Aahana Swrup
The Mikael Håfström sci-fi thriller film ‘Slingshot’ is a riveting psychological exploration of a space voyager’s grueling battle with his destiny. Aboard the Odyssey-1, John is bound for the moon Titan, a destination to be arrived at through a maneuver utilizing Jupiter’s gravitational pull. On this journey, he and his co-astronauts, Captain Franks and Engineer Nash, drift in and out of chemically induced hibernation. However, as a mysterious hit threatens to have potentially damaged the vessel, the fragile mental state becomes even more compromised.
Thus, John finds himself stuck between hallucinations of Zoe, whom he left behind on Earth, and the growing power tension in the ship. While the story takes off as a space adventure, the protagonist’s steady and overwhelming downward spiral soon turns the narrative into a tense cognitive horror. As such, by the end, John’s loose grasp of his reality may leave the audience in a jumble. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Slingshot Plot Synopsis
Odyssey-1 is set on a path to Saturn’s moon, Titan, on a mission to collect samples and natural resources from the celestial body. Naturally, the daunting destination comes with a similarly formidable journey. The astronauts aboard have to undergo multiple periodic 90-day hibernation with intervals for check-ups, maintenance, and communication. The first time that John wakes up from hibernation, he feels disoriented—especially because he can’t remember the last name of the woman he loves, Zoe. As such, he ends up reminiscing about the woman, sending the narrative back and forth between his present on the ship and flashbacks of his past with Zoe on Earth.
John meets Zoe during the build-up to the Odyssey-1 program, in which she was a part of the design team while he was one of the potential astronaut candidates for the program. As an only child with frail familial connections and a lifelong passion for outer space, he considers himself to be the ideal candidate. Therefore, the couple is adamant about keeping no strings attached once they become romantically involved with each other. Even so, things inevitably become complicated once John gets selected for the mission, inciting conflicting feelings in Zoe, who had grown to love him in their time together.
Still, John was unwilling to compromise on his dreams, which brought him to the present aboard Odyssey-1, beside his other travelers, Franks and Nash. For the same reason, he remains plagued by Zoe’s memories in and out of hibernation. During his second turn out of sleep, he hears a call of his name, which brings him to a corridor where a ceiling panel unceremoniously falls from the interior and onto his head. This raises several concerns about the safety of the vessel as it gears up for the much-anticipated Jupiter slingshot maneuver.
Even though Franks develops a calm and collected perspective on the incident, Nash grows eternally concerned that it could be an indicator of the ship’s damaged structural integrity. Consequently, he tries to convince John to join him in a mutiny and reroute the ship back toward Earth after the next hibernation cycle. Despite agreeing at first, he backs out of the plan when the time comes after realizing his hallucinations of Zoe are increasing, indicating his spiraling mental state.
Therefore, John ends up siding with Franks and pulls off the slingshot maneuver without Nash’s help. From there, the latter’s condition only worsens as he emerges a bit more paranoid after each hibernation cycle. In fact, he uses John’s passcode to enter a low-level command that leads to issues with the reactor that could hinder their journey. As a result, upon discovery, Franks pulls out a gun on his subordinates to get them back into hibernation right away. However, as John complies and starts going under, he witnesses the Captain brutally murder Nash with his bare hands.
Consequently, the next time John wakes, it doesn’t take long for him to engage in an altercation with Franks, who still has his gun but insists that he never killed Nash. Ultimately, after he delivers a few near-fatal blows to the Captain, John tries to find the engineer on the ship. Nevertheless, the system returns with an unnerving answer: Odyssey-1 is a one-person mission with only one astronaut named John Franks Nash on board.
Slingshot Ending: Were Franks and Nash Real?
Throughout the film, John’s descent into madness finds a contrast in the grounding moments he spends with his fellow astronauts on the mission. Each hibernation cycle messes up the minds of the passengers to the point where they can’t remember details from their lives. Yet, Franks and his fairly sure-footed demeanor initially offer a reliable reality. Nonetheless, this comes under questioning with John’s startling revelation at the ship’s bridge. As it turns out, John has always been the only one on board, making Franks and Nash simple figments of his imagination. Other details come into focus with the revelation—such as the fact that only one hibernation chamber is ever visible.
Similarly, Franks and Nash are both absent from John’s flashbacks. Even when he’s reminiscing about a part of the past integral to the Odyssey-1 mission, such as the presentation or recruitment, there are no mentions of his supposed space companions. This is because he was chosen alone for the journey on a ship that could only facilitate the survival of one passenger. However, after emerging from hibernation—a chemically exhausting procedure—his consciousness craved a guiding light and camaraderie.
