Passengers (2016)

[baumer]

Saw a second time. Upping my grade to 9/10

[Lordmandeep]

Useless film

 

D

[75Live]

On 12/28/2016 at 1:06 AM, filmlover said:

This is one half a good movie and one half a bad movie that adds up to a mediocre movie overall. I was actually with it for the first half (despite the Chris Pratt's character's questionable choices that makes the romance part of the movie a turn off), but then the second half dissolves into big-budget spectacle mostly thrown in because studio brass yelled "this expensive starry sci-fi romance doesn't have any action scenes! Add 'em!" The effects are great, but I was never invested in the characters, which the actors fail to draw much interest from: I thought Jennifer Lawrence was fine despite some moments of overacting, but Pratt is even more miscast here than he was in The Magnificent Seven (I'm starting to wonder if he really doesn't have much acting range). Outshining both of them is Michael Sheen in a supporting performance as a robot, but even his character doesn't fully live up to his scene-stealing potential. Overall, this left me feeling indifferent despite some nifty special effects (even though the spaceship looks like it could've been a unused sketch from WALL-E). C

 

this pretty much sums up my take on the film.  I liked the first half but the second half really dragged the film down for me.  

 

I don't read spoilers or the script, but the twist was obvious and given away in the trailers.  Even with that, that wasn't my issue with the film.  Although I do wish they touched upon it more and not just glossed over in a couple lines.  But that didn't hurt the film for me really.

 

Other than Michael Sheen, I don't think anyone was great acting-wise in the film.  I don't think the leads had the greatest chemistry either, but that wasn't that bad of a deal to me.  They were ok enough.

 

I probably have it around a C+ for right now after seeing it last night.  Not terrible, but nothing great either.

[Webslinger]

Perhaps lowered expectations are leading me to be generous, but I'll cut Passengers quite a bit of slack for the fact that I was taken with it for the majority of its running time. The central concept is inherently fascinating, and its execution through the first 70 or so minutes makes for an engrossing piece of hard sci-fi. Even amid some of the heavier subject matter, Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence shine, very ably carrying almost the entire narrative on their shoulders (with some help from Michael Sheen, whose comedic work as a bartender android hits the mark in every scene). However, once the film shifts gears into a more action-oriented third act, it becomes a noticeably weaker, less involving affair that feels extremely disconnected from the more cerebral proceedings that came before it.

 

B

[Dementeleus]

As I mentioned on WhatsApp, it took until the evening of December 31, but I finally found my JURASSIC WORLD of 2016.

 

I don't wish to endlessly trash something, so I'll say I liked the first 20 minutes (aside from the silly interior ship design), and I think the ship exterior was neat.

 

Maybe in time I'll mellow out enough to up my grade to a D.

[DeeCee]

I pretty much see all big budget Sci Fi in cinemas so I was extremely unspoilt for this. I obviously didn't read the leaked script, I haven't seen all of a trailer, avoided the thread here, haven't read any reviews and didn't even know Laurence Fishburne was in the movie. I had heard mention of a twist but my mind was going to more extreme twists like they never left Earth or were in some kind virtual reality. 

 

I really enjoyed it from the opening shot. I particularly loved the external design of the ship with the way the shield is structured and operates.  Granted, there was a couple of aspects to the physics that did bother me(using a gravity assist around a star at half of light speed and the structural stresses involved) but it wasn't  enough to throw me out of the movie. The in universe explanation for the internal design of the ship worked perfectly fine for me. This is the stage where human interstellar travel has reached the stage of today's 225,000 GT cruise liners.  I may be mistaken but I believe they smartly didn't date the movie. 

 

The performances by both Pratt and Lawrence were very good and Sheen was a standout as the android bar tender. Fishburne was solid as usual although he didn't have a huge amount to do.  I don't have a problem with the way the character arcs played out. The base premise of this is almost the old question of who would you have with you if you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life. 

 

In this case Jim had 5000 strangers to choose from although in the film it's more fate that leads him to Aurora.  He clearly made a horrible choice even though he agonised over it for more months that doesn't excuse what he did to her.  He also wasn't at times in the best state of mind. They had months to develop a relationship and when the truth came out Aurora's reaction was completely understandable and it was clearly weeks or more of zero communication before the crisis brought them back together (she was even locked in her room for 2 days without Jim noticing). 

 

Aurora was was lost on Earth and thought the journey to Homestead 2 and back again to a new century would define her life as a writer. Her father's writing came from a life of adventure and she thought this journey would inspire her own writing. However, through a horrible decision on the part of Jim she found something else on the journey.  Her character was given a choice at the end of the movie and in some ways it's a question of how much we as a viewer like her final choice as to whether or not we liked the film. 

 

Spoiler

Unless you're @Grand Moff Tele.  He just sucks the joy out of everything. 

