It took a long time to finally see the Pratt/Lawrence team-up,
PASSENGERS (2016). When this science
fiction romance came to theaters I didn’t have a free moment to get away and
see it. Making matters worse, it hasn’t (still isn’t as far as I know) been
made available to rent over streaming (unless one wants to purchase it) because
of an apparent streaming deal with Starz.
I wondered about the intelligence of inking any deal to keep this movie – which
might have done well through word of mouth in the rental market – out of
viewers’ hands. Even as a Chris Pratt (GUARDIANS
OF THE GALAXY, 2014, JURASSIC WORLD:
FALLEN KINGDOM, 2018) and Jennifer Lawrence (SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, 2011, MOTHER!,
2017) fan myself, I didn’t want to pay too much for a movie that had the
appearance on so many levels of being a flop. Three dollar DVD sale at Walmart later,
I realize now the film simply had a bad, or perhaps apathetic, marketing team.
Was PASSENGERS
worth the wait; and would it have been worth the movie ticket price? Short
answer: yes. Seeing this on the big screen might have been stunning. It’s is a clever and unique science fiction
movie. It’s also a romance at its core, no question. Though the story makes a few
mistakes along the way, it’s is a great “little” film. A pity PASSENGERS been kept from viewers for
so long.
What’s it about? In the future, humanity has colonized the
stars. More accurately, corporations
have done so, with money and the incentive to build ships and populate more and
more planets capable of sustaining life. When we open, five thousand colonists have
embarked on a 120-year journey to Homestead Colony aboard the starship Avalon. Having paid handsomely for the
opportunity, the colonists will continue to pay twenty percent of any income
they earn to the company while they are off-world. Lucrative for the
corporation, to say the least. Colonists
and crew are all asleep in individual cryogenic chambers, to be woken 120 years
later the same age as when they left. As we the viewers are reminded at least
twice in the story, there has never been a problem with hyper-sleep.
Until now.
An asteroid storm causes a short throughout the system,
triggering the sleep chamber of mechanic Jim Preston (Pratt) to activate. After
waking, he discovers he’s gotten out of bed ninety years too early with no
apparent way to get back to sleep. Over the next year, Jim reads every manual he
can find, and tries every day to break into the crew’s quarters to wake someone
up to help him.
Pratt does well flying solo for the first twenty minutes, his
character Jim isolated from humanity but finding plenty to do to keep busy. The
passage of time is reflected using a beard he eventually starts growing. I didn’t
quite buy the look, except near the end of Act one when it – and he – become straggly,
clothes frayed more and more because the man’s begun letting himself go. Until Jim
randomly chooses the sleeping chamber of a beautiful woman named Aurora (Lawrence)
and begins watching her voyage application videos, reading her work (she’s a
writer) in order to curb his loneliness.
There is one other “person” on board to keep him company:
Arthur the robot bartender. Michael Sheen (APOSTLE,
2018, FROST/NIXON, 2008, and no
relation to the other Sheens) plays bartender / android Arthur. Mounted on a
track running along a massive, polished bar Arthur is a key player throughout
the story. He also adds a touch of class, since Arthur is a high-end barkeep programmed
to ask leading questions in conversations and grow familiar with his customers.
He doesn’t quite understand the
nuances of conversation, however, and is unable to improvise well. Jim, and later
Aurora, figure this out and learn to “meet” him where he’s at in subsequent conversations.
Scenes with Arthur act as anchors through the film, centering the action and
allowing for some exposition to reflect what’s going on in everyone’s heads. Though
Pratt and Lawrence have strong, if not varied screen presences, Sheen’s barkeep
holds its own with them while adding a critical otherness to the cast. His facial expressions are great,
controlling himself just enough where there is almost something human wanting to get out. One final dimension to his
scenes worth mentioning is this bar / restaurant / ballroom location itself.
Everything here has unsubtle shades of THE
SHINING’S (1980) Overlook Hotel, Sheen’s bartender included (minus any demonic
evil, of course).
