Passengers

Dir: Morten Tyldum

2016

**

A Morten Tyldum directed thriller in space starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence had me excited. The trailer certainly cemented that excitement. While I wasn't a huge fan of The ImitationGame, the film I regard as the most over-rated film of 2014, I did enjoy Tyldum's 2011 thriller Headhunters. I thought maybe a Headhunters type story in a spaceship sounded good and it’s kind of what I hoped and expected from Passengers. The trailer lied. I'm glad the trailer didn't give too much of the story away but it ended up being woefully misleading but after watching it I see it was for good reason. The story is quite troubling, the big issue is sort of tackled but the end result is quite shocking and horrifyingly glossed over. The CGI is brilliant and I loved what they did with the concept and ship they are on. Personally I would always go to the mighty Red Dwarf or Silent Running if I want an 'alone and marooned in space' fix but Passengers got it so right in the first half hour, I thought I was in for a treat. The story is just so morally wrong I just couldn't get behind it. When the story's crime became unpunished and accepted I lost all respect for it, indeed, I felt quite disgusted. I'm not surprised the story has been in development hell all these years, no one was able to fix the glaring problem with it and that is certainly true of the end result. It could be said that to take a film such as this too seriously is ridiculous but personally I'm a little disturbed by the lack of backlash the film received. There were a few reviews that pointed out the gross problems with it but I would have expected far more conversation regarding it. Maybe no one saw it, there were better and bigger films out at the same time but my fear is that it was seen and accepted. Not necessarily accepted as the thrilling sci-fi it was advertised as but accepted that the actions of one particular character was okay, given the situation he found himself in. To be honest, it opens up a brilliant moral question, I just hated the way the question was answered and how the film was concluded. Pratt and Lawrence were great in their roles and I wonder whether the penny only dropped after it was edited. I'm not going to give the story away in this review but it has me worried that many people won't question it. It's natural to reject a film because it's not what you thought it was or if it doesn't turn out to be your personal cup of tea but it is important to voice your disapproval when you think a film crosses the line and tries to make the unacceptable acceptable. The sad thing is that the film just needed a slight tweak for it to have been brilliant. Change the ending completely and you could have been left with a strikingly original sci-fi with a hauntingly brilliant conclusion. Instead it feels like a creepy Disney film that gets it so wrong you have to wonder about the people who wrote it, made it, released it and ever thought it was a good idea. They are not the sort of people I'd ever want to be stuck in a lift with, that's for sure. Deeply unsettling and pretty far from the romantic film it thinks it is.