The best part about finally seeing Passengers in the theater is that I won’t have to see the trailer every time I see a movie. It’s a trailer that from the second viewing I knew the basic premise and that it showed too much. However, I don’t think the movie would have been saved if I hadn’t seen all of the trailers. The film seems to lack something in the story and there are some clear plot holes. I give Passengers the Not a Total Waste of Time rating.
Passengers was a ride I didn’t really need to take.
Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) and Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) awake on the Avalon 90 years before they are supposed to. Finding themselves alone on the ship, they look to each other for companionship as they search for answers to their early awakening.
I’m going to start fairly vague, but I plan on getting into some spoilers in the following paragraphs. There are storylines in the film that don’t really play out. Lawrence isn’t one of my favorites, and I don’t like her crying performances in any film. There are at least two in this movie, and I still don’t’ think she nails them. Pratt is charming as expected, but his humor doesn’t really shine like it did in Jurassic World and Guardians of the Galaxy. The look of the film is interesting and the effects are solid. But, it’s definitely missing something to make it memorable or great.
SPOILERS to follow
Okay, so Jim Preston wakes up because of a ship malfunction. For the next twenty or so minutes, we get Castaway in space with an android bartender, Arthur (Michael Sheen), as his Wilson. We watch him come to terms with his reality, that he’ll die before anyone else wakes up. He tries to enjoy the ship, but slowly gets desperate and contemplates suicide. That’s when he sees Aurora for the first time. He researches her and learns all about her before the hibernation. Now he has a choice, does he wake her up so he won’t be alone, but condemn her to the same fate as his own. It’s a devastating choice, but desperation gets the better of him.
For a while the two click and their circumstances push each other into the other’s arms. It’s sweet and the way the relationship unfolds is believable. Even when she finds out he woke her up and she wants nothing to do with him, the story works perfectly. Then, Laurence Fishburne shows up as another malfunction caused his hibernation pod to wake him early and incorrectly. This is where things get sloppy storywise. The ship is dying and with it so will the other thousands of people. Aurora attempts to accuse Jim of murder by waking her early, but it’s referenced and dropped. The film ends in several unsatisfying ways from that point forward.
Maybe I woke up too early to see the point.
I could see people loving this movie, but I can’t get past the sudden change in Aurora at the end. Also, a lot of the fun and games moments are contrived and not that innovative. I wouldn’t call this a popcorn movie as the action moments are in frequent. The romance is rapid and done mainly through montage. Basically, the film doesn’t’ do anything spectacular nor does it showcase the talent it’s boasting. That’s two Chris Pratt films in a row that are lackluster, but I’m still excited about Guardians 2.
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