Europa Report (2013) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there.

Not many people have heard of Europa Report, which is too bad, since in terms of the found footage science-fiction films from the early 21st Century, it’s in the top three. It is 99% based on real physics and science, taking inspiration from classic hard sci-fi films and mixing it with a more modern style.

First Impressions

This trailer depicts man’s first spaceflight to Europa, a moon of Jupiter. It appears to be made up of found footage showing the astronauts as would be seen with cameras they brought with them or on suit cams. As with adventure films of this type, the outcome does not look promising. Are they having an accident, or do they find something they weren’t expecting? Stay tuned for the Europa Report.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

Told through a series of video feeds and interviews, this film documents the first manned landing on Jupiter’s moon of Europa. An interview with Dr. Unger (Embeth Davidtz), CEO of Europa Ventures and Lead Mission Planner, sets the stage for the trip. The frozen moon of Europa offers glacial ice shelves, but recent discoveries suggested that there may be sub-surface lakes near heat plumes at the Conamara Chaos. A six-person, multi-ethnic crew of the best astronauts from around the globe was assembled, led by Dun “William” Xu (Daniel Wu). James Corrigan (Sharlto Copley), the engineer, gives a video tour of the ship to send back home to his son, Jaime.

Footage shows a press conference with Dr. Unger, Dr. Pamuk (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), and Dr. Sokolov (Dan Fogler) discussing the mission, which is intercut with the launch of Europa One. Rosa Dasque (Anamaria Marinca), the pilot and archivist, adjusts cameras around the ship as they blast past Earth’s moon. Dr. Unger expresses regret at the death of James in footage that hasn’t been shown yet. The timeline jumps forward to 19 months into the trip as the first sight of Jupiter appears to the crew. Chief science officer Daniel Luxembourg (Christian Camargo) discusses a medical decision about chief engineer Andrei Blok (Michael Nyqvist) with William. Both agree that they should all make the descent to Europa.

Dr. Unger’s narrative continues, revealing that after six months of mission time, transmissions were cut off from the ship with no word whether the crew was alive or dead. At 22 months mission time, the five remaining astronauts make a landing on Europa, but miss the landing zone by 100 meters. It doesn’t seem like much, but it puts them in a place where the ice is infinitely thicker for the tests they need to perform. They begin to drill through the ice to access the underground lake when Andrei sees something outside the window. Daniel believes he may be hallucinating since he hasn’t been sleeping. When the drill breaks through, science officer (and marine biologist) Katya Petrovna (Karolina Wydra) guides a submersible probe that detects increased radiation before running into something.

Six months into the mission, a solar storm strikes Europa One, frying the communications system. James and Andrei suit up for an EVA to inspect and repair the ship. They have over five hours of time to inspect the various parts of the ship, but don’t find the burned-out panel until the last 50 minutes. In an attempt to remove a stuck pin on the panel, Andrei tears his suit, causing him to begin losing pressurization and oxygen. James helps him back to the airlock, but discovers hydrazine on his suit, which is a contaminant. With only moments before Andrei loses breathable air, James pushes Andrei into the airlock, which forces him off into space. James apologizes to the crew and tells his family he loves them as he drifts off, forever.

Back at 22 months on Europa, Katya dons a spacesuit and walks the 100 meters to the original landing spot to take samples of the ice. She finds a single-celled organism, like algae, in the samples. Just as she is about to return, she sees a strange light in the distance and gets permission to investigate. The ice breaks, and she falls into the water, sinking. The last image from her suit cam is a moving blue light reflected in her eyes. William, Andrei, Daniel, and Rosa decide to abort and return to the orbiting ship, but crash back into the ice when a thruster malfunctions. This kills William.

They do not see a way off the planet, but Andrei thinks they can correct the communications issue by taking power from life support. Daniel heads outside to work on the problem, but the familiar video glitch indicating radiation spikes occurs, and he disappears. Andrei manages to repair the power feed, and Rosa sends all of the unseen footage back to the mothership so it can be transmitted to Earth. The blue glow surrounds the ship as it begins to sink. Rosa blows the hatch, flooding the ship, and the last transmitted footage shows a bioluminescent squid passing the camera. Dr. Unger concludes that the universe is far stranger than we have known, and the crew of Europa One helped to fundamentally change the way in which humanity understands itself.

“You put men and women into space because they have strength in the face of cosmic odds.” – Dr. Unger

History in the Making

Europa Report was the first English-language film for Ecuadorian director Sebastián Cordero and was shot in an amazing 18 days. It finds its structure in the found footage style of filmmaking popularized in the previous 15 years by films like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and V/H/S. The cast did not contain any major stars which enhances the reality of the pseudo-documentary style of the film. It creates a plausible reason for the found footage narrative with its multiple habitat cameras and suit cameras observing the crew. Some elements of the film break down slightly on close inspection, asking the audience to suspend their disbelief. But overall, it’s a well made and interesting film.

The biggest name in the cast at the time was Sharlto Copley, known for his breakout role in District 9 (a pseudo-found footage film, which doesn’t fully adhere to the style) and Elysium. Daniel Wu had many Chinese language films to his credit, going on to make appearances in Geostorm and Westworld. Michael Nyqvist played the villain in the previous year’s action hit, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, while Christian Camargo was known for The Hurt Locker and The Twilight Saga. Anamaria Marinca had a small role in a Doctor Who episode from the previous year, going on to have a prominent role in the TV series Mars (2016). Finally, Karolina Wydra was known for her work on House, True Blood, and Agents of SHIELD season 6. Besides keeping costs down, the casting of less prominent actors creates a more believable reality for the documentary style it approaches.

