Review of Passengers (2016) by Kevin W — 05 Apr 2017

Alas, the critics really blew it this time. They saw a wonderful science fiction movie with a well told original story and a critique of modern society that sailed straight over their heads. And I believed their bad reviews, postponing my experience of the movie Passengers until it arrived at Red Box. Passengers is an exciting and thoroughly believable tale with world-class acting and stunning visual effects. The starship Avalon's breakthrough design is rigorously faithful to our known laws of physics, giving it a meticulous authenticity seldom seen in the sci-fi genre, much appreciated by both scientists and connoisseurs thereof. It is a compelling story of flowering love, expressed with sincere longing and loneliness, deceit borne of desperation, revelation of a horrible secret that threatens to rip love apart, and the return of love, acceptance, forgiveness, and redemption. The movie is above all an allegory of our modern lives, reflected in two lonely people trapped and isolated by their technology. The two young lovers can see the faces of thousands of other passengers around them, but those faces are cocooned and inaccessible. The technology running the ship is incapable of solving problems beyond its limited programming. The couple faces life-threatening challenges that leadership is oblivious to. In the end, they can only count on each other, and their lives are enriched because of it.

It bothers me that critics who gush over Avatar and Star Wars VII could be critical of Passengers without choking on their own hypocrisy. In my view, Passengers is exactly the type of new sci-fi storytelling Hollywood should be producing. Could critics not appreciate an original story critiquing our modern day isolation and dependence on our technological devices? Who actually prefers tired and rehashed good vs. evil tropes like Star Wars, or a shallow retelling of Pocahontas via blue aliens of Pandora? Honestly, Hollywood, what thought-provoking message did we get from Avatar - inclusivity? Mixed marriages are OK? Native populations triumph over the colonizers? At long last, Hollywood got off its formulaic ass, taking budget away from yet another ghastly Transformers movie, and produced a breathtaking space-opera masterpiece. And the critics just couldn't handle it.