Eur-gonna-fall-asleep-watching-this Report

I'm glad you decided to focus so heavily on the throwaway Transformers taunt, which was obviously there just to try to goad you into making a pitiable attempt at self-defense. Always fun when people fall into that sort of trap.

But anyway, I'm glad you mentioned Sunshine, because I thought Europa Report was what Sunshine could have been, if the director had any balls. The first two-thirds of Sunshine I thought were really good; the characters were not overcomplicated (similar to Europa Report) and the narrow, specific direction of the plot made it very taut and exciting, even without much conventional action (also like Europa Report). But then they fell into the trap of adding a villain to try to make it more exciting, and the resulting tonal shift was too distracting, and it destroyed the really effective structural coherence that had been constructed up to that point. Europa Report, on the other hand, avoided that trap, instead continuing to focus on the basic mission, which made it, on the whole, a more effective film. If Sunshine had done the same thing, it probably would have been one of the best sci-fi movies ever. As is, it's just a good movie with great unrealized potential.

See, the thing about Europa Report I found so compelling was its tautness and focus. It took a simple but interesting idea for a plot, and logically developed it in a manner which didn't disrupt the focus. The characters weren't as interesting as in, for example, Gone Girl, but that's because trying to complicate them would have damaged the movie's streamlined focus without generating much additional interest. Sure, they were a little understated, which makes sense, given that one of the main themes of the film is self-sacrifice for scientific advancement - the people aren't as important as the story - but I actually thought they were pretty interesting, mostly because they were very realistic and there weren't any of the standard Hollywood attempts to complicate them (romantic subplots, going insane, turning cartoonishly selfish and evil, etc.). Sure, they had to give one of the guys a family back on Earth, and of course they focused heavily on that relationship to try to give his eventual sacrifice more emotional tension, but I don't really think that detracted from the movie overall. Too many things like that (blatant attempts "to keep [you] interested) would have turned it into a cliched mess of a plot, but by focusing only on the basic story, it was able to keep it interesting because it was so unusually taut and direct in its approach.

So anyway, I'd argue overall it's a really compelling and interesting movie, partly in spite of it's lack of conventionally interesting things, but partly because it chose to avoid them. It's a good movie, and I guess you're missing out, which is fine - we all have a few movies we dislike for stupid reasons - but I'll still feel sorry for you. I'm glad you could at least enjoy some other quality films like Moon and Sunshine and Gone Girl (I haven't actually seen Under the Skin, but I intend to at some point soon).

By the way, that "Eur-gonna-fall-asleep-watching-this Report" was dumb enough the first time.