Passengers Enlists the Right People to Create Something Great but They Handicap Themselves With a Heavy Twist and a Formulaic Ending

Rating: 7/10 (26 December 2016)

Passengers got a very different reception than what I was expecting. If you were to wind the clock back a year, I remember they previewed some footage and people were talking about this as an Oscar contender. I wasn't on pins and needles waiting for this but with Pratt and Lawrence co-starring and Morten Tyldum (the director of The Imitation Game, an excellent film), the right people were there to make something awesome. Then the reviews came in and wow, they were pretty bad. I still wanted to see this though and on a very rainy Boxing Day I got that chance. I have to warn you, although I liked this movie, you may have a very different viewing experience.
*Minor Spoilers Ahead* The movie takes place entirely on the Starship Avalon. They're on a 120 year voyage to colonize a new planet named Homestead II. The population of the ship is approx. 5000, around 250 crew and the rest are passengers. The ship is on auto-pilot and the entire population of the ship is in hyper-sleep except for a android bartender named Arthur (Michael Sheen). On it's journey. the Avalon is pelted by asteroids. The ship remains relatively unscathed but one giant asteroid triggers several alerts in the ship and one hibernation pod opens unexpectedly. Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) wakes up and assumes this is all routine. The passengers on the Avalon were scheduled to wake up 4 months before their arrival to meet each other and socialize. The passengers were separated into classes, Jim is a mechanic by trade so he obviously was in the coach section. All seems well until Jim realizes he's the only person awake on the ship. He's unable to awake the crew, they're in a separate sealed compartment. The computerized systems on the ship aren't any help, they've only been programmed for a certain number of questions, Jim's aren't among them. Jim's finally able to figure out that they're only 30 years into voyage with another 90 left to go. Jim is seemingly trapped on the Avalon, having to face the reality that he'll die during the trip rather than making it to Homestead II.
The initial premise of Passengers is actually pretty deep. What do you do if you're in Jim's situation? You can't go back to sleep and you're all alone on this vast ship, how do you wrap your mind around that? It's pretty interesting and I think they do a decent job portraying what that kind of loneliness can do to you. But that's only half of it. What Jim decides to do to combat that isolation is the big moral quandary of the piece. Some people have really rallied against Passengers because of it, calling it murder essentially. I don't know about that (it's definitely morally wrong and it could be interpreted that way) but what Jim does is wrong and they way he goes about doing it is even more questionable. It borders on creepy but I understood it. I'm not defending it because it wasn't the right thing to do but that kind of isolation does things to your mind. To the movie's credit, he struggles a lot with the decision and they do address the fallout of that choice. So it's up to you whether you can move past this or not, I did my best to put it aside and take the movie as it was.
So now that the philosophical quandary is out of the way, this movie looks great. I don't know how much of it was CGI or practical but it was really well done and it helped you immerse yourself in the atmosphere. It's not hard to get lost in the vastness of space but it adds to the feeling of sterility and emptiness on the Avalon. They obviously spent a lot of money and unlike some other big budget movies I've seen this year, they spent and used it well.
Passengers is really more centred on the romance between Jim and Aurora then on the journey to Homestead II. This can be hard to take, it's only going to appeal to a certain demographic. They got the right 2 actors to play those parts. Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt are on top of the acting world for a reason. They're great together in this, they're beautiful people (the movie has no problem showing that, they have lingering and loving shots of both) but they're also great apart. They carry this movie and bring gravity to Aurora and Jim's problems. I also liked Michael Sheen as Arthur, he's in the movie just the right amount.
Passengers has a lot going for it, more than it probably deserves. They have some really cool special effects and environments to play with. Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt are 2 of the top stars working today and they work so well together that they can sell this romance, even though there are much larger moral implications surrounding it. I even liked the characters they created in both Jim and Aurora. I would have liked this movie that much more if it delved even further into the big plot twist and unfortunately it does fall into predictability and sentimentality at the end. I still liked this movie more than I expected to. It took a pretty severe critical beating and I won't condemn the critics for complaining. The central issue that this movie has isn't easily explained or reasoned away. It's complicated and if you see this with your significant other or a group of friends, I guarantee you'll walk away discussing it after. I was still largely charmed by this movie and if you're looking for a romantic film with a sci-fi twist, this should scratch that itch. Be warned though, they were a little misleading when they advertised this. It's definitely more romantic drama than science fiction.