Passengers: lost on a space ship with a lover for 90 years, but no real chance to play Adam and Eve
Passengers, directed by Morten Tyldum and written by Jon Spaihts, turns out to be a rather formulaic dramatic thriller, with indie-sized cast, set on a spaceship (maybe it has an Alcubierre Drive), but it could have just as well have been a hotel, casino, or cruise liner, even the Titanic.
The ship has three interlaced living threads, all linked together in an interesting lattice; but inside it’s mostly cookie cutter luxury stuff. A Trump-like corporation sells passage to other inhabited colony planets, where people can start over. (It must own the planets.) They need to be prepared for “colonial living”, something that reminds me of the era-defined colonies on the rama-station in my own screenplay “Epiphany”. The people who escape earth do so by having enough money. In my screenplay, they have to be pretty and “angelic” or fundamentally virtuous enough. There seems to be no room for losers, but that’s Trump.
The gig is that you hibernate for the 120 years it takes to get there. You wake up four months early, and take your training.
The “situation” is that mechanical engineer Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) wakes up when his hibernation chamber fails, after the ship goes through an asteroid swarm. It’s still 90 years to landing. He’s entertained by a droid robot bartender with no legs (Martin Sheen), but has to go it alone for fifteen months. In time, he gets too curious about a female Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence) he sees in the chamber, and, yes, he wakes her up and takes away her intended life, which had been to travel to another world, write a book, and then return, assuming Earth really does have a civilization 250 years from now (maybe a world like “Revolution” after an EMP attack). She also finds she is writing about herself for the first time.
Eventually a couple other character work in, especially the engineer Gus (Laurence Fishburne). Andy Garcia appears briefly as the captain.
One way the plot could have gone would be Putin-like: wake up everybody else and make them have enough children en route. That would require too much cast. Instead, we have a solution a bit like that of “Gravity” (an maybe even “Wicked“).
There are a couple interesting points about technology. One is that the issue of “open access” comes up, in that Preston needs “access” to the technical manuals to help fix things (without having to deal with a paywall). Another is how they do the artificial gravity – it’s not explained well, but it doesn’t seem to be centrifugal. There’s a swimming pool scene that shows what happens when gravity is suddenly lost. Oh, the ship has a fusion reactor, maybe designed by Taylor Wilson. It makes a flyby of red giant Arcturus (some unreliable astronomy).
A couple of films for comparison would be “All Is Lost” (with Redford) and “Castaway” (with Tom Hanks and tennis ball “Wilson”).
Pratt, now 36 and Minnesota born, looks good again. I remember him as Bright in Everwood (starting in 2002), and met him (with Gregory Smith) at an event at King of Prussia mall in August 2005.
Name: “Passengers“
Director, writer: Morten Tyldum. Jon Spaihts
Released: 2016/12
Format: 2.35:1, 3D
When and how viewed: Regal Ballston Common, sneak, small crowd, 2016/12/22
Length: 116
Rating: PG-13
Companies: Columbia, Village Roadshow
Link: official site
(Posted: Thursday, Dec. 22, 2016 at 11:45 PM EST)