Passengers 7/10

I love sci – fi of almost any sort, and the premise behind this is exactly the type of sci – fi I grew up with. What if on a 90 year journey to a new world you are awoken sometime in the middle and now face the prospect of having to live the rest of your life in an empty albeit luxurious ship. Surrounded by comfort and extravagance you will no doubt still feel lonely, so how do you deal with that?

In a way its a little like Omega Man, the film I am Legend was based on, both relying on the ‘last man on earth’ plot where we investigate what a man left alone will do. The common denominator being the inevitable feelings of despair and loneliness, providing the catalyst to which all action he will do from thereon is justified against.

And that’s the problem with this movie, because the protagonists’ action was unacceptable. He awakens another passenger because he is supposedly infatuated with her based on videos about her – which make you roll your eyes because of course you’ll want to wake someone who looks like that regardless. The action of waking her up and being made to believe it’s because he likes her persona reminds me of the old joke about watching porn because of the story. It strains the suspension of disbelief necessary in all sci – fi.

But wait, there’s half a movie left so maybe it will work out in the end. Unfortunately it spends that hour or so with them running around the ship trying to fix something or other. The final act where she finally forgives him feels forced still because even if she admits she says she cannot live without him, it still doesn’t justify what he did. He still needlessly woke her up, he still made a decision on her life without her consent, and lied to her about it at that. That’s not ok.

Other than that, Jennifer Lawrence is just a presence to behold, and Michael Sheen is amazing as well.

To end the movie in an unnecessarily weird twist, Andy Garcia was in both the last two seconds of the movie and the trailer. This should have been removed as it leaves the audience puzzled as to what he was doing there, and as a rule of thumb if it doesn’t help the story in any way just drop it altogether as it will just distract from the story.

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