Anyone watched "Europa Report" yet?

[xendelaar]

I just watched the movie Europa report (IMDB = 6.5) and must say I was pretty blown away by it. It captures perfectly the way a return trip to Europa could be when done in real life. The story itself isn't Oscar worthy or anything, and there were several inaccuracies, but still..I really did enjoy watching it.

What did you guys think?

Edited January 31, 2018 by xendelaar

[DAL59]

It was pretty good.  The found footage format was unique.  

 

Basically, the ship loses communication halfway to jupiter, but they continue anyway.  This proves to be a very bad decision.

[Bill Phil]

It was alright. Kind of sad, though.

[Superfluous J]

I really liked it. Far from perfect but far better than most movie SF out there.

[XB-70A]

It actually entertained me pretty well. I tend to be annoyed (or even to hate) found footage style, but the case of Europa Report was a bit different. Now I only looked at it once (2014), so maybe I would not perceive it the same way today.

[monstah]

Agree with other opinions here. Nothing spectacular, but quite enjoyable and well-done. 

Another footage-style sci-fi from roughly the same time is Apollo 18, again not spectacular, production with a clearly lower budget, sort of "conspiratory" vibe (an Apollo mission no one knew about), but also enjoyable.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

What stays unclear for me: did they meet Kerbal Kraken or Github Octocat.

"Don't forget a harpoon flying to another planet."

[ChrisSpace]

I remember watching it on Nelflix in December 2014, and I absolutely loved it. Personally I consider it a good halfway point between The Martian and Space Odyssey: Voyage To The Planets.

[xendelaar]

the story was pretty predictable: **WARNING SPOILERS IN SPOILER**

Spoiler

it was a typical sequence of “death by the number” throughout the movie.

Although the ending was pretty cool with the confirmation of higher lifeforms on Europa. I would have preferred the scenario where we didn’t get to see the A.L.F and had to guess if it all was real or just a fantasy created by the radiation spikes.

 

But besides those flaws, I really enjoyed it. The whole premise of visiting Europa is so fresh and intriguing to me that I just had to see it. I wanted to see how the director would display the surface of the planet to the viewer. I was not disappointed !

I'm glad you guys liked it as well.

[PakledHostage]

I remember seeing the trailer and thinking "there's one that I am going to have to miss", but I was pleasantly surprised when I did actually watch it. I'd recommend it to friends. 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

8 hours ago, xendelaar said:

a typical sequence of “death by the number”

Thanks! I tried to find out what's a correct name of such kind of stories.

The most pleasant feature of this movie is its absolutely routine atmosphere.

But "speaking heads" could be a little fewer.

[xendelaar]

On ‎31‎-‎1‎-‎2018 at 8:40 PM, kerbiloid said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Thanks! I tried to find out what's a correct name of such kind of stories.

 

@kerbiloidDon't know if that's the correct term for this kind of scenario, but it was the only thing I could come up with. I'm glad you understand what I meant.

I just realized that the specific gravity on Europa is less than on the moon. They didn't really demonstrate this in the movie, which is a shame.

Fun fact: a return trip from Earth to Europa would cost approximately 41 km/s delta-V... (assuming aero braking on Earth and no gravity assists)

Spoiler

Source

 

[Gargamel]

On 1/30/2018 at 10:24 PM, 5thHorseman said:

I really liked it. Far from perfect but far better than most movie SF out there.

That was my thought when I watched it a few years ago. 

[Spaceception]

I like it, I actually saw it a couple times, and I agree with @Bill Phil, it was sad.

On 1/30/2018 at 10:48 PM, monstah said:

Another footage-style sci-fi from roughly the same time is Apollo 18, again not spectacular, production with a clearly lower budget, sort of "conspiratory" vibe (an Apollo mission no one knew about), but also enjoyable.

 

Hmm, I don't think I quite get what you mean by 'conspiratory'.

Despite the lower budget, I liked the effects, definitely better than Sharknado and stuff . It's been a couple years since I saw it though.

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

Hmm, I don't think I quite get what you mean by 'conspiratory'.

Apollo 18 is based on a conspiracy theory, at least somewhat.

[DAL59]

This movie is basically the story of the Tsien from the book version of 2010, which was dropped from the movie.  

... relay this information to Earth. Tsien destroyed three hours ago. I'm only survivor. Using my suit radio - no idea if it has enough range, but it's the only chance. Please listen carefully. THERE IS LIFE ON EUROPA. I repeat: THERE IS LIFE ON EUROPA...

The signal faded again.

