Warning: since this movie isn’t even out in theaters yet, it should go without saying that thar be SPOILERS ahead. Until the last few paragraph, there are only minor spoilers that don’t give away any plot elements, but if you’re the sort of person who likes to go into a movie completely blind, stop now. You have been warned.
The very first movie I saw in a theater was Star Wars, and my childhood revolved around attempts to drag my family to see The Wrath of Khan, Explorers, The Last Starfighter… basically anything involving outer space. From blockbuster to made-for-TV schlock, I absorbed every frame, begging my parents to rent Krull or to let me stay up late to watch V. When the Star Wars movies were aired on TV, I videotaped them, and watched those tapes so many times that to this day I can tell you where the commercial breaks were.
I mention this because I want you to know that when I watch sci-fi movies, I do it first as a fan. I don’t intend to nitpick them to death–I want them to be good! Sometimes even glaring scientific mistakes can be ignored if they don’t pull you out of the narrative. That’s why the errors in space fantasies like Star Wars are much easier to forgive than the errors in, say, Mission to Mars. Conversely, good science does not necessarily equal good movie <cough>Deep Impact<cough>.
Which brings us to Europa Report, a hard sci-fi film in the “found footage” style made popular by The Blair Witch Project and recently rejuvenated by Paranormal Activity. The movie is about a mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa, which is thought to have a liquid water ocean beneath its icy surface. Unlike most rocky bodies in our solar system, Europa shows very few signs of impact cratering. The implication from this is that Europa’s surface is young. It may experience a form of plate tectonics driven by tidal stressing from Jupiter. This same tidal stressing may drive vulcanism under Europa’s ocean, and cause features like the black smokers seen on ocean floors on the Earth. Life teems around these vents, and some scientists think these may be the sites where life originated on Earth.
That’s a long-winded way of saying that the producers of Europa Report clearly did their homework. Like the other Galilean satellites, Europa is tidally locked, and the Europa crew land at the sub-Jovian point, with Jupiter always visible in the sky. They also make use of an ice drill to send a probe through the crust, an idea NASA has actually explored! Other than some issues of sound in space, there’s really not much to complain about, science-wise.
That brings us to the plot itself and the reason for my preface. The science in this film is great, the effects and cinematography are good, the plot’s… ok. But much like Noomi Rapace’s character in Prometheus, or everyone in Mission to Mars, the crew members make some bizarre choices.
SPOILERS BELOW
At one point, a crew member, running low on oxygen and already exposed to a potentially lethal dose of radiation, heads off walking towards a light she sees in the distance. She has already successfully found life on Europa, which is the purported purpose of their mission! The ending voiceover talks about the rewards of such an amazing discovery being worth the risk of a few human lives, but this was a completely unnecessary risk.
Similarly, two of the crew go out on a spacewalk to attempt to repair the ship communications system. One of them gets a deadly compound on his spacesuit so they can’t let him back in. He’s forced to sacrifice himself. This entire situation could’ve been avoided if the ship had a robotic arm, like the Space Station. They could have seen the severity of the damage to the communications system and the tetrazene leak before going outside, and planned accordingly. Instead, they spend the next couple of years trying to carry out their mission with no way to communicate back to Earth. Do you really think that the first manned mission beyond the Earth/Moon system would have no backup for its communication system? Or that, even after the catastrophic death of a fellow crew member, they wouldn’t attempt a second spacewalk to fix it?
Ultimately, I’m not sure if Europa Report is for or against human spaceflight. For all the scientific accuracy, my takeaway is that humans are dumb and robots could’ve done a better job. They stress the “human element” in exploration; the responsiveness of which machines are incapable. But it’s that same human element that eventually gets them all killed. The repeated sacrifices of the crew eventually allow them to make a major discovery, but none of them knew that when they were sacrificing themselves. It was just dumb luck.
I want to like this movie. I really do. And there are some things to like, such as the beautiful cinematography and the outstanding use of real NASA/ESA launch footage. But ultimately the fan in me was disappointed. Maybe it’ll be better in the theaters. I’ll report back in a couple of weeks.