A Spiritually and Emotionally Complex, yet Incredible Movie

Rating: 8/10 (6 January 2017)

Passengers is an amazing Sci-Fi movie in many ways based on the current dream of placing humans on another planet. The destination in Passengers is to an unknown universe and system that requires 180 years of suspended space travel through the outer regions.
This movie introduces some very complex ideas about the meaning of life, purpose and "What-If" scenarios. What if you're traveling through space and things go wrong? What makes a person happy? Can love grow and develop between two strangers based entirely on need and circumstances?
In one way, Passengers is a retelling of the Adam and Eve story from the Bible in the book of Genesis when God say's, "It's not good for man to be alone" and "There was no suitable partner for the man". Which in the bible led to God putting Adam to sleep, pulling out a rib, and molding it into a woman name Eve. In Passengers the Man gets lonely, finds and researches one woman out of the millions sleeping in their pods, and awakens her.
As the story progresses, there are some typical moments you already know what is coming next, then the movie forces what seems like a no win scenario which ultimately requires a single question to be answered.
The ultimate question is, "Is there any gift, greater than sacrificing oneself for someone you love, or even strangers you will never know, who will never know what you did, or know your name?"
Passengers is about love, companionship, friendship, lust, selfishness, desperation, loneliness, sacrifice, redemption and realizing that true happiness does not depend entirely on your environment or circumstances. It presents the idea that love is a decision.
While I greatly enjoyed this movie, I was disappointed with the ending, perhaps I just didn't understand or relate to its metaphor, or perhaps it just didn't go far enough.
The movie ends with passengers awakening long from a long deep sleep. They step out into the cavernous space of the ships interior and glance in bewilderment at the trees, bushes and plants covering the inside of the ship.
This eludes to a theme presented mid-movie about the main male character planting and growing a tree. It also eludes to the male and female characters finding happiness with each other within the context of their situation. Ultimately, making the best out of being stuck on a ride which still needed 80 mores years. In response, they adapted the ship by turning it into their own paradise, or garden of Eden.
What I feel would have been a more fitting and perhaps interesting ending, would of been a whole new culture and several generations of families born and raised as a result of this single man and woman. It really seemed like the whole concept of pregnancy in space was skipped. Regardless, it seems that in addition to massive overgrowth of vegetation, the newly awakened passengers could of been greeted or been introduced to an entirely knew population of people born during the last eighty years of travel.
The couple was young and highly sexually involved, no birth control available most likely, it just seemed logical that a child or several children would of been born, the ship was more than suited and capable of being able to sustain them.
Other things I both enjoyed and hated about this movie:
Several different events force the potential of dying in the vacuum of space, or drowning. Those scenes really captured my imagination and made me ponder the "What If" questions about death by suffocation.
The introduction of a third person traveling with them through space, posed an interesting question as well. Would they share the woman? Would he awaken someone of his liking?
Also interesting are the discussions regarding the costs of building the ship, the travel, and the cost to make an emergency phone call back home.
Somewhat unsettling was the concept of being on a ship, where every living person is asleep with only technology to help in a crisis.
Final Thoughts, at times its a little slow, other times wildly intense. From a filmmaker perspective, I think this movie is brilliant! It's the ultimate concept that many filmmakers, especially low-budget filmmakers grapple with. Is it possible to make a full feature movie with four or less characters all within a very limited amount of space. Passengers, pulls this off like a champion, with only three (Possibly, four if you count the android) characters throughout the entire movie, all within the confines of a single ship traveling through deep space.