'... soon after local midnight. We were pumping steadily and the tanks were almost half full. Dr Lee and I went out to check the pipe insulation. Tsien stands - stood - about thirty metres from the edge of the Grand Canal. Pipes go directly from it and down through the ice. Very thin - not safe to walk on. The warm upwelling...'

Again a long silence.

'... no problem - five kilowatts of lighting strung up on the ship. Like a Christmas tree - beautiful, shining right through the ice. Glorious colours. Lee saw it first - a huge dark mass rising up from the depths. At first we thought it was a school of fish - too large for a single organism - then it started to break through the ice.

'... like huge strands of wet seaweed, crawling along the ground. Lee ran back to the ship to get a camera - I stayed to watch, reporting over the radio. The thing moved so slowly I could easily outrun it. I was much more excited than alarmed. Thought I knew what kind of creature it was - I've seen pictures of the kelp forests off California - but I was quite wrong...

I could tell it was in trouble. It couldn't possibly survive at a temperature a hundred and fifty below its normal environment. It was freezing solid as it moved forward - bits were breaking off like glass - but it was still advancing towards the ship - a black tidal wave, slowing down all the time.

'I was still so surprised that I couldn't think straight and I couldn't imagine what it was trying to do.

'... climbing up the ship, building a kind of ice tunnel as it advanced. Perhaps this was insulating it from the cold - the way termites protect themselves from Sunlight with their little corridors of mud.

'... tons of ice on the ship. The radio antennas broke off first. Then I could see the landing legs beginning to buckle - all in slow motion, like a dream.

'Not until the ship started to topple did I realize what the thing was trying to do - and then it was too late. We could have saved ourselves - if we'd only switched off those lights.

'Perhaps it's a phototrope, its biological cycle triggered by the Sunlight that filters through the ice. Or it could have been attracted like a moth to a candle. Our floodlights must have been more brilliant than anything that Europa has ever known.

'Then the ship crashed. I saw the hull split, a cloud of snowflakes form as moisture condensed. All the lights went out, except for one, swinging back and forth on a cable a couple of metres above the ground.

'I don't know what happened immediately after that. The next thing I remember, I was standing under the light, beside the wreck of the ship, with a fine powdering of fresh snow all around me. I could see my footsteps in it very clearly... I must have run there; perhaps only a minute or two had elapsed...

'The plant - I still thought of it as a plant - was motionless. I wondered if it had been damaged by the impact; large sections - as thick as a man's arm -had splintered off, like broken twigs.

'Then the main trunk started to move again. It pulled away from the hull, and began to crawl towards me. That was when I knew for certain that the thing was light-sensitive: I was standing immediately under the thousand-watt lamp, which had stopped swinging now.

'Imagine an oak tree - better still, a banyan with its multiple trunks and roots - flattened out by gravity and trying to creep along the ground. It got to within five metres of the light, then started to spread out until it had made a perfect circle around me. Presumably that was the limit of its tolerance -the point at which photo-attraction turned to repulsion. After that, nothing happened for several minutes. I wondered if it was dead - frozen solid at last.

'Then I saw that large buds were forming on many of the branches. It was like watching a time-lapse film of flowers opening. In fact I thought they were flowers - each about as big as a man's head.

'Delicate, beautifully coloured membranes started to unfold. Even then, it occurred to me that no-one - no thing - could ever have seen these colours before; they had no existence until we brought our lights - our fatal lights - to this world.

'Tendrils, stamens, waving feebly... I walked over to the living wall that surrounded me, so that I would see exactly what was happening. Neither then, or at any other time, had I felt the slightest fear of the creature. I was certain that it was not malevolent - if indeed it was conscious at all.

'There were scores of the big flowers, in various stages of unfolding. Now, they reminded me of butterflies, just emerging from the chrysalis... wings crumpled, still feeble... I was getting closer and closer to the truth.

'But they were freezing - dying as quickly as they formed. Then, one after another, they dropped off from the parent buds. For a few moments they flopped around like fish stranded on dry land - and at last I realized exactly what they were. Those membranes weren't petals - they were fins, or their equivalent. This was the free-swimming, larval stage of the creature. Probably it spends much of its life rooted on the seabed, then sends these mobile offspring in search of new territory. Just like the corals of Earth's oceans.

'I knelt down to get a closer look at one of the little creatures. The beautiful colours were fading now, to a drab brown. Some of the petal-fins had snapped off, becoming brittle shards as they froze. But it was still moving feebly, and as I approached it tried to avoid me. I wondered how it sensed my presence.

'Then I noticed that the stamens - as I'd called them - all carried bright blue dots at their tips. They looked like tiny star sapphires - or the blue eyes along the mantle of a scallop - aware of light, but unable to form true images. As I watched, the vivid blue faded, the sapphires became dull, ordinary stones...