 

I really enjoyed this. 

 

A-

 

Edited January 1, 2017 by DeeCee

[baumer]

Terrific review @DeeCee

[amelin]

This behemoth is a very worthwhile read:

 

This.https://t.co/tB0hNxxotQ

— Jon Spaihts (@jonspaihts) 1 januari 2017

 

Wall of text incoming (I tried and failed to cut this down any further ):

 

Quote

But the interesting values portrayed in this movie don’t stop with that troubling issue of forgiveness. There is also a surprising movement from seeking personal fulfilment to building relationships. When the movie starts, Jim is alone, and the movie is simply about his self-interest, his survival. When he accepts his fate, he moves on to all sorts of self-indulgence. This culminates in his waking of Aurora, a clear act of self-interest trumping love for others.

 

Aurora, similarly, begins in a way of life that is individually driven, atomistic. She leaves behind all her friends and the life she knew to pursue her career goals. One friend in particular gives her a weeping, heartfelt farewell that highlights the degree to which she is declaring her independence from other people. When she reaches the other world, and has experienced it, she plans on turning around and coming right back, cutting herself off from any relationships she has built there.

 

Over the course of the movie, both Jim and Aurora are confronted with their own self-centered individualism. With death and loneliness staring them in the face, they come to realize that they need other people, and that they are morally obligated to love other people. Love, not necessarily in the romantic sense, but in the sense of caring for another person, going out of one’s way to respect them, to protect them, and even to improve their life.

 

Others found the ending of the movie off-putting. Jim and Aurora didn’t get back into hibernation, didn’t solve that original problem and live to reach the colony. Doesn’t that mean they lost? But I would suggest that this is the entire point.

 

In today’s world of constant advertisement, of easy wish-fulfilment, of instant gratification, fast food, streaming entertainment, and endless information at our fingertips, we have come to view ourselves as consumers, and the world as a product. We are individuals who have desires that must be fulfilled, and the world exists to fulfil them. Jim wants a new world in which to build things. He should get it. Aurora wants to have adventures and to write things people will read. She should get it. But in Passengers, this is exactly what doesn’t happen. Given the chance at individual fulfilment, at erasing what Jim has done and going on to fulfil her dreams, she chooses not to. To those of us raised in an individualistic, consumerist society, this feels wrong. It feels insane. Doesn’t she realize that life will be so much better on the other side of hibernation? Of course she does. And she rejects it. Again, this could be read as bad gender politics, and if the movie was less self-aware, I might buy that. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on.

 

Over the course of the movie we have been repeatedly confronted with the vast emptiness of space, the fragile nature of human life in that void, the fragile nature of relationships involving flawed human beings. We have seen the horror of loneliness, been confronted with the inevitability of death, the shortness of our own brief lives.

 

If Aurora goes back to sleep, we know what that will do to Jim. More pointedly, Aurora knows. Aurora also knows the value of relationships, knows what that means because she has been threatened with death, offered the relationship that mitigated that pain, and then had it ripped from her in an unthinkable betrayal. Aurora also looks back to her father, looks back to the friends she has left behind, and we know that even in a life where there were other human beings, Aurora was lonely.

 

In Aurora’s choice, we are not being told that the guy should always get the girl. In Aurora’s choice, we are being told that relationships matter more than personal fulfilment. We are being told that the most important things in life are not our dreams or desires, but other people. We depend on them for survival, but they are also, as Jim came to realize early on, what makes survival worth it.

 

This realization comes about only when the characters are confronted by mortality. If the lesson stopped there, that would be more than enough. But it doesn’t.

 

While Jim and Aurora are still together, he asks her who she is writing for, if not for people she knows. At that point, it doesn’t matter who. She just wants to be read. But later on, when she comes to grips with the fact that she will die before anyone sees what she reads, she begins to speak of posterity. She is not writing for a future fame she will personally get to enjoy, but to leave something to future generations. She is leaving a legacy. In the end, having chosen to stay with Jim, that’s exactly what she has done. Her writing was not for personal glory, and it wasn’t just for Jim. She passed on her story the passengers who would awake long after they were gone. She left a legacy beyond death.

 

Just like the decision to stay with Jim, this a vaguely off-putting idea in our society. Again, we are often so radically individualistic, so focused on our own desires, that the idea that we would plant something and never live to see the harvest is all but unthinkable. Why do something if you won’t derive enjoyment from it? This idea is not present only in Aurora’s writing, but also in Gus looking past his own death to the good of Aurora and Jim, and the good of the ship. It is present in Jim and Aurora risking their lives to fix the ship, and to save one another when self-interest cries out against it. Throughout the movie we are confronted with death, and throughout the movie we are asked to look beyond it, to look to a future we will not live to enjoy. In this day and age, that’s a remarkable thing to do.

