A new year may have already started, but the films of 2016
will keep trickling into Rochester theaters throughout the next month. But while
they make their way here, I’m still catching up on the massive number of new
movies released over Christmas week (eight in total), including “Passengers,”
from director Morten Tyldum (“The Imitation Game”).
The movie
has been in development for years, in fact its script made it to the Black List
— the yearly survey naming the best unproduced screenplays currently making the
studio rounds — all the way back in 2007. “Passengers” is set aboard the
starship Avalon, a ship making a 120-year journey to a new planetary settlement
called Homestead II, when two of its thousands of passengers are awakened far
too early.
The film
would be a perfectly fine entry in the big-budget, sci-fi action genre, but
there’s an essential element of the basic premise that’s been excluded from the
film’s marketing. This detail raises some intriguing moral questions that the
filmmakers clearly don’t know how to handle, as they settle for transitioning “Passengers”
into a big, silly action movie to avoid actually dealing with them. But in
order to get into some of these issues, I’m going to have to reveal some major
plot points. So if you don’t want the movie spoiled for you, read no further.
A
malfunction in the ship’s sleep chamber causes Jim (Chris Pratt) to be awakened
90 years before the Avalon reaches Homestead II. With the rest of the
passengers and crew still in cryostasis, Jim knows he
will end up dying long before reaching the ship’s final destination. He tries
everything he can to fix his situation, but is ultimately unsuccessful. He spends
an entire year completely alone, save for an android bartender (Michael Sheen)
that’s his only companion. As desperation and loneliness eat away at him, Jim
begins to consider suicide.
Then one
day, he sees Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence), another passenger still in her sleep
chamber, and he’s captivated by her. Reading her files and watching her
personal videos, he learns that she’s a journalist. Eventually Jim convinces
himself that he’s in love with her, so he decides to wake her up.
Jim spends
time wrestling with this decision, knowing that waking Aurora up will doom her
to the same fate that he was so desperate to avoid, but he goes ahead with it
anyway. Once awakened, Aurora goes through the same desperation that Jim did a
year prior, but eventually settles down, because at least they have each other.
For a time,
Tyldum treats the film’s premise with intelligence. As Jim and Aurora fall in
love (not that they have many other options), we wonder how things will play
out if she finds out their relationship is based on one unforgivable act. When
she does eventually learn the truth — not from Jim, but because Arthur
accidentally tells her — her reaction is given the proper seriousness. Aurora
calls him a murderer, and she’s absolutely right: Jim may have been desperate,
but his ultimate decision amounts to “I don’t want to die alone, so I’m making
you die with me.”
But then the
film abruptly shifts gears. Unbeknownst to Jim and Aurora, crucial systems on
the Avalon have continued to malfunction, spelling disaster for everyone on
board. Suddenly the film becomes a race against time as the pair must work
together to save the day. The film’s interesting ethical questions are swept
aside in favor of turning the plot into something much more conventional. These
developments serve to negate Jim’s terrible actions, but it’s a cheat.
The
character of Aurora is treated like a rat in a maze, as writer Jon Spaihts (“Doctor Strange”) gradually closes off every
narrative pathway available to her. From the moment Aurora learns about Jim’s
deception, everything about the plot is designed in a way to justify what he
did and make her fall in love with him anyway. He may have cyber stalked her
and manipulated her into spending eternity with him, but the film rewards him
for his actions.
Worst of
all, the film buys into Jim’s belief that they’re meant for one another. And
because he’s Chris Pratt, the audience is supposed to be ok with his. One
audience member near me audibly gasped and whispered “Oh, Arthur…” when he lets
Jim’s secret slip, as though the robot was the one doing something wrong by
cluing Aurora into the fact that her lover’s a creep.
But Pratt
and Lawrence are movie stars, and “Passengers” only works as well as it does
because they’re charming and appealing — Pratt’s charisma is the major reason
that Jim doesn’t immediately come across as a complete monster. It’s always
going to be at least somewhat enjoyable to watch gorgeous people do interesting
things in gorgeously designed sets (and the production design by Guy Hendrix Dyas is pretty fantastic), but all that prettiness still
can’t cover up the film’s inherent ickiness.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A review of “Hidden Figures” will be posted on Sunday, January 8.
This article appears in Jan 4-10, 2017.
