Apollo program and turn it in to a horror movie.

[Elmar Moelzer]

This reminds me of that movie Apollo 18 (shudders) I hated that movie, how can they take something as great as the Apollo program and turn it in to a horror movie.

Yepp, I am very affraid that this movie will be simillar.
I liked 2001. The Discovery is beautiful, even with the missing cooling panels, or maybe even because of that.
I can see why they omitted them. All in all I think that 2001 is still one of the most realistic scifi movies. It feels so "close" and tangible.

[MattJL]

This reminds me of that movie Apollo 18 (shudders) I hated that movie, how can they take something as great as the Apollo program and turn it in to a horror movie.

I don't really understand why screenwriters resort to the tired trope of encountering aliens that serve no purpose but to pick off characters one by one.  Is it that difficult to write a hard sci-fi that is entertaining and doesn't devolve into horror?

This film, unfortunately, feels a lot like Apollo 18 on ice.  My hopes are not high.

[KelvinZero]

This reminds me of that movie Apollo 18 (shudders) I hated that movie, how can they take something as great as the Apollo program and turn it in to a horror movie.

I don't really understand why screenwriters resort to the tired trope of encountering aliens that serve no purpose but to pick off characters one by one.  Is it that difficult to write a hard sci-fi that is entertaining and doesn't devolve into horror?

There is a lot of agreement on that. I think it would be a great goal for space advocacy groups to fund more positive realistic sci-fi. I think you could do quite a bit with say a 100k prize for best hard-scifi short. You could get a whole bunch of professional-looking short animated films on youtube, and perhaps some of these could be seeds for a successful series.

[Elmar Moelzer]

This reminds me of that movie Apollo 18 (shudders) I hated that movie, how can they take something as great as the Apollo program and turn it in to a horror movie.

I don't really understand why screenwriters resort to the tired trope of encountering aliens that serve no purpose but to pick off characters one by one.  Is it that difficult to write a hard sci-fi that is entertaining and doesn't devolve into horror?

There is a lot of agreement on that. I think it would be a great goal for space advocacy groups to fund more positive realistic sci-fi. I think you could do quite a bit with say a 100k prize for best hard-scifi short. You could get a whole bunch of professional-looking short animated films on youtube, and perhaps some of these could be seeds for a successful series.

Quoted for agreement!

[Star One]

IGN's review.

THE VERDICT

The sci-fi fan in me wants to love every second of this found footage space trip, but the film critic in me can’t help but groan at the super slow turn of events and awkward time jumps in Europa Report.

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/06/28/europa-report-review

[Oli]

Variety likes it

http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/film-review-europa-report-1200500661/

[p51]

I saw it last night. It's not Apollo 18 or Alien, I can tell you that. If you could call it a horror movie at all, it shows the horror of how space doesn't give a rat's backside about humans at all. It's a cold, unforgiving area of uncaring either way. And humans plop down in the middle of it with not exactly happy results.
The film has a very good look to it, but I didn't find the characters very compelling at all. It's also very short, less than 90 minutes.
Wait until it comes out on video, there's really nothing about this film that merits a viewing on a big screen over a smaller one.
While it's not a bad movie, for all the work that went into it (and there is a LOT of NASA cooperation noted in the credits), I just expected more...

[Star One]

Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey easily sets the highest standard in this department. However, we recently screened the new movie Europa Report, and were taken aback by its respect for audience intelligence while still offering a thrilling, edge-of-your-seat story [watch the trailer below]. It's clear director Sebastián Cordero and writer Philip Gelatt did their science homework. Their characters behave like real people on a believable mission to search for life on Europa -- an icy moon of Jupiter that astrobiologists yearn to explore.
Here, we pick the brain of Kevin Hand, an astrobiologist and expert on Europa at NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and one of the film's volunteer science consultants, on how to create a truly realistic space film that won't bore viewers to tears.
Spoiler alert: Key scenes and plot elements are mentioned here, so bookmark this article if you want to watch the movie first.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/qampa-how-realistic-em-europa-reportem-sci-fi-space-thriller

[dcfowler1]

Just saw it on demand on TV. It was really good. Fairly plausible, and nothing that made me groan.

Dave

[Zannanza]

New trailer for it.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=104446

Apparently you can get a manned vehicle to Europa using an Atlas V, well according to this trailer you can. Looked like the launch of Curiosity they were using.

Not many sci fi films where you can see a quote from Popular Science on the trailer. 

I suppose the Atlas V is only used for ferrying the crew on a CST-100 or Dragon to the mother ship waiting in LEO.

[gfagley]

want to go see it but it isn't playing at many movie theaters.  may have to drive 3 hours (each way) across MA to Boston to see it (I live on the other side of MA near NY state).  I wish they where playing it at more places.

[TimL]

Saw it today, not a bad movie at all. I rather enjoyed it 'except' the forward and back jumping video/storyline gimmick where you're replaying captured video.

[newpylong]

The astronaut actions were a little Hollywood for me. In reality they would always go in pairs and the EVA would be highly scripted. Overall it was okay.

