Instead of heading to the theater to see White House Down last night as I'd originally planned, I came home and curled up in front of the television and ordered Europa Report on cable.
I read yesterday that this geekly-anticipated film—while not released to theaters until August 2nd—was for some reason immediately available via VOD.
Europa Report was something I caught wind of several months ago and found the premise intriguing: a "hard" science fiction story (aka 2001, or Moon) without the usual epic space battles and prosthetic aliens we've come to expect from the sci-fi genre.
When all was said and done, I wasn't disappointed—but I wasn't wowed either. Good, but not great. I didn't feel like I'd wasted ten dollars to see it, but it left me wanting more. If you've read any of the speculative fiction written about Europa since the Galileo mission back in the 1990s, you knew how the storyline was going to play out from the very first scene, but it was still nice to see some of those ideas finally realized on screen. It was interesting, but not particularly surprising.
I was hoping the film would be more along the lines of The Frozen Sky by Jeff Carlson, a book I highly recommend and another one of those novels that's begging to be filmed.
Oddly enough, it's still something I'd like to add to my library when it's available on disk. Take from that what you will.