'Dr Floyd - or anyone else who is listening - I haven't much more time - Jupiter will soon block my signal. But I've almost finished.

'I knew then what I had to do. The cable to that thousand-watt lamp was hanging almost to the ground. I gave it a few tugs, and the light went out in a shower of sparks.

'I wondered if it was too late. For a few minutes, nothing happened. So I walked over to the wall of tangled branches around me, and kicked it.

'Slowly, the creature started to unweave itself, and to retreat back to the Canal. There was plenty of light - I could see everything perfectly. Ganymede and Callisto were in the sky - Jupiter was a huge, thin crescent - and there was a big auroral display on the nightside, at the Jovian end of the Io flux tube. There was no need to use my helmet light.

'I followed the creature all the way back to the water, encouraging it with more kicks when it slowed down, feeling the fragments of ice crunching all the time beneath my boots... As it neared the Canal, it seemed to gain strength and energy, as if it knew that it was approaching its natural home. I wondered if it would survive, to bud again.

'It disappeared through the surface, leaving a few last dead larvae on the alien land. The exposed free water bubbled for a few minutes until a scab of protective ice sealed it from the vacuum above. Then I walked back to the ship to see if there was anything to salvage - I don't want to talk about that...

'I've only two requests to make, Doctor. When the taxonomists classify this creature, I hope they'll name it after me.

'And - when the next ship comes home - ask them to take our bones back to China..

'Jupiter will be cutting us off in a few minutes. I wish I knew whether anyone was receiving me. Anyway, I'll repeat this message when we're in line of sight again - if my suit's life-support system lasts that long.

'This is Professor Chang on Europa, reporting the destruction of spaceship Tsien. We landed beside the Grand Canal and set up our pumps at the edge of the ice...'

[DAL59]

Spoiler

 

 

[radonek]

I stopped after about 20 minutes,  the "found footage" was so annoying I just could not stand it. Finished it later after much prodding from friends, and it's actually not that bad in other respects. I still wonder about the hydrazine stuff - does it really look like this?

[DAL59]

1 hour ago, radonek said:

I still wonder about the hydrazine stuff - does it really look like this?

Yes, but that far from the sun, it would probably freeze before it even hit the suit.  Still a very interesting scene.  

[xendelaar]

On 2/4/2018 at 3:50 AM, DAL59 said:

This movie is basically the story of the Tsien from the book version of 2010, which was dropped from the movie.  

... relay this information to Earth. Tsien destroyed three hours ago. I'm only survivor. Using my suit radio - no idea if it has enough range, but it's the only chance. Please listen carefully. THERE IS LIFE ON EUROPA. I repeat: THERE IS LIFE ON EUROPA...

The signal faded again.

'... soon after local midnight. We were pumping steadily and the tanks were almost half full. Dr Lee and I went out to check the pipe insulation. Tsien stands - stood - about thirty metres from the edge of the Grand Canal. Pipes go directly from it and down through the ice. Very thin - not safe to walk on. The warm upwelling...'

Again a long silence.

'... no problem - five kilowatts of lighting strung up on the ship. Like a Christmas tree - beautiful, shining right through the ice. Glorious colours. Lee saw it first - a huge dark mass rising up from the depths. At first we thought it was a school of fish - too large for a single organism - then it started to break through the ice.

'... like huge strands of wet seaweed, crawling along the ground. Lee ran back to the ship to get a camera - I stayed to watch, reporting over the radio. The thing moved so slowly I could easily outrun it. I was much more excited than alarmed. Thought I knew what kind of creature it was - I've seen pictures of the kelp forests off California - but I was quite wrong...

I could tell it was in trouble. It couldn't possibly survive at a temperature a hundred and fifty below its normal environment. It was freezing solid as it moved forward - bits were breaking off like glass - but it was still advancing towards the ship - a black tidal wave, slowing down all the time.

'I was still so surprised that I couldn't think straight and I couldn't imagine what it was trying to do.

'... climbing up the ship, building a kind of ice tunnel as it advanced. Perhaps this was insulating it from the cold - the way termites protect themselves from Sunlight with their little corridors of mud.

'... tons of ice on the ship. The radio antennas broke off first. Then I could see the landing legs beginning to buckle - all in slow motion, like a dream.

'Not until the ship started to topple did I realize what the thing was trying to do - and then it was too late. We could have saved ourselves - if we'd only switched off those lights.

'Perhaps it's a phototrope, its biological cycle triggered by the Sunlight that filters through the ice. Or it could have been attracted like a moth to a candle. Our floodlights must have been more brilliant than anything that Europa has ever known.

