I thought it was okay, and I appreciated the lack of the slasher movie twist like Event Horizon or Sunshine, but…aside from all the convenient crew deaths, I was also groaning over the fact that evidently life is so scarce on Europa that the only evidence they can find is a giant predator species…that evidently feeds on humans. Or at least, they never found anything else for it to eat. That’s an interesting ecosystem to put it mildly.
I don’t think it was quite that banal. Life is scarce on the surface of Europa, perhaps consisting only of some sparse spores or algae that happened to be able to survive in an area of the moon where the ice was thinnest and (presumably) warmest. The implication is that down in the deeps of the planetary sub-ocean there are enough organisms for the big predator to eat, much like there are enough deep-sea critters for a terrestrial giant squid to eat.
You could argue that it’s fairly plot-convenient for a big predator to be lurking around the thin-ice area near the surface, and you’d probably be right to do so… but that’s a fairly minor issue and I could come up with half a dozen reasonable responses like it being attracted to the light coming down through the thin ice or the heat coming off of the lander’s engines, or whatever.
As for eating humans: The Europa predator was attracted to light and/or heat… and maybe movement, which is why it attacked the probe. I’m a little hazy as to whether it actually caused the female EVA crewmember to fall through the ice or whether that simply happened due to bad luck, but once she and her light and heat were in the water, it attacked. Like a great white mistaking a surfer for a paddling seal.
I dunno. There’s a reason that people had trouble even confirming that giant squid existed for a long time…if your main food source is at the bottom of the ocean you don’t usually hang around the surface much. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they had found Europan life BEFORE the thing attacked, but the way it was portrayed was that it was the only thing they found at all, which doesn’t make any sense. You can’t have a food web where the bottom four tiers are missing.
I can see why you might feel that way, but I think we can agree that not everyone will feel that way. Christa McAuliffe for instance, I doubt she thought she was on a suicide mission. Space travel doesn’t automatically equal assumed death. That’s why the movie did have tension in my opinion, it was clear these astronauts went on this mission with the expectation it was survivable. The mission in a movie like Sunshine is more of a do or die mission than the type in Europa Report, which I’d call a go out and look around then come back and report mission.
I understand where you’re coming from, but I just don’t have the same problem suspending my disbelief. Whatever attacked and disabled the probe was the first thing they found, yes (and we’re only assuming it was the same predator), but they shortly thereafter found the green phosphorescent goo, showing that there was some type of plant-like life there too.
I guess when I see the film, I think of our own polar oceans. If you were to drill through the ice in the either polar cap in the winter and not go all the way to the sea floor, you’d probably assume that the oceans were lifeless. And it’s not a great analogy, but if you happened to be close to an area where something IS likely to be near the surface, chances are good you would see an apex predator like a Beluga whale or leopard seal before you saw their prey.
I just watched this one, mainly on the suggestion of the guys on the Best of 2013 podcast, and I really enjoyed the movie. I wish it had been longer and could have fleshed out the interpersonal relationships, maybe even a little more of the tedium they were enduring like 2001, but I liked what it gave me. I wish more movies like this were made, and I don’t have it in my heart to pick apart all the inconsistencies like a cheap sweater. It was an enjoyable experience, it made me think a little, and that’s good enough for me.
As for the “attacks”, I’m not convinced that’s really even what the cephalod alien was doing. It was obviously drawn to light sources, enough to break through the ice to get at them. I could see how you could look at it that way, but I think you could also imagine that it’s a first contact situation for that being as well, and that it had never seen light like that. Natural animal curiosity (not assuming any higher thought processes here) could draw it to break through the ice and investigate. Not that the predator theory isn’t a valid one, given what we’re shown. I just like my interpretation better.
Yeah, I think I see now that my problem with the movie isn’t unlike some of the other complaints, in that it revolves around scientific accuracy, or in my case, likelyhood. I’m thinking that like some of the current plans for missions to Mars, a first time mission all the way to Europa would be understood to be a suicide mission from a logistics perspective, and had mistakenly made that assumption while starting the movie. I still enjoyed the movie a fair bit, but I think I ruined it for myself by bullet counting. :(
Considering it’s a corporate mission and not one based on some governmental agency, the likelihood of an intentional (at least, publicly) mission is pretty remote. Unless retrieval was monetarily possible (ie. Alien).
— Alan