I've finally seen "Passengers"

I've finally had a chance to watch Passengers. How soon a movie makes its way to DVD is a good indication of how well it did at the box office, so that sounds a lot like 'not too well'.  I know a couple of other Spacefreighters ladies reviewed the movie a while ago, but I thought it was worth adding my two cents' worth. 

You can read Pippa's review here and Laurie's here. They fundamentally disagreed with each other 😊

Actually, a friend of ours recommended the title to us, so Pete and I sat in the lounge and watched it on the big TV.

WARNING: There will be minor spoilers.

Credit: Sony pictures - starship Avalon

First things first: I LOVED the space ship. It takes the form of a double helix spiralling its way through space at half the speed of light, and it's pretty realistic.  

It's traveling in normal space, scheduled to arrive at its destination after 120 years, carrying five thousand passengers and about 260 crew to set up a new colony. But things go wrong when the ship encounters an asteroid belt. Jim (Chris Pratt) is shaken out of suspended animation and finds himself the only person awake on the ship, with 90 years to go. Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence) joins him after he's been alone for a year. The way in which she joins him is probably the most contentious – and most important – issue in the whole movie. Some saw it as 'stalkerish' and 'creepy'. But I felt it was all about the essence of what makes us human, and how we consider choices. The audience is presented with the unspoken words – what would you have done?

From there, the plot became a bit predictable. There's not too many places you can go with two people in a faulty spaceship carrying over five thousand other souls. The part where Jim gets the knowledge he needs to tackle the faults is a little too convenient – and conveniently transient, as Pippa pointed out in her review. 

When the credits started to roll I turned to Pete and said, "I can see why it wasn't so popular at the box office." He agreed with me. Perhaps it's because we have been conditioned to expect science fiction movies to have lots of excitement and adventure. Although things hotted up a bit in the last third of the film, I have to agree with reviewer Owen Gleiberman, who said, "There isn’t much to “Passengers” besides its one thin situation…. it's like a castaway love story set in the world's largest, emptiest shopping mall in space." Read the full review here.