Billed as a Space Romance starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence as Jim Preston and Aurora Lane, from an original black listed script by Jon Spaihts, which meant this should’ve been a good, thought provoking film, and having the Director of the Excellent, The Imitation Game should’ve been the ace in the hole. The final product, whilst entertaining and visually outstanding received some harsh words from critics. The Film follows Jim Preston, one the 5000 Passengers aboard the Starship Avalon who woke up 90 Years too soon in the Ship’s 120 Years cruise to a new human colony in a new galaxy.
The Film opens with the uniquely designed Starship Avalon zooming across a star field and then through an asteroid field, but thankfully, the ship has a shield to take care of those potato shaped rocks, despite having no crews on the steering wheel. It was a little unnerving to see the ship sterile emptiness, kudos to the Production Design Team for managing to create such impressive interior for this spaceship, despite its rather strange almost Kryptonian style exterior. It’s soon established that Avalon is in the middle of a 120 Years cruise to a planet called Homestead II where its 5000 passengers are to be the first settlers of the uninhabited planet. Not only is the planet uninhabited, it’s owned by the Homestead Corporation, and guess what? The Planet turned out to be one of many Planets the Corporation owned! Kudos to Screenwriter Jon Spaihts for creating an interesting vision of the future.
Things started to go wrong aboard The Avalon, after the ship cleared off the Asteroid Field (and everything automatically fixed themselves) when one of the Pod malfunctioned, waking up its inhabitant Jim Preston 90 Years too soon. The scenes where Jim searched the ship for fellow humans through the deserted pristine corridor brought to mind 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead (minus the garbage and debris). It didn’t take long for Jim to figure out that he’s an early riser, and that everybody else would sleep for 90 Years more in their pod. Being an optimist, Jim tried to make the best of his situation, following advice from Android Bartender from The Shining-like Bar, Arthur to “live a little”. Moving himself to a VIP Suite, playing basketballs, dance dance revolution (holo?) game (Clever reference to Peter Quill), and dramatic spacewalks. He also attempted to break into the Crew Quarters to try and wake up the crew to no avail, thanks to the heavily secured door. However after a Year of being alone, Jim started to lose his mind and contemplated suicide by throwing himself out to space. It is this dark aspect that is unfortunately, the Filmmakers chose not to explore. Instead, they opt to continue to make Jim the nice optimist he is at the start.
Jim met Aurora after his botched suicide and immediately regained his old swagger as he browsed through Aurora’s Interviews. In a creepy, (but presented as cute) scene, he watches Aurora’s interview, while sitting next to her Hibernation Pod and eating crisps. Naturally, the video recordings aren’t enough and Jim soon faced a dilemma : Should he wake Aurora and doomed her to a lifetime on the ship with him, or let her stay in her pod and continue with her life? This being a Movie, there’s no doubt which scenario ended up on the Screen. He woke her up, and lied about it. Initially distraught, Aurora soon accepted her situation and initiated a relationship with Jim, which probably doesn’t seem like a bad deal (he’s nice, he’s hot) considering it was some form of Stockholm Syndrome. She had no choice. But thanks to the leads performance, this subtext might be forgivable to some.
Of course, Jim’s lie was soon uncovered, just moments before he’s due to propose to Aurora via Arthur’s revelation. Aurora’s distraught at the truth was understandable, she’s stuck on the ship for 90 years, with the Man she now hates. But, ever the Optimist, Jim continually attempted to make it up to her by taking over the Ship’s P.A System to apologise to her, justifying his action. This is film’s critical point. By this point, the filmmakers could go the horror route by having Jim, twisted by his period of solitude go all Jack Torrance on Aurora or down the road they went to, by introducing a new Character, Gus (Laurence Fishburne) the Ship’s Deck Manager and problems with the Avalon that only Jim and Aurora can fix by working together. Thus the Film kept to the Sci-Fi Romance it marketed itself to be.
Passengers is not a perfect film, its flawed and its plot points problematic to some people, but this is not a film made for discussion, or deep analysis, it’s a popcorn film. Of course the Guy and the Girl end up together, of course the Girl forgives the Guy. Yes, there is a darker, scarier version of the Film that the Filmmakers could’ve made, but they didn’t. It is a shame that they didn’t go with that version, but that doesn’t make this film any less enjoyable. At least it’s not one of the Transformers sequel.
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