Movie Review: Passengers

 

By: Carina Carlos

 

Passengers is a 2016 science fiction film starring Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) and Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) as “passengers” aboard the starship Avalon with 5000 others. They are meant to travel for 120 years to the planet Homestead II. The passengers are in hibernation pods, but when the ship passes an asteroid field, it causes a malfunction in the ship that awakens Jim 90 years too early. Jim goes a year living in isolation, through this time he contemplates suicide. One day he notices Aurora in her pod. After watching her video profile, he discovers that she is “the perfect woman” and struggles on the ethics of manually waking her up for company. He awakens her and claims her pod malfunctioned. She is at first distressed at the idea that she might grow old eventually die on the ship before getting to Homestead II, but eventually conforms to the idea. Her and Jim grow close and eventually become lovers. After a year, Arthur tells Aurora the truth. After finding out she becomes devastated and blames him of taking her life. Another malfunction wakes up Gus (Laurence Fishburne), a Chief Deck Officer who helps them discover multiple failures in the ship. Gus dies a few days later because not being in a pod affected his body. Before dying, he gives them his ID badge to access the places that needed repairing. After going to struggle to fix the ship, Jim finds out that Aurora can go into hibernation, but she decides against it because it would mean she would never see him again.

 

The only thing that bothered me about this movie is the that even though it was about 2 hours long, the plot felt rushed. The movie went from one scene to another without context. For instance, Aurora finds out the truth about Jim waking her up and then suddenly she is beating him up out of anger to a point where she almost kills him.

 

Although, this movie is supposed to be set so far along in the future, the characters are so relatable. It was easy for me to understand why Jim would want to wake Aurora up because I would fear living in isolation too. I think I would have been tempted to wake someone else to keep me company too, but he didn't take her feelings into consideration when he decided to wake her up. Which is why I'm able to relate to her feeling like he has taking her life. Aurora is a journalist, she was planning to write about her experience on Homestead II and then go back to Earth. She was planning on being the first to report on her adventure in Homestead II, and he ruined that for her.

 

02.23.17