A classic example of when a good scifi story gets butchered by Hollywood clichés

Rating: 5/10 (7 March 2017)

(Taking a deep breath) Uff... Let me just start by saying I love sci-fi movies, I really do. From masterpieces (IMO) like "Moon", "Interstellar", "Ex Machina", "Blade Runner", "Ghost in the shell "to less ambitious but still amazing classics like the Riddick trilogy, the original "Alien" movies or the excellent "Guardians of Galaxy", I enjoy being drawn into these made up worlds of the future and presented with reality that may one day be our own. Yet sometimes, I get irritated and decide to write a review about a particular movie. It's a rare thing for me to be angry at a scifi movie and it only happens when a great premise gets butchered by the greed of Hollywood producers who do everything to lure the widest audience possible. So is the case with "Passengers". Without getting into much details, I had really high hopes for this movie- the story is truly intriguing and original, the star ship Avalon is really dope and the ever present feel of isolation the main protagonist experiences is very well presented. In short, the first half of the movie, the part where there is no action at all, is great.
Then, Aurora shows up, a big romance and sudden break-up follows and... the ship starts to malfunction. Perhaps you, like me, had similar thoughts about what triggers the ship to go haywire. A black hole bends the fabric of space, an evil corporation is behind everything, maybe the whole journey is based on a broken promise and was doomed from the beginning. You would think there is a grander theme to all of this, a universal message that reflects our own society, a sudden plot twist that takes this movie into another direction. You get none of that. Instead, it turns out the ship has some bad engineering and the main characters are the only ones that could save the rest of the passengers. Or something like that, I gave up paying attention at this point. What matters is that we could have witnessed how the director of the movie paints a portrait of a human psyche when he introduces elements of Stockholm Syndrome, the negative effects interstellar travel puts on human brain and how isolation destroys someone's will to live. As an alternative, we got a microwaved soup of classic Hollywood clichés, one after another, the next one even more predictable that the previous. It's almost as if there was a different plot with a much better ending somewhere in the beginning of making of this movie, but a group of producers had a meeting where they all agreed "Nah, the audience is not put to it, scratch it and give me some action! With semi-naked bodies, a lot of explosions and a clock ticking". Screw you, we deserve better. Of course, there is time and place for pure action and laser beams flying off the screen, but when you promise a psychological sci-fi thriller in extremely cool setting, you keep that promise. I am maybe overreacting, but I feel like I've been back-stabbed. This film could have been so much more, but it seems as revenues mattered more than art. The ending is, well, acceptable, but I really hoped that after an hour of explosions I will at least get recompensed with a scene where the ship reaches its destination, or lack of if that would be the director's choice. Yet once again, no, we get this illogical premise that two people imprisoned in an enormous tin can heading to a destination they will never see can live and be happy "Adam and Eve" style for decades without any human interaction other than each other's company. I'll give them 10 years tops and they go mad. And it wouldn't be their fault, we are just not "programmed" to be alone. If that wasn't enough, we are constantly being mentally stimulated to scream "That's ridiculous" when the plot unfolds. To me, it was: 1. There are 5000 passengers on board the Avalon, all in cryosleep, monitored by an advanced computer AI that keeps them alive as they await the end of they voyage. There is nobody awake who checks if everything's OK, no plan to take turns and wake up for a little bit to monitor the journey's progress. Most of all, there is absolutely no plan B in case one of the pods malfunctions and wakes up its host. Nothing. Your pod was a lemon and you're screwed to the end of your days. Please. 2. When our lovely duet finds out that they can use the "ultimate human fixing machine" to go back to sleep, it turns out there's only one such robot aboard this ship. Only one. For 5000 passengers. You can't tell me it was too expensive to buy two for a ship this size and a distance that long. It's literally like having one lifeboat on a transatlantic cruise ship. 3. I always get frustrated when I see how inadequate security features are portrayed in movies that take place in the future. It's either a magnetic card, a stupid watch like id thingy or a fingerprint scanner. Really? My laptop has better security features than that. I really wanted to like this movie and I did, for the first half of it, but after that everything went downhill and I had to force myself to stay till the end. At one point, I was laughing when Chris Pratt character floated away in space and Aurora missed the cable that held him. I really wanted him to float back to Earth and save himself from being resurrected only to die of boredom 50 years later (or however long they lived). Sorry, to disappoint you if you didn't see the Spoiler alert and read this through. You should still see this movie and decide for yourself. In my opinion, it's a missed opportunity.