Review of Passengers (2016) by Spangle — 01 Jan 2017

"It is as if The Notebook and Interstellar had sex and had a baby." - My cousin.

I am going to write a review, but this quote really sums up everything about this film. From the creepy and morally unethical meeting (waking up Aurora vs threatening to kill yourself in The Notebook) to the premise, time spent away from family traveling, and the gratuitous shots of the ship in space (Interstellar), Passengers is a sick concoction of the two. As neither of those films are great (Interstellar being good and The Notebook above average), it should be obvious that Passengers would wind up being disappointingly below average. Though its leads try their best, the inherently creepy nature of their romance, cliches, awful second half, and director Morten Tyldum's obsession with the Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt's asses and sex appeal derail Passengers.

The premise has been much discussed at this point, but it is certainly an engaging one. After a collision with a meteor, a spaceship traveling for 120 years to a new planet with 5,000 people aboard begins to malfunction, Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) wakes up 90 years too early. Left on his own, he finds ways to pass the time, such as speaking to the android bartender (Michael Sheen). During this portion of the film, it is certainly slow, but is entirely compelling. The audience feels Jim's isolation, desperation, and loneliness. He is just a normal guy who wanted a fresh start, but is instead dealt the worst hand possible and is left all alone on this ship. However, Passengers quickly nosedives. Though Jim knows it is morally wrong to wake up Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), a woman he noticed and began to stalk and obsess over, he opts to wake her up anyways. Passengers then goes on to half-heartedly scold him, try and have us root for him, and seemingly draw a parallel between that action and a later one by Aurora. Spoiler, she wakes up him later on in the film. It is clear the film is about the lengths we go to in order to not be lonely, but that the end justifies the means. Fortunately, it seems that Tyldum was onto this one and knew audiences would reject this moral. Though powerless to change the story, he opted to just have Pratt rip off his shirt and Lawrence get naked (even though she does not have to strip to get into that suit, just hike up your skirt you idiot). If the plot is creepy, Tyldum gives the film a few extra sprinkles of sexy and shots of asses in order to try and distract less discerning audiences. For those still unable to forget the "moral dilemma" faced by Jim and his actions, the proceeding hour and a half or so will just get progressively creepier and, as one critic pointed out, begin to resemble Stockholm Syndrome.

However, it would be misleading to claim that the creepy nature of the romance is Passengers' only flaw. It is also incredibly cliche. With the romance being incredibly trite, the aforementioned "sexiness" is used to try and spice up the film. Instead, it only further distracts from the plot and adds nothing to the film. The romance in this film feels as though the studio loved the setting and the original premise of the film, but opted to make it more commercially viable. Thus, they cast two attractive leads and decided the innovation of the film would be to have them have sex in space. While I admit seeing so much sex in space was a first for me, the romance itself is hardly new. Most romance films have a creepy beginning, secrets, and the cringeworthy "you die, I die" line. The film's cliches know no bounds as well with the two leads physically incapable of dying. Unfortunately, convenient plot devices such as Chief Gus Mancuso (Laurence Fishburne), are not as immortal. Woken up two years after Jim due to the ship malfunctioning, Gus Mancuso may be the funnest character, but is the most cliche. The definition of a convenient occurrence, Mancuso exists only to explain the situation to the main characters, wag his finger judgmentally at Pratt, and then die. In his short time alive, Mancuso is able to give the characters access to the entire ship, which enables them to fix the ship. This invariably leads up to the over-the-top ending in which Jim Preston survives a situation nobody could reasonably expect to survive. Here, Passengers plays into the stereotypical "Hollywood ending" and even has the gaul to skip 88 years into the future and ignore the fact the characters' corpses are still on the ship. After having a thoroughly compelling premise and great opening with Jim wandering the ship, Passengers' second half is nothing but a creepy and cliched romance, cliched scenes of peril, and a simplistic and rosy ending ill-fitting of a film of this ilk. That said, Passengers is not all bad. Though the writing is lackluster and plain, the special effects and visuals are anything but. With a gorgeous ship that Tyldum loves taking advantage of, the camera slides around this ship with ease and captures every gorgeous inch.