Passengers (2016) ★★★☆☆
A man prematurely awakens from hibernation during an interstellar trip, realising he must live out his days alone…
Warning: this review contains a few spoilers for Passengers, but nothing that gives away the ending or developments in the final act.
The script for Passengers was on the famous ‘Black List’ of great unproduced movies for years, as was The Imitation Game (2014), Morten Tyldum’s previous hit, so it’s little wonder the director felt he could pull off the same trick twice. Writer John Spaiht has already recycled some of Passenger’s premise for the opening sequence of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012), but it’s nevertheless a movie with a strong conceptual hook…
In the future, the starship Avalon is transporting thousands of people to the distant planet of Homestead II, on a 120-year journey through the cosmos. Consequently, everyone’s been put to sleep in hibernation pods, timed to awaken four months before they arrive and begin new lives on this alien world. Unfortunately, a malfunction brings engineer Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) out of stasis prematurely, only a few decades into the trip, and he’s thrown into turmoil when it becomes clear he can’t get back to sleep, so must now live and die alone on this enormous vessel.
It’s a juicy premise that sparks a range of knock-on ideas and questions, although it’s not totally original. Then again, what is nowadays? On the surface it feels like Robert Zemeckis’s Cast Away (2000) meets BBC comedy Red Dwarf, although others have noted direct comparisons to a 1950s comic strip:
Whatever the film’s provenance, we haven’t seen one of these types of stories in a long time. It’s also a $110 million sci-fi movie that isn’t a sequel or reboot, so definitely worth celebrating on that level. And for around half its runtime, I was confused about why I’d heard bad things about Passengers since its release in 2016…
The production design is utterly gorgeous, and Tyldum does an excellent job communicating the awesome scale of the ship and making you believe everything you’re seeing is a plausible look at the future of human colonisation. If you’re a sci-fi geek, you’ll love seeing all the high-tech gadgets and futurism on display here. It’s the best peek ahead to a possible future’s tech since Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002).
The first act with Jim wandering the uninhabited spaceship, trying to get his head around his unsettling situation, and what it means for him, are engrossing. The Avalon is a bright and welcoming environment, but the isolation and prospect of having to spend your life there, without any company, is genuinely terrifying.
When the film’s big development arrives, it worked for me. Having spent a year alone on Avalon — playing 3D video games, watching movies, eating at holographic restaurants, taking dizzying space walks, chewing the fat with an android barman (Michael Sheen) at a Shining-like bar — Jim hits rock bottom and opts to do the unthinkable: get himself a companion by awakening another passenger, thus condemning them to share his fate, for the selfish reason it’ll make his own life more bearable. And he selects Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), a beautiful writer whose video diaries he enjoys watching. Now, this is where I know a lot of the backlash to Passengers arose when it was released into cinemas. There was talk of Pratt’s character being the equivalent of a weird Facebook stalker, and many critics found his decision-making so reprehensible it cut their attachment to his ‘nice guy’ character.
I just think this is slightly unfair.
The movie acknowledges Jim’s desire for companionship comes with big ethical problems, and it’s not something he does immediately. It’s a whole year before he even considers rousing Aurora from her sleep, and he’s close to suicide when he takes that fateful step out of sheer desperation. He’s clearly not in a good state of mind. The script makes you see things from Jim’s perspective, and it’s clear he’s conflicted about what he does. He comes to regret it once he sees how much Aurora’s hopes and dreams have been destroyed by his selfishness, too.
One can argue about the creepiness of Jim “selecting” Aurora like she’s a “mail order bride”, in some sense, but I think the movie does enough to make you sympathetic to Jim’s plight. Is it unsettling he decides to bring a beautiful and charming journalist into his living nightmare, rather than someone who would perhaps be more useful around the ship — like a fellow engineer or scientist? Yes, perhaps. But this is his character: lonely, sexually frustrated, suicidal, and not thinking straight. Plus, the movie has a solid reason for why Jim can’t get access to the higher-ranking crew deck, to awaken someone who might actually be able to fix his hibernation pod.
However, I do share some of the widespread criticism of Passengers, and another of the key complaints I’ve subsequently read about. The script takes the easy route when it comes to devising Aurora’s personality, and it’s a surprise that Jennifer Lawrence chose to portray someone this stereotyped.
It would have been exciting, dramatically, for Aurora to be revealed as someone unlike what Jim’s expecting in reality. Maybe she could have lied on her video diaries, to get aboard the ship? But no, he awakens his idealised “sleeping beauty” from her pod, and she fulfils every one of his unspoken male fantasies: being personable, sexy, clever, funny, and unskilled enough to rely on him for almost everything.
Jim’s an engineer who becomes an indispensable handyman, whereas Aurora merely has higher access to VIP suites and can “make” him tastier meals. Their relationship is very much weighted in Jim’s favour as “the man”, and it’s a shame the story doesn’t take things down a more unexpected path. I know the movie’s aiming to be a romance, so boy and girl must fall in love, before their breakup, but it felt a little too easy for Aurora to fit the ‘perfect woman’ archetype and disrobe several times throughout the movie.
It’s frustrating these issues exist, because Passengers is otherwise a decent sci-fi drama, but it could have been a great one with less cliched characterisations. Still, it’s hard not to feel bad when Aurora realises her only friend is responsible for stealing her future, and they go through a very ugly split. Pratt and Lawrence are likeable actors who have a nice chemistry together, so you’d have to be made of stone not to feel sad when Jim and Aurora’s close relationship goes from bliss to bitterness. This tinge of darkness to the story (having to spend the rest of your life “alone” because you’re not on speaking terms with the only other person around), is something the whole story needed more of.
The second half of Passengers adds a more developments that feel slightly half-baked (and the story doesn’t have a conspiratorial twist to justify the poster’s misleading tagline “There Is A Reason They Woke Up”), but the first hour’s strong enough for me to recommend it. The premise is inherently cool and interesting to watch unfold, with good performances to pull you along through the weaker areas, and you want to know how it’ll end. It’s just a shame the screenplay spent 9 long years stuck in development, and yet nobody fixed the obvious issues with Aurora’s cliched characterisation and the central relationship.
Cast & Crew
director: Morten Tyldum.
writer: Jon Spaihts.
starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen & Laurence Fishburne.