Another element that lends believability to the film is the use of several real news reports and documentary footage. The most obvious is a scene with Neil deGrasse Tyson describing what he’d like to do if he could visit Europa. “I wanna go to Europa to go ice fishing,” says Tyson. He continues that he would, “see what swims up to the camera lens and licks it.” This line was possibly the inspiration for Philip Gelatt to write the film. It’s such a vivid description, and ultimately very close to what the astronauts discover.

Genre-fication

The found footage genre of film owes much to the pseudo-documentary pictures from the 70s and 80s, including The Legend of Boggy Creek and Cannibal Holocaust. These types of films lend themselves to the horror genre by design. They are inexpensive to make and often provide a first-person perspective, two hallmarks for scary pictures. The found footage style took off as a viable genre with the advent of inexpensive high-quality video cameras. The Blair Witch Project capitalized on this in 1999, opening the door for many copycat style films. Horror films that would follow blended home video footage with reality show quality storylines. Europa Report was the third major release of a found footage sci-fi film after Cloverfield and Chronicle. While all of these films are considered science-fiction, they all contain elements of horror. Europa Report’s horror is more existential horror based on the real dangers of space travel, which audiences would be familiar with from docudramas such as Apollo 13–which was based on real events–and hard sci-fi films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

Much of what makes Europa Report interesting is owed to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, both in terms of its realistic tone as well as its subject matter of traveling to Jupiter. Dozens of films about space travel include sequences where the characters must save themselves from a catastrophic error using minimal tools and their ingenuity. It’s a testimony to the perseverance of the human spirit that insurmountable odds are sometimes not. Fans familiar with 2010, the 1984 sequel to 2001, might recognize the quote at the top of the article. In that film, after a rescue/fact-finding mission to the Discovery spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter, the Leonov discovers intense chlorophyll growth on Europa. They are unable to get any probes around the planet, and are warned in the end not to attempt to land on Europa. Obviously, this film does not take place in the same timeframe as 2010, but its similar plot point seems derived from that original story.

Societal Commentary

Europa Report has two main themes that it works into its story. The first is perseverance, which is what any realistic space-faring film is about. From 2001 to The Martian, humanity proves that it can overcome dangerous situations and usually come out on top. As Dr. Unger says about the crew of Europa One, “you put men and women into space because they have strength in the face of cosmic odds.” At no time is anyone complaining about the perils that they face. In fact, each character bravely encounters their fates to help either the other crewmembers or humanity via the mission. James gives hardly a thought to saving Andrei, even knowing that he will likely not survive. And he’s the only character that has a family, as far as we know. All the characters do their job to the best of their abilities for the sake of the mission, knowing what they signed up for and that their individual lives are insignificant in the face of what has been discovered.

That brings up the second theme of the film, as stated by Rosa in her final video log entry. “Compared to the breadth of knowledge yet to be known, what does your life actually matter?” The mission to possibly find alien life on Europa was more than a success. Coming to terms with the idea that humanity is not special, nor alone in the universe, can be either a comforting or terrifying thought. Europa Report approaches this discovery with a sense of awe. While it is tragic that the lives of six astronauts are forfeit, their mission was a success that allows humanity to grow beyond its current narcissistic phase, and learn more about the universe it lives in.

The Science in The Fiction

The science of Europa Report feels much more realistic than even recent films like Prometheus. Their ship takes nearly two years to reach Jupiter without hyperdrive, hibernation capsules, or any other form of speedy travel. The astronauts must work in tight quarters, taking care of their minds and bodies for long stretches to make certain that they’re in good shape to perform the mission when called upon. There are no shortcuts in this type of sci-fi film. When things go wrong, they need to be able to fix them with a minimum of additional supplies. Films such as Apollo 13 have shown the real-life ingenuity of astronauts and set a higher bar for fictional films about problems in space.

As a conceit for the film, Rosa is in charge of filming all aspects of the mission via several cameras mounted around the spacecraft. With at least five cameras on board, several more outside, plus the various suit cameras, that’s a lot of footage being captured. At one point, Andrei is working on some hard drives, which appear to be part of the computer backups and potentially the storage for the video footage. With the communications disruption, no footage from month 6 through month 22 made it back to Earth, and had to have been banked on board Europa One. How many terabytes would that have been over 16 months of filming? The speed at which it was uploaded at the end of the film and broadcast back to Earth was one of the possible shortcuts that the film is taking with its storytelling, since if that footage never was sent home, audiences would not be watching this “documentary.”

The Final Frontier

Aside from some introductory remarks about the overall mission from Dr. Unger, the majority of the footage is presented in chronological order. From the press conference on the findings on Europa, to the launch, and early days of the trip. But the filmmakers then skip over the accident at the six-month window, to show how the characters are dealing with “some tragic event” out around 19 months. Other than just putting the event out of sequence for dramatic purposes, there’s no reason that this serves. It’s mentioned that James had an accident, and he’s not in the later scenes, so there’s not any surprise to knowing what will happen. This was the only non-chronological scene, which seems weird in retrospect. The film might have flowed better if the mission was presented in its proper order.

Europa Report has an air of claustrophobia around it, as is befitting a film about six crewmembers on a small space vessel for two years. The found footage style of filmmaking was a good choice to tell this story, rather than a purely omniscient viewpoint, as it allows the actors to create more realistic moments that allow the audience to feel more in the moment as they too follow along with the discovery of life outside our planet.

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