Film Challenge Week 1: A film set in space
Film: Passengers (2016)
Genre: Sci-Fi/Romance
Watched on: Prime Video
Imagine waking up on a spaceship 90 years earlier than expected, while everyone else is peacefully sound asleep in suspended animation. This journey on the spaceship Avalon is en route to a colony planet, Homestead II, where you are promised a better life. You spend the first year alone, except for the animatronic bartender to keep you company. The rest of your life will be spent on this spaceship with nowhere else to go and no one else to keep you company. All because your pod malfunctioned.
What would you do?
I went into this film without prior knowledge, looking for something unexpected to surprise me. Sure enough, I was deeply surprised when Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), the person who woke up ahead of time, intentionally broke down Aurora Lane’s (Jennifer Lawrence) pod. He chances upon her pod one day when he’s drunk and reeling from the shock that this is his life now.
Before making this life-altering decision without her consent, he finds out everything he can about her. From watching her introductory Q&A to reading her published work, he was enamoured by her. In full predatory behavior, he pretends that they’re both afflicted by the same malfunction. They start spending their days together, eventually falling in love. Only by a misunderstanding between Jim and the android bartender did the truth reveal itself.
Surely this isn’t a romance movie, and yet it is.
Spoiler alert: after Jim saves the spaceship from imminent disaster, Aurora decides that maybe he is worthy of her love, and they spend the rest of their lives together on the Avalon.
I was honestly flabbergasted that this was a story that people not only were willing to fund, but that anyone agreed to be a part of.
First of all, Aurora? Not the Sleeping Beauty reference!
Secondly, why Aurora would ever forgive him is beyond me. It must have been some form of Stockholm Syndrome, because I would rather live the rest of my life alone than co-exist with someone who so blatantly chose for me, that was irreversible. When given the chance to enter hibernation, she refused. And for what? For “love”?
It’s absolutely devastating when an intriguing premise falls so deeply into some bullshit that makes you wonder why you even spent close to 2 hours invested in the story. This would have made such a strong survival movie where he eventually figures out how to enter hibernation without dragging someone down with him. The romance plot was completely unnecessary.
In many ways, this could have been a thriller if told from Aurora’s perspective. Imagine waking up and finding out that you’re 89 years ahead of landing on the colony planet you were meant to inhabit. The sole person on the plane informs you that his pod malfunctioned too, and there’s no way to reenter hibernation. You enjoy spending time with him as both of you explore the many high-tech amenities available. As you start falling for him after a particularly lovely date, you learn from the android bartender that he woke you up. Perhaps it could turn into a revenge/escape film.
Unfortunately, all we get is the lost potential of what could have been. I give Passengers 0.5 stars.
