An imperfect but remarkable film.

Rating: 8/10 (31 January 2020)

Passengers.
A science fiction film directed by Morten Tyldum, written by Jon Spaihts; starring Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Sheen and Laurence Fishburne.
Synopsis:
In the futuristic era of humans colonizing other planets, a hibernation pod fails and leaves one person awake, stranded inside the ship, with more than a lifetime to go before arrival to destination. Will he live his life in solitary, end it all or spread out his predicament to others by messing with their hibernation pods?
Some degree of spoiling ahead.
"Passengers" is a remarkable film, an imperfect one, but fun to watch and fairly thought provoking.
I have two lines of thought that arise from the film, one regarding the film itself and the other that delves into the subject that the film opens for discussion.
First the ethical dilemma.
Many critics of this movie, have focused on the ethical dilemma. Some have said that it's not even a dilemma because Jim's decision is so blatantly wrong. Some focus on the sexist characteristics of the decision, because it is perceived as Jim awakening Aurora in order to use her for his benefit.
I think they are confusing the character with the writer. The decision is wrong yes, but that's what's interesting about the story. The writer in not saying this is a good decision. He is asking, if confronted with such a dilemma, wouldn't we all be tempted to do what the character did?
Waking Aurora is controversial, but so is almost every decision of life and death caliber we can make in real life. Chris' decision to wake up Aurora reminds me of a situation I have seen countless times in romantic couples in real life. When a wife puts pressure on a husband (or the other way around if you will) to "stay home more on sundays" for example, she is rightly demanding him to fulfill his promise as a husband to be with his wife, but she is also egotistically asking him to sacrifice his individual needs, in order to have him near her for her own personal needs.
I'm not trying to find an answer in a couple of paragraphs. We could argue about this situation for months and never come to a satisfying conclusion, the moral and ethical considerations become very complicated and quite a bit subjective when we talk about this kind of question. My point is that we are always balancing egoism and altruism and sometimes there is no clearly defined line to divide the two. Human nature and nature itself has to be egotistical to a certain point or there would be no survival of the fittest, no survival of the species, no personal achievement of goals. We all capture fragments of other people's lives for our personal benefit. The key is that there should be consent, but then again consent is sometimes a result of some degree of pressure. That is why I said before that I suspect (given the situation the movie establishes) we would all seriously consider the option of waking others, rather than just discarding the idea as ethically wrong.
In conclusion, I'm not saying Chris' decision is right, I'm saying Tyldum and Spaihts are right in offering this subject for discussion and I thank them for it.
Now the film and it's merits.
I already said the film is imperfect, but not because it takes a stand on the moral dilemma. Rather, because I feel the third part is a waste of what was achieved during the first two thirds. Why do they feel the need to turn every film towards the action-explosion path when there was a very interesting situation, worthy of a great film, already going on? The movie is not ruined, I like it anyway. The production is top notch, the acting is excellent and the pace is great too.
The cliched action-explosion situation could have been avoided, for example, by having the Avalon's failing system start messing up the hibernating people or even killing them. Or by losing navigation capabilities and going in the wrong direction.
The last part of the plot is coherent given the direction the writer was going once he decided that Jim's decision was fortuitously good for Aurora, hence "redeeming" him. Because she would have been killed if the ship had exploded or whatever was going to happen without their intervention. Therefore, he inadvertently "saved" her by waking her up. However, it might have been more satisfying to take a more ambiguous direction and explore the situation if the ship was not facing certain destruction. If Chris' decision was not so clearly "necessary" for the survival of all the passengers and crew.
I also feel the machine waking up Gus feels too much like a need of the plot, so he can tell Jim where to look and to give Aurora the "drowning man" speech. In lesser films, this might be irrelevant, but for me, this movie was good enough that I feel it would have been even better if it had avoided both the action-explosion commonplace and the easy justification of Chris' decision.