Passengers is a Voyage Best Missed

Two “passengers” find love in a disappointing and ordinary story

Allan Sainz

Staff Writer

    Morten Tyldum’s “Passengers” was released on December 21, 2016. The film tries to pull together the allure of science fiction and a love story as beautiful as the Titanic. In what would seem to be an interesting story of love, selfishness, and space turned out to be a colorless story.

    The film takes place on a spaceship taking off from Earth to a new and better planet called Homestead II. The ship is filled with 5,000 passengers who are in suspended animation and will awaken four months prior to their arrival to Homestead II.

    The entirety of the movie is plagued with both inconsistent cinematography and uninteresting character development. The majority of the film is focused on the male lead Jim, played by Chris Pratt, who finds himself awake 90 years too early, and Aurora, played by Jennifer Lawrence, who is awakened by Jim. I would say that the CGI of the exterior of the ship and outer space make up for the blandness of both Jim’s and Aurora’s dull and boring characters but I would be lying.

    One aspect that kept angering me was the amount of slow paced and boring scenes. More than half of the film was dedicated to displaying Jim’s lonely and dull life without any other humans. This proved to be a terrible mistake as well because the only “action” the film showed during this part was a futuristic video game dance floor, an advanced basketball court, and robots aboard the ship.

     Additionally, the theme of science-fiction within this adorably awful love story is extremely unoriginal and lacks any creativity. The idea of a ship going to another planet after Earth has been overpopulated, overpriced, and difficult to live in is overused and ordinary. The only uniqueness I could find within the story was the climax of the film; Jim enters the fusion reactor, risking his life to save the space vessel from exploding.

    Jim and Aurora’s love story is completely overdone and simple. If anything, the highlight of their story is Jim waking Aurora from her suspended animation (essentially killing her before she can also reach Homestead). Other than that, their love is superficial and vacuous.

    Overall, the movie presented slow, boring scenes filled with a variety of futuristic science fiction. However, the science fiction poured within this love story tended to be bland, familiar, and sterile.

    Rating: 5/10 stars