Passengers (2016)
Directed Morten Tyldum
Written by John Spaihts
Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Ray Liotta, Michael Sheen
Release Date December 21st, 2016
Published December 20th, 2016
I really wanted to like Passengers, the new sci-fi adventure starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. I am a big fan of both Pratt and Lawrence, each of whom are veterans of the blockbuster genre having starred in Guardians of the Galaxy and The Hunger Games respectively. Unfortunately, Passengers sticks Pratt and Lawrence with one majorly flawed story choice that even their charm cannot overcome.
Chris Pratt, dialing back on his usual Chris Pratt schtick to a welcome degree, plays Jim Spencer, a mechanic who has signed up to travel to a new space colony, a journey that is supposed to last 120 years. Jim is supposed to be in hibernation during the entire trip but a malfunction wakes him up after only 30 years. Alone, Jim at first tries to get his sleeping pod working again. When that fails he begins to get a tad stir crazy.
With a robot bartender named Arthur (Michael Sheen) as his only friend, Jim begins to think about doing something terrible, waking up another passenger. He even has his eye on one in particular, Aurora, played by Jennifer Lawrence. After reading her file in the ship's archives, Jim begins to fall for Aurora but he knows that waking her up is basically a death sentence.
I won't tell you whether it is Jim or some other circumstance that leads to it, but, indeed Aurora is awakened and after a short while of rehashing Jim's failed attempts at restarting the sleep pods, she resigns herself to Jim as her only companion and the two begin developing a relationship. Naturally, their idyll will have to be disrupted and when another pod fails we begin to find out just how much trouble our heroes are in for.
The major flaw of Passengers is one that could have easily been avoided. A simple rewrite of the script, one simple decision by the writer or director, and a major flaw could have been corrected. Unfortunately, Director Morton Tyldum apparently preferred the forced and predictable drama of this flawed choice over something more satisfying and less damaging to one of our main characters.
Sorry to have to dance around the problem so much but I don't feel it is my place to spoil this movie for people who still want to give it a chance. The film does still have two incredibly appealing leads and they are beautiful to look at, especially when they begin to fall for each other. There are other positives as well such as Michael Sheen's robot supporting player and the ship sets which have both a modern gleam and an old school Kubrickian-sci-fi majesty to them.
In the end, Passengers is not a bad movie, just one that is ruined by one silly, kinda creepy, poor storytelling decision that leads to a lot of false, unnecessary and predictable melodrama, all of which could have been easily avoided. This movie could have played out in much the same way that it does without this one stupid plot contrivance.