For the same reason, John concocted the stoic Captain Franks and the vulnerable Engineer Nash as outlets for his own identity. Even when the initial paranoia caused by the chemicals and the journey’s years-long isolation begins to set in, all three of John’s personalities have clear roles to play. John, the center, walks a middle ground where he’s somewhat aware of the insanity of his hallucinations. Meanwhile, Franks remains on solid ground—representing the astronaut’s reasonable mind, which pulls him toward logic. On the other hand, Nash gets to go off the rails as he gives into the most hysterical impulsions, swayed by his fragile emotional mind.
Furthermore, the concerns raised by John’s companions regarding his relationship with Zoe—that she must have moved on by now and that she had been a plant put in place by the selection committee—are also manifestations of the man’s insecurities. Likewise, their reference to the Tor Ice Station is another indication of their connection to John, whose father died at the research facility. Ultimately, all this time, Franks and Nash have always been hallucinations that the lone astronaut creates in a desperate attempt to stay sane.
Are John’s Hallucinations of Zoe Real?
Part of what triggers John’s fatal fight against Franks in the first place is a conversation he thinks he has with someone through the short-distance radios on board. Franks—or the logical part of his brain—argues that the radio signals are simple hallucinations since it would be impossible to make a connection with anyone thousands of miles away from Earth. Nonetheless, once it becomes evident that the ship captain has been a hallucination all along, the reality of the radios also comes under question. Therefore, John tries to make contact with another party through the radio until a familiar voice finally responds: Zoe.
Zoe’s voice comes bearing nauseating news. She tells him that the hibernation dosage on the ship had been too strong, which contributed to his spiral into madness. Nevertheless, more pressingly, she reveals that John never actually left Earth. According to her, the astronaut was put into a test simulation to evaluate his and Odyssey-1’s capabilities in undertaking the mission. Consequently, he is actually a thousand meters underground, and his space journey has been simulated in a training facility. However, a sizeable earthquake—the initial bump the ship takes—collapsed the access tunnel, cutting means of communication with John.
If John believes this, it would mean his entire trip has been a sham and that he can still return to his old life. It’s an obvious Hail Mary explanation to bring the astronaut to his happy ending—and thus, it reawakens Franks, who tries to convince John that Zoe is just another hallucination. Just because Franks and Nash aren’t real doesn’t mean Zoe is. If anything, the former reinforces the severity of John’s delusion. He’s desperate for an escape from his chosen destiny as the lone Titan explorer. Therefore, he creates an explanation with Zoe at its center because she represents the entirety of his regret for taking the off-Earth mission. In the end, Zoe’s voice—a hallucination of John’s mind—urges him to exit the ship through the airlock.
Is John Really in Space? Is He Dead or Alive?
Earlier, a flashback reveals a conversation John has with Zoe on Earth, where they discuss the phenomenon of a moth flying toward the light. Zoe argues that it is a survival instinct that compels moths to fly toward the light since that’s where an escape usually lies. Now, John finds himself in the same position as a moth with the airlock as his light. If Zoe’s words are true and John really never left Earth, then the airlock will lead him to an access tunnel, bringing him back from the underground. Still, if not, then the light—a metaphor for the airlock—would no longer be an escape but rather a burning bulb that would spell out John’s doom.
In the end, John decides to take a leap of faith and exits the airlock. Initially, it leads him to the exit of an underground facility—seemingly confirming that the implausible tale he heard over the radio is true. Nonetheless, it isn’t long before the astronaut discovers one crucial detail: a moth dead inside a red emergency light. This showcases that John has actually flown toward the wrong light and has now sealed his fate. With the realization, the hallucination of the underground facility changes, and John gets sucked out into the outer space without his space suit. Ultimately, he dies all alone in the vast and endless space.
Zoe’s voice over the radio has always been a hallucination. It was John’s way of creating an easy solution that solved his current problems. His journey on the ship slowly but steadily turns into a nightmare, trapping the astronaut. His overstretched isolation—and the effects of hibernation and space travel—had taken an adverse toll on his brain. The mission was faulty from the start and could’ve never sustained human life long enough to accomplish its goals. Unfortunately, John—the bright-eyed spaceman—fell victim to the miscalculation. Consequently, in a way, his narrative had been doomed from the start, destined to end in his demise.
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