Review of Passengers (2016) by Chris W — 29 Jun 2017

This movie......eh. I don't know what this movie wanted to be. On one hand the first act of Passengers comes off like a Sci-fi version of 'Castaway' you have Jim (Chris Pratt) who's an engineer of sorts wakes up in the mist of meteor shower that hit the ship on its way to a new planet that is hospitable for human life....the only downside to this is that the planet is nearly 90 yrs away, talk about your rude awaking f**kups!!

In the year he's been "Adrift" on this ship he deals with the issues of loneliness as well as depression which leads him with a moral divide one of which is one of the BIGGEST downsides of this movie. But despite all that here's my review.

The Good:

Chris Pratt is the next big thing and his 'Star lord' Swagger kind of shows in his character of Jim Preston a man who's accidental wake up from cryo-sleep have him LITERALLY 90 yrs from his destination; I can honestly say I don't know what I would do if I was placed in a situation like this which was something I've said the first time I saw, "Castaway" w/ Tom Hanks. But Passengers is an interesting machine...it places Castaway on a ship that's nearly 100 yrs from earth where everyone he knows and love is probably gone now and put him by himself in an environment you can only hope for the best but it seems in his case...expect for the way worst. But all that changes when he sees Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence) who's a book writer and yet Jim is enthralled by her who also is accidentally woken up by "circumstance". together they have to endure the dangers aboard the ship as well as find hope in one another.

The first act of this movie seemed very well executed to a degree there were moments in this film where I felt really bad for Jim and his outcome; I was impressed with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence in some moments of the movie but I guess that's as far as I can say for the Good cause everything else after wards was well......

The Bad:

Now, everything from the first act was pretty decent....But then I don't know who made the decision and/or choice Sony or the screenplay writer but when the big reveal (Which I won't spoil) of what Jim does which is DOES NOT get remedied it gets discussed but in the end by the end of the movie it will never be brought back up or settled it just....is!

And it sucks because the majority of the movie Jim's moral decision could have been the VERY strong highlight of this movie and instead of making the third act of this movie an Action/suspense/adventure (or whatever it wanted to be...) it could have been a character study in the middle of a 90 yr castaway film. Now would this film been any better because of it? not really, but what we got in the third act while it was interesting it still was a slap in the face to people including myself who felt that what Jim did was morally wrong....but I digress!

Laurence Fishburne makes a SMALL appearance and so does Andy Garcia in the SHORTEST appearance in the movie....AT THE END!!

There was many ways this film could have been a pretty good if not best film of that month but Sony failed way too many times especially with Ghost-busters (2017) that it was trying so hard to find a hit but in the end Passengers was a bit of a mess.

Overall:

Despite what Sony was trying to do 'Passengers' is an okay movie....no perfect, not awesome. There are moments where I had to facepalm cause I felt choices made in this movie was completely overlooked and never brought up again; and in that instance the moral choice would have been a great highlight of this film.

The First and Third act of this movie was trying too hard to be two different films that it didn't know exactly what it wanted to be. And while there were some plot holes that was overlooked as well...the movie still had a charm thanks to Pratt and Lawrence which at times kinda felt like it wasn't gonna work but it did. 'Passengers' is one of those movies you can pop in the Blu-ray or Digital once in a blue moon just to watch and just turn your brain off but after its done watch a better movie.