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Passengers Movie Review

Passengers is a 2016 science fiction romance film directed by Morten Tyldum and starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt. It’s a wildly underrated movie.

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“I laughed at a man with no pants,

until I realized I have no legs“

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During a voyage to a distant colony planet, Jim’s hypersleep pod malfunctions, waking him up. He and fellow passenger Aurora must work together to prevent their spaceship from meeting with a disaster. The idea here is high-concept and quite intriguing, perfect fodder for a hard SF story. It could have been more sophisticated for sure, but the critics dismissing this movie for not being smarter in execution when they are the ones who would praise much weaker movies spells hypocrisy of the highest order.

The movie was just done dirty. It should have been a bigger hit with audiences and critics as well. The third act is problematic, but it doesn’t derail the movie. Yes, the disaster elements were overly abundant and the movie suddenly became an audio-visual chaos, but let’s face it, this happens in SF movies at times – Danny Boyle’s ‘Sunshine’ is one such example.

What’s important is that the rest of the film is so good and I would actually call it great myself. The protagonist’s action is one that is deeply immoral, but also highly understandable. Let’s be honest, every one of us would do the same thing. The film is truthful in depicting how loneliness will get the best of us always. Humans are extremely social beings, so the idea of being alone for decades in a spaceship undoubtedly sounds horrific.

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The ending of the movie is obviously controversial in this day and age when love and romance are an afterthought, but for me I found it to be actually very relatable. Would it be so wrong to live your entire life with your significant other in a somewhat confined space? I personally find this idea to be rather reasonable and this extremely romantic angle made the ending itself both beautiful and poetic.

Some would say that the movie is sexist, but I wholeheartedly disagree with this assessment. Jim clearly is a good guy and we see him struggling with what he’s done, so I did not have any problem with this central narrative. The dialogue is also pretty strong and the movie is very successful as a romance set within the SF world as the banter between the two stars is lovely.

Yes, Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt are both terrific in Passengers. Lawrence is clearly a better actress, but Pratt is also surprisingly strong her in a very emotional role. He is both unlikable and likable depending on the situation. Both play these fun, interesting people and their romance is terrific because their chemistry is on-point. They are a hot couple composed of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

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I also found the whole production technically very accomplished and even authentic in certain regards. The score in Passengers is so beautiful that it really deserved its Oscar nomination and the same goes for the production design as the sets are absolutely gorgeous. The whole ship looked incredible and quite inviting. I loved the robot, the games and the food all being very well depicted. The directing from Morten Tyldum is also excellent while the screenplay has some definite plot holes, but still it was mostly pretty strong. It’s overall a very good movie that was trashed by the critics due to the bandwagon effect and nothing else.