I look forward to the movie "Gravity" this fall.

gfagley, you're right. The only place I know of it playing is in Cambridge now. Not even Albany has it.

[p51]

***SPOILER ALERT***

I've seen it twice and I still don't get what happened to the Russian who got back to the airlock (where the guy from District 9 shoved him inside). They make it sound like nobody made it home, but what happened to that one guy? I didn't quite get whatever happened to him...

[Blackstar]

***SPOILER ALERT***

I've seen it twice and I still don't get what happened to the Russian who got back to the airlock (where the guy from District 9 shoved him inside). They make it sound like nobody made it home, but what happened to that one guy? I didn't quite get whatever happened to him...

Major spoilers:

He lived through the EVA, but died at the end, with the rest of them. You'll note that early in the film, when it is clear that the other guy has died, the Russian guy is emotionally damaged. We don't know why or what happened, only that he somehow feels very bad about the other guy's death.

It is only when they get to the EVA scene that we see what happened--the Russian got a hole in his suit during an emergency EVA and as the other guy was helping him in, the other guy realized that his own suit was covered with hydrazine and if he came into the airlock too he could contaminate it and they would both die. So he pushed in the Russian and closed the door. He then floated off and died. The Russian guy regained consciousness in the airlock and started screaming in frustration and sorrow.

So the Russian guy lived, but then was emotionally damaged for the rest of the mission. The plan was to leave him in orbit around Europa while the rest of them went to the surface, but they decided that they did not want him to be alone, so they took him down to the surface with them. Then everything goes bad. He realizes that the only way to fix the lander for launching is to go outside and repair the damage. He does that, and also fixes the communications. The ship beams back to Earth all its recorded data, but then cracks through the ice and is destroyed. Everybody dies. But the data and video gets back to Earth.

I realize that the jumping around in time is confusing, but you clearly see him on the ground with them when they land on Europa.

[Blackstar]

You can already guess that everybody dies in the end. So why bother watching it?

Because what is important is not that they died, but what they did while they were alive.

[p51]

***ARRRR, HERE THERE BE SPOILERS***

I realize that the jumping around in time is confusing, but you clearly see him on the ground with them when they land on Europa.

Thanks, I didn't realize it was the same guy who was also on the ground, it looked like he was still in the "CSM" while the "LEM" was on the surface if you watch it with a linear mindset.
At least in the series "Defying Gravity," they had more than one lander, I assume one could have rescued another in some cases (except for Venus). You'd think a spacecraft this large, going this far, might have had more than one lander, not that it really would have saved anyone from what happened once they got on the surface.

[Blackstar]

***ARRRR, HERE THERE BE SPOILERS***

I realize that the jumping around in time is confusing, but you clearly see him on the ground with them when they land on Europa.

Thanks, I didn't realize it was the same guy who was also on the ground, it looked like he was still in the "CSM" while the "LEM" was on the surface if you watch it with a linear mindset.
At least in the series "Defying Gravity," they had more than one lander, I assume one could have rescued another in some cases (except for Venus). You'd think a spacecraft this large, going this far, might have had more than one lander, not that it really would have saved anyone from what happened once they got on the surface.

Well, yeah, but...

First off, Defying Gravity (which I wrote a lot about for The Space Review, you can look up those articles) featured a ship that was visiting multiple planets. So they needed multiple launchers.

Second, although this may seem like a bit of a cop-out, consider that Europa Report had a limited budget, and that affected a number of their filming decisions. For instance, filming the same set as two different landers would have meant doing twice as much filming. You film Actors 1, 2, and 3, and then you have to film Actors 4, 5 and 6, and that takes more time, and time means money. Also, they wanted to create dramatic tension. The Russian guy was mentally unstable, which is why they did not leave him in orbit. But they were also worried about having him around when they landed. And note that he was the first one to spot a light outside the lander. Was he crazy? Turns out he was right, and there was something outside the ship.

I'd also add that in order to save money the filmmakers did something clever, but also inaccurate: they made the lander serve as the command module of the whole spacecraft. Why? Because then they only had a single set. They didn't need to build separate sets for that purpose. Of course, the problem with this is that if they had left the Russian in orbit, how would he have returned home without the lander to serve as the command module?

Let's face it, Europa Report is not a totally accurate film. But if they had tried to be totally accurate, they could not have made the film at all. For starters, humans will die on Europa because of the radiation. We simply will not send humans, even with really great shielding, because the people will be dead quickly, or at the very least they will get radiation poisoning and get very sick. And the ice is not that thin. And a ship cannot travel to Jupiter that fast. And if you want artificial gravity by spinning the ship, you need a MUCH BIGGER radius.

They had to cut corners on all of these things. But I give them a lot of props for what they did. When was the last science fiction movie (other than Star Trek) that sent anybody past Mars?

[Bubbinski]

I want to see this movie....but it's not playing in Salt Lake or anywhere near here.  From what I'm gathering on Fandango, I'd need to fly to LA, San Diego, Seattle, or Denver to see this, unless I pay 6.99 on Google Play.  Google Play sounds like the better option.