Passengers is a Clunky Ride Through Space

What would you do if you woke up from your sleeping pod 90 years too early on your voyage to another planet? That’s the challenge that Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) faces in the romantic sci-fi film Passengers.

Written by Jon Spaihts (Doctor Strange) and directed by Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game), a collision with a small meteor causes the starship Avalon to power surge and accidentally pop open Jim’s sleeping pod barely a fourth of the way on their 120 year trip to the new planet Homestead II.

After being unable to signal for help or wake up the cabin crew, Jim slowly settles into life on board what is essentially a chic, abandoned mall, filled with different restaurants, recreational areas and a charming, android bartender named Arthur all at his disposal. As time passes, however, the glamour of the Avalon slowly vanishes, leaving Jim an isolated, desperate man at a bleak crossroads: he could kill himself, or he could wake someone up so he wouldn’t be so painfully alone.

The answer comes to him in the form of Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), a writer who Jim stumbles upon sleeping in one of the pods. He becomes fanatically obsessed with the idea of her and reads all of her work, watches videos of her online and frequently watches her in her medically induced sleep. If he wakes her up, Jim is condemning Aurora to a life stuck with him on board the Avalon; she’ll never make it to Homestead II. But surely it’s better than dying alone? Could he really live with taking someone’s life away from them?

Unlike Tyldum’s other films, Passengers received heavy negative criticism due to Jim’s disturbing fixation on Aurora and its supplemental affect on her character. While both Lawrence and Pratt have good chemistry together onscreen, the real flaw of Passengers isn’t the actions Jim takes to not be alone but the way it is executed in the film. A flawed character can be a great one, and Jim’s actions could’ve potentially lead to interesting, meaningful conversations between the two characters.

Instead, once Aurora discovers the truth, it felt as if Jim’s actions were glossed over with little to no repercussions to him other than her short-lived anger. With an actor like Chris Pratt portraying Jim as well, it begs the question: would viewers have been okay with his actions if he was played by someone less attractive, or an older man?

Another bump in the road for Passengers was how it was marketed. The trailer made the film look like a romance in space with a shocking twist, with Pratt’s character saying: “there’s a reason we woke up early”. That line is never actually said in the film.

Instead, it felt as if the casual moviegoer was tricked into believing that Passengers was a heart-warming, romantic film about two characters who awake in space and have to work together to stay alive. It casually omits the biggest plot twist in the entire film and already sets it up for disappointment because it’s not what it promised its viewers.

However, Passengers isn’t all bad; it’s gorgeous in terms of its visuals. The design of the Avalon and all of its different locations from the pool to Jim’s executive suite are beautifully crafted and look very sleek. The film also has stunning visual effects, especially in the scenes with anti-gravity. Michael Sheen’s portrayal of Arthur is solid, and Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence are great as their characters, but it felt like the script didn’t give them enough depth to do them any justice.

Overall, Passengers had a lot of potential to be great and could’ve had critical dialogue about its themes of isolation and the importance of connection between people, but instead it ended up feeling very long and underwhelming. With its unnecessary twists and turns toward the end that seldom amounted to any real plotline progression, its strangled justification of Jim’s decisions and its odd marketing strategy, Passengers leaves the viewer with more to be desired, like the actual film they thought they were seeing.