 

Together these three values of forgiveness, relationship, and legacy, all of which trump individual fulfilment, combine to create something far more wonderful: hope.

 

From the beginning of the movie, Jim is a tinkerer. He takes the world around him and wants to make it something more. When Aurora comes along, he is a given a new direction for his efforts. He creates a robot to communicate with her, he builds a model and a ring, and he plants a tree. He is fundamentally a builder, someone who wants to create something that will improve not only his own life, but the life of others. In the final scene, we see the results of this mentality. In their years together, Jim and Aurora built a garden in the main concourse, a green world filled with trees and birds and robots pulling vegetables out of the earth. In the midst of it all is a house, the house Jim wanted to build, the something new that there was no room for back in the old world. Jim and Aurora did not survive, but they built something worth having.

 

And that’s the true value of Passengers. It’s not just the story of Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence in space. It’s not just a rom-com, a sci-fi action flick, or even an interpersonal drama. It’s a story about how civilizations are built. In the beginning there were only two people staring death in the face. By the end there is a garden, a home, and a story for the future. Forgiveness, self-sacrifice, and a mind tilted towards legacy—these are the values of hope, and hope is what creates beauty.

 

After the year we just had, I can think of nothing more needful.

 

I'm personally not big on framing the values the movie presents as a lesson, because there's a moralizing aspect to that that I find difficult to swallow. I don't go to movies to be told how to live my life, and I don't think this movie is trying to do that, but these ideas really resonate with me. I consider myself an individualist, but I absolutely feel that, as this guy says, the most important things in life are not our dreams or desires, but other people. And that's probably at the heart of why I loved this movie.

[eXtacy]

I really liked this movie. Strongly disagree with the critics. Was entertaining from start to finish.

[Kvikk Lunsj]

On 12/23/2016 at 5:51 PM, Frozen said:

I think the movie would have worked better if he had the ability to wake up a passenger without knowing which one he'd wake up. The problem for me isn't so much him wanting to wake someone up because he wants a friend and doesn't want to die alone. That makes sense and I understand.

 

The problem for me is that he wants her as a sexual partner. He picks the hottest girl he can find, he reads her files, decides he is in love with her and never considers anyone else. No, this is the perfect girl for him. And he won't wake up anyone else because that doesn't benefit him (competition) and of course she has no say in the matter. What happens if she doesn't like him back or is not attracted to him? There is no other man for her to choose from. And what if she isn't looking for a boyfriend anyway? What if writing about this new planet is her first priority?

 

The fact that they made him want her as girlfriend/sex partner from the start is what ruined it for me. That turns it into a consent debate.

 

I am fine with his reason since he went a year with not talking to another human. I can't imagine going a year with no human contact.  By a year would not be thinking clearly you want someone. He saw this beautiful girl right after he decided not to kill himself. He had a reason not want to kill himself since he could look at this female. When he started to read up on her, he liked what he was reading. He could read books about an actual person. It made him feel alive again. 

[jb007]

Technically superb with an interesting screenplay. The performances by Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence are excellent. Chris Pratt's interaction with Michael Sheen (Arthur) was very good.

 

Liked it a lot. 

 

Rating: B+

[IndustriousAngel]

7/10, B+

very entertaining, but also rather superficial. I went in unspoilt and felt a bit let down by the rather pedestrian and kitschy resolution (my ladyfriend adored it though). I can see at least two paths the script didn't tread which would make it A material, but as it is, it's a completely satisfying B-movie.

[Tower]

I thought this might be one of those movies that I would like more than critics, but I was disappointed in the end.

 

I'll start from good parts though, Jim's decision to wake up aurora not only didn't bother me but I thought it was the best part of the movie. Seeing Jim slowly lose his mind from the loneliness over a whole year until finally going to such an extreme measure, felt believable. You can make the call that he was still wrong, but it isn't as if he was some random asshole that a day after waking up wanted some hot chick to have sex with so he woke her up without caring about her.

 

there was also some technology and interactions with the AI that was decent enough throughout the movie. The ship itself and the special effects all looked great, and the acting is fine.

 

As for the bad, it felt like they wanted to make a story about a couple dealing with being trapped on a spaceship but went lazy with the details of how they made the plot possible. It never made sense to me why they were supposed to wake up 4 months before arrival, why not just wake up when you get there and save having to build so many amenities on the ship? Why does Jim keep eating that shitty food he gets in the cafeteria when he could just eat at those good restaurants with the robowaiters, it just felt like they shoved that in to make a joke about the regular version versus the gold class. Also for a society that can make some pretty good AI, putting in a command that if the ship can tell that it will have critical failure it needs to wake up a crew member should be an obvious thing to have, instead the ship spends two years slowly malfunctioning until it would eventually just stops working entirely. 

