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.
A spacecraft traveling to a distant colony planet and transporting thousands of people has a malfunction in its sleep chambers. As a result, two passengers are awakened 90 years early.
First Impressions
Wow! It opens with the spaceship travelling through space, then suffering a meteor shower before moving into the interior of the ship and diagnostics. Nothing really new in terms of special effects, but it's very pretty! After that, we have a long stretch of not very much happening, which is no doubt supposed to correspond to the empty, tedious existence of our hero and the motivation behind that dastardly deed that provides the only real plot twist (lazy!).
The Plot
Well, I had some issues here. First up, I kinda wish we weren't shown what had happened to the ship as it made it more frustrating to see the characters trying to figure it out and failing (although some of the best scenes of the ship in space other than the finale). Also, why just one pod? Why not a whole group or even a whole bay? (and that could have made it even more interesting, like The Poseidon Adventure in space, and maybe got rid of the ew factor). Also, I disliked the convenient waking of a crew member who survived just long enough to point them in the right direction to fix things, then died so they weren't stuck with an awkward triangle (Jim is supposed to be some kind of technician - would it really have been so impossible for him to work it out?!). I also didn't get why the barman Arthur blabbed the truth to Aurora after being told to keep it a secret (shouldn't he have some kind of discretion programmed, or maybe client confidentiality?! Okay, so she needed to learn that bit of information for reasons, clearly, but that seemed too convenient a way. It could have been done after the crew member woke and they were running diagnostics, and again taken the film in another direction. Personally I'd rather her pod had been an accident too, because as a plot twist the idea sucked).
Finally, I'm not convinced by Chris Pratt playing the straight guy - he's much better as Starlord with the witty banter (I didn't quite buy his character in Jurassic World either - he's much better in something with a humorous edge), and Jen Lawrence's kissing style? That was much more an ew factor for me personally. Sorry, Jen, but even my daughter who adores you said the same thing...
The Ew Factor
Okay, so, yes, what Jim did was completely and utterly wrong and reprehensible (and as Aurora says later, tantamount to murder), but totally made sense (a year in space alone with the prospect of decades ahead? Not sure I wouldn't have done the same thing). Some people say he got no punishment
I think Aurora beating the cr*p out of him and the guilt was at least some payback? And in the end, she decides to stay with him even when given the choice, so she must have forgiven him. She could even have stayed for a while, then said 'nah, this isn't working, put me to sleep'. Considering how popular romances involving kidnap/abduction, and even forced seduction are, I'm kind of confused by the reaction to Passengers in that respect (although I don't personally like those kind of romances myself yet enjoyed Passengers. Go figure!). While I found the romance too rushed (I didn't get a real sense of time passing, like I didn't realise Jim had been awake for over a year until we're told) so perhaps that could have been better conveyed.
What I did like
Despite all the above, I enjoyed the film - it made for entertaining, thought provoking and visually attractive viewing. The basic premise was cool, and I loved the design of the Avalon. Although we expect that standard of CGI now, I did love all the special effects too, especially when the ship lost its gravity (although I know the whole science is supposed to be wrong on that. Sometimes I can be forgiving in that area if the visuals are spectacular). The barman Arthur was probably the best character in it (and it was cool discovering he was an android. His character provides the little humour in this film).
While I don't think Lawrence or Pratt were 100% perfect for the roles, they played them well enough to mostly be believable (and yes, as an author, I'm somewhat biased toward Aurora). The heroine gets a turn saving the guy, and while the earlier part of the film runs frustrating slow, there's tension throughout, with action and explosions in the finale (though not nearly enough for me). I'm not sure about the level of nudity - I was watching with my 14yo so there was a certain level of embarrassment for both of us, and I definitely wouldn't have taken my younger two. :P In Conclusion
I'm glad I didn't read the reviews and had decided to just go see the film (as with Suicide Squad). I can't help but feel it got an automatic 'scifi with girl cooties'='shoot it down in flames' like the all-female Ghostbusters.
