so much talent, and an ideal premise, poorly and even dangerously executed

Rating: 5/10 (22 December 2016)

It was a tough call for me to even go see this; I knew what the "twist" was, which isn't even so much of a twist if you pay enough attention to the trailer (the "there's a reason we woke up early" line is and isn't a trick from Chris Pratt's character Jim), and I saw the early reviews, which were and still are not promising. I could have gone on with the rest of my Christmas vacation having not seen Passengers except for the simple fact that I'm currently somewhat a sucker for a movie, any movie, that is made with this ambition and scale (let alone a release at this time, albeit with major stars leading the way) and is an original script.
Oddly enough I could say that about a number of films out this Christmas season - Sing and Why Him? are also "original" properties - but this one, still a genre film as those are, looked like it had some real potential as science fiction or at least a desert island scenario with some existential ramifications: what happens if you're out of your cryogenic slumber for more than a lifetime before you're supposed to wake up? And what happens when loneliness settles in and the temptation to have a, uh, 'companion' along the way becomes too great? It struck me as mildly ironic that Jennifer Lawrence fought for and succeeded in getting paid more than her male co-star for a movie that is at least a little, if not more, sexist.
I should try to separate myself from seeing it that way, but I can't help it as what writer Jon Spaihts and the producers present here (don't forget the latter being the ones who also call the shots, Mortem Tyldum directs though who knows how much say he had here with such a massive studio film) is skewed in such a way so that it comes close to (no, maybe, just being) a story of a man committing a life-rape. It's about violating someone's free will, not to mention the sex that comes with it (I'd stop short of saying it's actual rape, but I won't stop any SJW's coming forward with that charge), and then what should be the ramifications of when Lawrence's Aurora discovers the deception on Jim's part - which, I might add, is a stupid character thing that happens (thanks robot Michael Sheen - probably the best character in the movie).
I pondered leaving the movie as to what might happen if the roles were reversed, what if it was about a woman waking up early on a ship with 90 years to go before reaching the destination only to get so lonely as to wake up a hunky guy who thinks that he woke up by accident. To get even more intense about it, what if it wasn't a *white* hunky male kind of likable guy like Chris Pratt (and it's a deceptive thing casting him, since, well, who doesn't like Chris Pratt after all?) What if, say, it was Laurence Fishburne instead, who is also in this movie and brings a great heap of pathos for about ten minutes of screen-time? Was this movie sort of, I don't know, calculated around how audiences would respond to such a monstrous thing as dooming someone to live the rest of their lives on a space-ship? Is that hashtag of white (male) privilege not applicable here?
Maybe I am thinking this over too much, and that I should enjoy this film outside of the context of who these people are and what they do. I think if the third act had done a strong enough job of giving Jim a comeuppance, or bringing in some other stakes into the situation (i.e. what if a bunch of people wake up on their own, no problems to the ship). Instead it becomes one of those scenarios that's familiar from other sci-fi movies where disaster is looming if X isn't fixed with Y doing this and so on. It speaks to Tyldum not being a bad director (he doesn't have a ton of real vision, but he is competent) that I was even, if only on a surface level, feeling some of the intensity as the climax approaches and is executed, sort of like a less risky version of, say, the ending of Event Horizon (which Fisburne's presence reminded me of and made me wish I was watching instead).
But near the end, like the last five minutes, it wastes more of the goodwill I was willing to extend it. I don't know or am not sure if the filmmakers took into context what this story and its consequences mean in line with the images being portrayed - again, forget if it's still a white guy, what if he looked like Seth Rogen or Kevin James, would we buy the redemption as much if it wasn't Star Lord - but beyond that, it ends up having similar problems to Spaihts own (co)scripted Prometheus: a film who's premise and set-up has so much that can spring from it, but how the details come out makes things frustrating, especially given the talent involved.
If the movie had committed more to being darker, embracing itself as a full-blown horror movie (again, not unlike Event Horizon did), or made it less intentional, like if Aurora actually woke up on her own, then it could be different. But it's not, and we're left with something that is slickly made and troubling as hell.