 

Speaking of not caring about the ship falling apart, The humans seemed equally nonchalant about it. They spent all that time in a ship where clearly something was wrong and yet there is no indication that they tried to do anything about it, this is particularly true for Jim since he's an engineer and the main reason he even went on this trip is because he likes to fix things. 

 

The ending is very Hollywoody in the bad sense of the word. Aurora went from hating Jim to suddenly not being able to live without him, I just didn't find that "If you die, I die" line believable. When Aurora gets Jim back it just seems so cliche that the autodoctor just says that he's dead and makes no attempt to help him or even give any options and just leaves everything to Aurora (and of course he lives somehow anyway).

 

The movie overall felt disjointed, trying to fit a more blockbuster type ending with the story about two people stuck on a ship with each part hurting the other.

 

5/10

Edited January 8, 2017 by Tower

[amelin]

18 hours ago, IndustriousAngel said:

I can see at least two paths the script didn't tread which would make it A material, but as it is, it's a completely satisfying B-movie.

 

Do tell!

Edited January 9, 2017 by amelin

[IndustriousAngel]

29 minutes ago, amelin said:

 

Do tell!

Well, they could have gone the way of idea Sci-Fi and made the couple the Adam&Eve of a new planet (or go all Baxter and make them Adam&Eve of a new universe ...). Or they could have explored the emotional implications of the situation, making it an extremely focused psychothriller. And that's just the two ideas I had during the show ... with a little thinking, there should be a lot more interesting goals the plot could have evolved to. I really felt a bit dissatisfied with the vanilla resolution.

[JennaJ]

I ultimately felt that the studio really wanted a big action sequence they could use to entice the sci-fi action fans. I think they feared the idea of a movie that would be mainly a space romance centered around a moral dillema and its implications. That's too bad because the ending definitely takes this movie down a few notches (even though I still enjoyed it quite a bit).

 

I'm just gonna go ahead and hope the rumors of an alternative ending will prove correct and that it'll be released at some point.

i wish I could see what this movie would look like without studio notes, rewrites and test screen-induced changes.

[Goffe]

It is much more nuanced than I led to believe. Pratt and Lawrence are GREAT together and I was invested in their characters from start to finish, I really felt the weight of what they were going through.

 

Tyldum is one hell of a craftsman, and I shall not doubt him again. 85/100

Edited January 10, 2017 by Goffe

[Goffe]

On 12/25/2016 at 5:03 PM, Noctis said:

It's entertaining but it's so timid in delving deep into the themes it initially presents. It could have been fantastic but instead it's entertaining with a horrible character turn in the third act. He essentially took her life and yet she decides she's best suited to live off her years with him even when she had the chance in the end to go back to sleep?

 

I'm all for love and I'm sure it would have been difficult but he lost any moral ground by waking her up...

2

She fell in love with him, she learned why he did it, he accepted punishment not one, but two times. You don't stop loving someone just because your partner did something wrong, especially when that wrong was out of desperation.

 

I know I would have forgiven my romantic partner had I been in a similar situation. 

Edited January 11, 2017 by Goffe

[baumer]

I know it's easy for me to say this as I sit in my room, in front of my computer, but I've thought about this situation and if a beautiful woman woke me up, if she chose me to spend her life with, and I fell in love with her, and I was on the ship and had the life they were going to have, I honestly don't think I'd be mad.  I might be shocked for a bit, I might have conflicting feelings for a bit, but anger and spite and hatred, I don't think I would.

[Blankments]

Passengers is a film without an identity. It's got a seriously disturbed character at the heart of the film, and yet it wants to be a crowdpleaser. Tyldum and Spaihts jump back and forth at trying to do it all, despite they should clearly just pick one and stick with it. A wacky space comedy or a dark psychological sci-fi would've both been a lot more fascinating than what Passengers actually is. After the first half hour (which is admittedly interesting), the film completely loses its way with the actual catalyst for the plot being a compete mess. The rest of the film follows suit.

 

Pratt and Lawrence try to elevate their characters, but when one of them is playing one of the creepiest protagonists on screen and the other character has no personality, it's hard to blame them for their shortcomings. Sheen is fun as a robot, but everyone else is forgettable. At least Thomas Newman's score is here, functioning as a sequel of sorts to his work on WALL-E. It is the only thing about the film that's consistently quality, and at points, fooled this audience member into believing he was watching a better movie than he was.

 

Passengers is rough. Too afraid of being the trashy film it wants to be, yet too lazy to abandon its most troubling aspects, it's a big budget failure in many ways. One has to wonder why studios thought a space drama starring Lawrence and Pratt was even a good idea, seeing how everyone thinks comedy when they look at both actors. It would not be fair to fault Passengers for not being a completely different movie, but it would be fair to call it the soulless product it is, where only the musical score is worth noticing. A waste of every actor involved's talents, and a waste of time for every audience member it receives. C-