Passengers, 2016.
Directed by Morten Tyldum.
Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne and Andy Garcia
Synopsis:
A spacecraft traveling to a distant colony planet and transporting thousands of people has a malfunction in its sleep chambers. As a result, two passengers are awakened 90 years early.
It takes a staggeringly awful script to suck out all of Chris Pratt’s natural charisma and transform Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence into a completely melodramatic cheeseball with hilariously over-the-top line delivery, but such is Jon Spaihts’ (a writer on Doctor Strange and Prometheus) scribblings for spaceship romance/action flick Passengers. Directed by Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game), visuals can only take a movie so far, and Passengers is aesthetically pleasing, but there came a point where I actually had to take a long hard thought process about whether those serviceable special effects had earned the movie a second star, or if it still wasn’t enough to salvage this garbage script containing a story beyond creepy. To be honest, deciding whether I should settle on one star or two was more entertaining than the movie itself.
The first 20 minutes of Passengers do work; Chris Pratt plays Jim, a man aboard Starship Avalon traveling from overpopulated Earth to a new thriving planet named Homestead Colony, which apparently offers more opportunities for his line of work (fixing things) and his own personal life. It is a very lengthy journey lasting 120 years (why any of the 5000+ passengers aboard would commit to a move so life-changing filled with a seemingly overbearing level of uncertainty baffles me, but then again, so does literally almost everything about this narrative), with problems arising as his hibernation pod malfunctions, waking him up with 90 years of travel left. What ensues is something along the lines of Castaway on a spacecraft, where the sarcasm and witty charismatic humor of Chris Pratt can be used as a mighty tool to fend off crushing degrees of loneliness and the possibility of becoming insane due to no human interaction, similar to Matt Damon’s inspirational tale of survival on Mars in The Martian.
And again, for a while, this does work. The script gets to add insult to injury by incorporating a robotic serving system that funnily only allows Jim low ranking level meals, putting Jim into some slightly philosophical conversations about his situation with an android bartender (Michael Sheen), and gives him quite a few recreational activities to partake in. Pratt successfully makes this fun, even if we understand the loneliness is gradually taking its toll.
So what does he do? Well, he stumbles across a blonde bombshell journalist in hibernation named Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence), only to begin digitally stalking her archived video logs and work to the point where he “falls in love” with her, prompting him to selfishly wake her up too by intentionally malfunctioning her pod. To give Passengers a little bit of credit, Jim is aware of the moral ambiguity behind his decision. It is even possible to empathize with him on some level, as who knows what over a year of total isolation from humanity would do to someone’s mental state. However, the script has no idea how to properly deal with material this firmly planted into human ethics.
I’m getting ahead of myself, as the biggest red flag in this bizarre situation is that Jim claims to have fallen in love (yes, that is actual dialogue in the movie) with someone he has never interacted with, period. There doesn’t need to be physical human contact to develop feelings, especially considering that long-distance relationships are a working concept. Jim has never even texted Aurora; his love is literally founded on her work and video logs. If that’s how love works can someone point me in the direction to where I can start a relationship with Brie Larson, because I loved her in Room and follow her on Twitter. Using the logic of Passengers, we’re soul mates!
***SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SOME SPOILERS***
Jim doesn’t even try to explain himself or his difficult position after waking Aurora up. Instead, he lies and pretty much emotionally manipulates her into a relationship. Passengers is actually a lot like Fifty Shades of Grey, just set in space and without all the BDSM. Anyway, Aurora does obviously eventually find out and gets really mad (prepare for an unintentionally hilarious angry Jennifer Lawrence), but then the state of the spacecraft is thrown into jeopardy, meaning that they put their differences aside to focus on ensuring their (and the other 5000 sleeping souls) survival. Basically, Passengers actively avoids the central conflict to distract viewers with some special effects.
***END SPOILERS***
Look, this movie is absolute garbage, and I’m completely aware I just spoiled quite a bit of the movie. It’s just that it’s near impossible to properly convey everything immoral about the film without delving into just what makes the plot so ugly and poorly presented. Yes, the visuals are nice and feature really fancy activities like a swimming pool that overlooks space, a Dance Dance Revolution style game, futuristic technology capable of healing injuries and cleaning up messes, and more. The camera also loves pulling back shots from a room, all the way to the exterior of the entire Avalon to show us its unique design and graceful beauty floating through space.
None of this excuses Passengers from behind awkwardly disturbing and one of the most uncomfortable viewing experiences of 2016. It’s actually flabbergasting that Jennifer Lawrence, a noteworthy key fighter for female equality among the Hollywood landscape, would sign onto a project so despicable. In theory, an absorbing film grounded in moral ambiguity could be ironed out from this concept, but the script and direction here do no justice. Passengers is the disastrous equivalent of a spaceship crashing into a heavily populated planet, with the resulting explosion starting a massive fire that burns down its entire civilization
I didn’t even touch on all the plot holes and massive gaps in logic but rest assured nothing makes sense and everything is far-fetched. There are probably three scenes alone desperately begging audiences to accept that with technology this advanced, the hibernation sleep chambers can put people to sleep, but not back to sleep if one suffers a malfunction. Holy moly… what an atrocious viewing experience. If you go see a movie with your family or significant other on Christmas Day, only suggest Passengers if you hate them.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder – Chief Film Critic of Flickering Myth. Check here for new reviews weekly, friend me on Facebook, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