Jim falls in love with Aurora while she sleeps
and he goes through her life story. More accurately, his loneliness becomes too
much to handle because of all this. His interactions with Arthur aside, Jim has
been alone for over a year and is craving human companionship. Add to this the
fact that he’s learned how to re-create the same condition which caused his
sleeping pod to open, Jim spends a good amount of screen time struggling with
the moral conflict of whether or not to wake her up. If he does, she will be
destined to spend her entire life on board the ship, likely never reaching the
new world. While he debates this, he shaves and cleans himself up, saying No, I won’t do it, while slowly getting
ready to do it. It’s a well done sequence. Arthur the bartender thinks waking
her up is a wonderful idea, having no grasp of the implications such an act
would have, how it’s almost like murder.
Of course, Jim wakes her up and pretends it was a glitch as
with his own pod. She eventually finds out the truth in what I found to be a
very clever scene, but we’ll stop with all this plot rehashing here.
For a story which doesn’t put much focus on special effects,
what they had was quite stunning. PASSENGERS
is a beautiful film. Director Morten Tyldum (THE IMITATION GAME, 2014) didn’t go too crazy with the usual
tropes, keeping effects localized to the ship flying through a Hubble-Calendar
rendition of space, a few spacewalks and one stunning, claustrophobic scene
with Aurora in the swimming pool when the gravity cuts out.
The sets are the biggest accomplishments. Someday I’ll watch
the bonus features to see if these were built as they appear in the final
product (everything seems to be massively-constructed set pieces), or if they
used green screen shots. I don’t think so, but these days how can the viewer tell?
Like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY’S (1968) Discovery, the floors and ceilings curve
to reflect the circular world required for a ship to have simulated gravity - at
least in theory. I’m looking forward to the day when we get to prove this out in
real life.
Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt have a great chemistry
together. As much as the teasers tried to convince us there would be plenty of
steam, there was only one love scene, and it was a relatively tame PG-13. I’m
fine with that, the two have too much of a sister/brother vibe with their
audience for any graphic visuals to not be awkward. Although there is sex, the
scene is restrained with well-timed fadeouts. All of this enhances the effectiveness
of their performances since the actors have to act to convey attraction, not just show just body parts. Besides, there
is more to this relationship than just physical attraction. PASSENGERS is a love story told from an
isolation-brings-people-together vantage, rather than two souls finding each
other across a crowded room. Pratt’s personal physique oscillates film to film,
from buff sex symbol to slightly overweight everyman. Here he leaned just a bit
towards this latter side, making his character project more realism on screen.
Lawrence always looks real, for lack
of a better word. Even so, both are still quite beautiful. The casting director
could have chosen actors with more bumps and lumps, but this wouldn’t have fed our
escapist visual appetites – or Hollywood’s assumption of them (though they’re
right, let’s be honest).
Overall, the two played well together. One minor complaint might
be that Jim and Aurora are both uber-nice
people - one slightly more devious than the other but for good (if not purely
ethical) reasons, and one really, really angry later on, also for good reason.
There was conflict, especially when Aurora learns what happened, but not as
much as one would expect.
Laurence Fishburne (THE
MATRIX, 1999, BLACKISH TV
series) is always a welcome sight, and his Gus Mancuso is an important – if not
a bit convenient - bit of deus ex machina
introduced late into the film as a member of the crew who is woken as things
begin to go awry on the ship from issues that have been occurring in the ship since
the original meteor shower. Fishburne’s role is mostly to fill in the blanks with
what is happening and make sure our heroes have the tools to tackle it. I
didn’t let this bother me, obvious as it was, and am not sure they could have
done this bit any differently to get to where they wanted to go. Besides, it’s
Laurence Fishburne. He’s awesome.
In the end, PASSENGERS
is a romance wrapped in spaceships and bartender androids, but still a romance
at its core. It works as such, but holds its own as sci-fi and so appeals to
both people on the couch. I enjoyed this latter aspect more than the romance – some
behaviors of one character near the end seemed less a valid response than a
convenient way of wrapping up the emotional threads before the film ends. Ask
me in the comments and I’ll share specifics. Aside from these cracks where characters
and behaviors are forced into the plot to fit the narrative, versus the other
way around, writer Jon Spaihts (PROMETHEUS,
2012, DOCTOR STRANGE, 2016) has put
together a clever story which kept my interest beginning to end. Unlike many
science fiction movies, this is one you and your significant other might both enjoy,
each finding different things to like about it.
I give it three star-crossing lovers out of five.