Review of Passengers (2016) by Jillian S — 26 May 2017

This movie is CLEARLY a sci-fi romance, not an action movie. I suspect the mis-marketing of this movie as sci-fi action is the reason for all the 'hate.' Luckily I was warned before I saw it, so watched it with an open mind.

The plot revolves around a worldship en route to a new colony with 5,000 cryo-sleeping passengers and crew. Thirty years into the journey, the ship runs into a bit of trouble and causes one of the cryo-pods to malfunction, awakening Chris Pratt to be the sole 'awakened' person on a luxury worldship not due to reach its destination for another 90 years.

From there, I won't give spoilers, but there is a variety of androids on the ship, including the endearing android-bartender, Andrew, and he is eventually joined by Jennifer Lawrence's character (not going to say more ... will be a spoiler).

The story goes through all the plot-points necessary for a well-written romance. But underlying the story is an incredibly fascinating portrayal of how efficiently the worldship runs thanks to its AI and all the artificial lifeforms who take care of the humans. My husband, who is a mechanical/software engineer who generally doesn't like 'chick flicks', was truly excited about the accurate portrayal of where the science of AI is going, and all the ways he could see existing technology evolving into what was portrayed on the ship.

The story then has a purely sci-fi crisis which compels the characters to move beyond their boundaries. There was a bit of a deux ex machina about how they came into information necessary to solve the problem, but other than that rather glaring plot-hole-fill (and to be honest, I enjoyed the deux ex machina enough to forgive it). I really enjoyed the movie at the end and ended up rewatching it on video ... twice.

So if you love a moving romance, watch this movie. If you are a technogeek like my DH who likes seeing plausible portrayals of existing cutting edge technology, watch this movie. If you hate romance and want pure sci-fi action, then skip it because you probably won't enjoy it. It's a shame this movie is getting such low ratings because, if properly labelled, the audience it was really written for will enjoy it.