However, while being an okay/good film I do think it missed out on being much more and hope this is just some test run for greater things. I'd really like to see Starship Titanic (Douglas Adams and Terry Jones) done as a film - you can guess the storyline from the title, AND there's a double romance in it with all the promise that entails. ;) (Adams also did something similar in Mostly Harmless, part of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, while the comic SciFi TV series Red Dwarfalso deals with a lone surviving human left on a ship after a nuclear disaster, kept company by a hologram of the crew member he hates most, a humanoid evolved from his pet cat, and a dysfunctional android servant they rescue).
Meanwhile I'm still waiting on that breakout Scifi Romance film (where it's clearly labelled and portrayed as such)...
I give Passengers 3 out of 5 emergency flares, and I will be investing in the DVD (though not another cinema trip).
Science fiction romance demands a delicate
balance that is not easy to achieve. For the romance to work, the hero and
heroine must have a fiery chemistry that will attract an audience right away,
and a bond that will survive all the obstacles we devilish authors can throw in
their paths. For the science fiction to work, the world we create must be both
believable and intriguing, expanding our readers’ minds in some way as they
follow the story.
And if that balance is difficult to achieve
on the page, just think how hard it must be to accomplish on the big screen,
where it is so easy to overwhelm an audience with special effects on the SF
side and neglect the much smaller-scale human interaction of the romance (MAN
OF STEEL, OBLIVION, any superhero movie with a female love interest). After
all, any number of great science fiction movies come to mind when the subject
comes up. But only a handful of science fiction romances make the grade—AVATAR being far and away the best of them.
That’s why I was so excited to see
PASSENGERS, currently in theaters, starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence.
Here is a film that satisfies on the SF side, with beautiful visuals of a
lovely interstellar ship and of the stars themselves, with an external plot
that is driven by familiar space-going emergencies. And yet, the romantic arc
between the very appealing hero and heroine is central to the story, and,
indeed, inseparable from it. Finally!
Pratt and Lawrence have just the right
chemistry for this job, with the able catalyst of Michael Sheen in the role of
a robotic bartender who serves as a sort of informal counselor to both parties.
We are enchanted with their romance and root for them as a couple, just as we
would in any rom-com. We want them to succeed together, despite the dark secret
at the heart of their love’s origins, and in defiance of the challenges that
inevitably come.
Of course, that dark secret (which I cannot
reveal here for spoiler-y reasons), has thrown the critical world for a
complete loop. PASSENGERS has been excoriated by the critics because of the
ethical dilemma posed by this plot twist, which has been described as “icky,” “stalkery”
and “misogynistic.” This from the same people who see the moral dilemma posed
by a childless couple hiding the baby they found on a beach from its natural
mother (in THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS) as high art.
This central moral question only makes
PASSENGERS a much more interesting film, raising it a level above the usual
space opera. The audience leaving the theater has more to talk about than just
whether Pratt and Lawrence were good together or whether the special effects in
the nul-grav swimming pool scene were cool or not. Viewers must decide for
themselves whether what Pratt’s character did was justified or right or not;
whether Lawrence’s character reacted realistically or as they themselves would.
And, finally, they must determine whether the couple’s final solution to their
external dilemma—a lifetime aboard a ship originally meant to be only a sleeper
transport to a distant colony planet—is a good one.
As a romance reader, dark secrets and slightly
stalkery behavior are really nothing new to me, either. Paranormal romance, in
particular, is rife with such tropes. In fact, PASSENGERS could be said to
combine SF’s well-known “Adam and Eve” trope with PNR’s “fated mates” trope to
good effect. And no harm done.
Science geeks will no doubt point out, too,
that artificial gravity produced by spinning the ship would not cut out
suddenly when the power went out. Thus the coolest scene in the movie (in my
opinion) is scientific BS. Okay. It still looked awesome. I give it an “A” for conceptual effort.
PASSENGERS deserves much better than it’s
been getting from mainstream reviewers. Go see it on the big screen and enjoy
the best SFR film since AVATAR.PASSENGERS is definitely a GO!
