An interplanetary Titanic

Film review: Passengers

MANILA, Philippines – With such films as the historical drama The Imitation Game under his belt, Norwegian director Morten Tyldum saw Passengers as the romantic outer space epic he just had to direct. Touted as some interplanetary Titanic with the requisite love from opposite ends of the tracks blossoming, much was also made of the pairing of Jennifer Lawrence with Chris Pratt, two of the brighter young stars of Hollywood today. While the film has scale coupled with intimacy, there is a nagging ethical dilemma that holds back the plot line from becoming truly successful — and the film is really two “animals,” with the latter half much more engrossing.

Sometime in the future, the spaceship Avalon is transporting 5,000 passengers and crew to the planet Homestead II. A journey of 120 years, the passengers are all in pods of induced hibernation when some malfunction causes one lowly engineer, Jim (Chris), to inexplicably awaken — 90 years too early. What follows is a sci-fi variation of the Castaway and The Martian, with Jim’s only companion is a bar-tending droid named Arthur (Michael Sheen). When he spies Aurora (Jennifer) asleep in her pod, he discovers she is the daughter of a famous writer, and is traveling to Homestead II to write about the experience herself. Through her video captures that he gains access to, he believes he is in love, and through technical wizardry, manages to awaken her. What makes the rest of the first half is their courting game.

The second half is infinitely more entertaining. Aurora becomes terribly upset when she discovers it was not some accident that caused her to awaken with the dismal prospect of dying before reaching Homestead. Complicating matters is the knowledge that there is some fatal malfunction in progress that imperils the fate of all those on board. Here obviously is the attempt to somehow find some justification for the truly creepy action taken by the person who we are still being asked to treat as a hero, Jim.

There are some wonderful eye-popping scenes, such as when doing laps in the pool on board the spaceship, they suddenly lose gravity. But it’s the ethical sleight of hand that mires the film as something that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

While we are constantly fed scraps that try to exonerate Jim — one is comparing him to a drowning man who will, in desperation, bring someone down with him — we can’t escape the fact that by “awakening” Aurora, he did effectively “murder” her.

Much is made of the themes of loneliness, of human contact and interaction, and even the need to love and be loved; but in the end, the character who I missed when leaving the theater, was the droid Arthur.