'Then the ship crashed. I saw the hull split, a cloud of snowflakes form as moisture condensed. All the lights went out, except for one, swinging back and forth on a cable a couple of metres above the ground.

'I don't know what happened immediately after that. The next thing I remember, I was standing under the light, beside the wreck of the ship, with a fine powdering of fresh snow all around me. I could see my footsteps in it very clearly... I must have run there; perhaps only a minute or two had elapsed...

'The plant - I still thought of it as a plant - was motionless. I wondered if it had been damaged by the impact; large sections - as thick as a man's arm -had splintered off, like broken twigs.

'Then the main trunk started to move again. It pulled away from the hull, and began to crawl towards me. That was when I knew for certain that the thing was light-sensitive: I was standing immediately under the thousand-watt lamp, which had stopped swinging now.

'Imagine an oak tree - better still, a banyan with its multiple trunks and roots - flattened out by gravity and trying to creep along the ground. It got to within five metres of the light, then started to spread out until it had made a perfect circle around me. Presumably that was the limit of its tolerance -the point at which photo-attraction turned to repulsion. After that, nothing happened for several minutes. I wondered if it was dead - frozen solid at last.

'Then I saw that large buds were forming on many of the branches. It was like watching a time-lapse film of flowers opening. In fact I thought they were flowers - each about as big as a man's head.

'Delicate, beautifully coloured membranes started to unfold. Even then, it occurred to me that no-one - no thing - could ever have seen these colours before; they had no existence until we brought our lights - our fatal lights - to this world.

'Tendrils, stamens, waving feebly... I walked over to the living wall that surrounded me, so that I would see exactly what was happening. Neither then, or at any other time, had I felt the slightest fear of the creature. I was certain that it was not malevolent - if indeed it was conscious at all.

'There were scores of the big flowers, in various stages of unfolding. Now, they reminded me of butterflies, just emerging from the chrysalis... wings crumpled, still feeble... I was getting closer and closer to the truth.

'But they were freezing - dying as quickly as they formed. Then, one after another, they dropped off from the parent buds. For a few moments they flopped around like fish stranded on dry land - and at last I realized exactly what they were. Those membranes weren't petals - they were fins, or their equivalent. This was the free-swimming, larval stage of the creature. Probably it spends much of its life rooted on the seabed, then sends these mobile offspring in search of new territory. Just like the corals of Earth's oceans.

'I knelt down to get a closer look at one of the little creatures. The beautiful colours were fading now, to a drab brown. Some of the petal-fins had snapped off, becoming brittle shards as they froze. But it was still moving feebly, and as I approached it tried to avoid me. I wondered how it sensed my presence.

'Then I noticed that the stamens - as I'd called them - all carried bright blue dots at their tips. They looked like tiny star sapphires - or the blue eyes along the mantle of a scallop - aware of light, but unable to form true images. As I watched, the vivid blue faded, the sapphires became dull, ordinary stones...

'Dr Floyd - or anyone else who is listening - I haven't much more time - Jupiter will soon block my signal. But I've almost finished.

'I knew then what I had to do. The cable to that thousand-watt lamp was hanging almost to the ground. I gave it a few tugs, and the light went out in a shower of sparks.

'I wondered if it was too late. For a few minutes, nothing happened. So I walked over to the wall of tangled branches around me, and kicked it.

'Slowly, the creature started to unweave itself, and to retreat back to the Canal. There was plenty of light - I could see everything perfectly. Ganymede and Callisto were in the sky - Jupiter was a huge, thin crescent - and there was a big auroral display on the nightside, at the Jovian end of the Io flux tube. There was no need to use my helmet light.

'I followed the creature all the way back to the water, encouraging it with more kicks when it slowed down, feeling the fragments of ice crunching all the time beneath my boots... As it neared the Canal, it seemed to gain strength and energy, as if it knew that it was approaching its natural home. I wondered if it would survive, to bud again.

'It disappeared through the surface, leaving a few last dead larvae on the alien land. The exposed free water bubbled for a few minutes until a scab of protective ice sealed it from the vacuum above. Then I walked back to the ship to see if there was anything to salvage - I don't want to talk about that...

'I've only two requests to make, Doctor. When the taxonomists classify this creature, I hope they'll name it after me.

'And - when the next ship comes home - ask them to take our bones back to China..

'Jupiter will be cutting us off in a few minutes. I wish I knew whether anyone was receiving me. Anyway, I'll repeat this message when we're in line of sight again - if my suit's life-support system lasts that long.

'This is Professor Chang on Europa, reporting the destruction of spaceship Tsien. We landed beside the Grand Canal and set up our pumps at the edge of the ice...'

fascinating!