Passengers finds an Earth in the future that seems to be doing just fine. This is not a post apocalyptic tale with a shipload of humans heading to a far corner of the galaxy to help save the human race. Oh, no… this is a ship full of thousands of human beings who chose to leave a perfectly healthy planet and be the first settlers of a new planet that takes 120 years to get to. So, you lie in suspended animation until the ship gets close and magically wake up and start life anew. Sounds like an exciting prospect for a certain adventurous crowd?
The thing is, for Chris Pratt’s Jim Preston and Jennifer Lawrence’s Aurora Lane… that is not exactly how their trip goes. As the ship careens through an asteroid field, it suffers a few electrical surges and Preston awakes. He soon learns that he’s the only one of the thousands on board who is awake. Our lone “passenger” also discovers that he is 30 years into his trip and that there is no way for him to go back to sleep for the next 90 years. Therefore… he will be alone for nine decades and most likely die before anyone else wakes up or before the ship even gets to its destination.
What to do? Well, he quickly discovers the “fun” things to do on board, including virtual basketball, a dance-off video game and a bar manned by a robot named Arthur (impeccably played by Michael Sheen) whose libations certainly helps drive away the loneliness — for a while at least.
Preston soon comes upon Lane, asleep in her pod and is taken with her beauty. He learns more about her and then becomes taken with her joie de vivre. He is alone and facing decades of solitary living. So, he does the inexcusable.
(SPOILER ahead if you consider something that happens in the first act a spoiler).
He wakes her up… And doesn’t tell her.
This is a true problem for the story and the film as it was marketed. This is not a love story set in space with two people facing years of solitude and finding a connection between each other that transcends the universe. Oh no, this is a story about a man who learned everything about a woman while she was unconscious and then woke her up, played into her likes, knew what to avoid in terms of her dislikes and essentially conned her into falling in love with him.
***SPOILER SUBJECT OVER***
Trouble ensues when it appears that the ship they’re on is having issues and slowly but surely things are starting to come apart. The gravity systems fail at the most inconvenient time — which provides for one of the more awesome sequences in Passengers… imagine swimming in a pool and then suddenly there is no gravity! Another character finds its way awake during these technological menaces and together they must bond together and find a way to get this ship performing at tip top shape so it can continue its 90 year journey to the planet where thousands of these Passengers will be calling home.
Trouble with dramatic choices aside, there is something truly special about the chemistry between Lawrence and Pratt. We hope they do more movies together as that hard to attain cinematic chemistry thing is off the charts with these two.
The film looks amazing, too. The production design is beyond otherworldly and as the cast told us at the Passengers press day, there were eight million LED lights used on the set alone! Director Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game) does his best with what he’s given, but the script falters late in the third act with a conclusion that is less-than-favorable and especially considering the huge leap of faith we’re supposed to take that brought these two characters together. It does not pay off in the least.
That one plot element between the two characters and how it’s resolved is an enormous problem and it creates issues of ethics, morality and more. Because of that, there is a shadow hanging over this entire production. It is impossible to escape.
Grade: C-