Review: Passengers
I went into this movie slightly nervous as I heard that it wasn’t what the trailers made it out to be. However also based on what I heard, I didn’t think this would be an issue for me. This is like The Village for me all over again. A stroke of fate had me watching an interview with Sigourney Weaver the night before seeing The Village and I was prepared for it to be more of a romance than a thriller and I wasn’t disappointed. Thanks to the complaints of my good friend Tara I was prepared for this movie to be more of a character study than a thriller and once again was not disappointed. This could be a lesson in marketing…
Some lies hurt us all.
If you’ve seen the trailer you may assume that this movie is about two people being released from their hibernation pods too early on a spaceship to a distant planet. From soundbites in the trailer you may then assume that perhaps something nefarious is going on and it may not have been a mistake that they were awoken and perhaps there is a conspiracy afoot! Or something like that.
You’ll find out within the first 10 minutes or so that this is not the case. Yes they are woken up too early and the reasons for that are fairly clear from the beginning, but I’ll leave you to experience the details as they unfold, as I do think that is important to the intake of the movie.
As a character study of both the main characters I found the movie fairly interesting. In some ways it was predictable, but overall I considered it an enjoyable experience. One of my favourite things in the movie is the presentation of the future. The biggest pet peeve I have with futuristic movies is going too far. Specifically I mean too far with their idea of how different the people of the future will dress and engage each other etc. There were some slight changes in dress and clear upgrades in technology but all of them not too far removed from what any of us would anticipate.
What is the purpose of sideways vertical highways? If nothing else why sideways, they move forward on the ground. You know why? ‘Cause Tom Cruise has to jump around on precarious crap that’s why!
Do I think a ship in the future taking over 100 years to get anywhere would have some crew wake up and maintain the ship on occasion? And therefore have a way to put a person back into hibernation on board? Sure! That sounds like a good idea. The circular logic of ‘but they be failsafe’ is beyond annoying. There is no way we get that far in the future consistently assuming nothing breaks. But then again we should never underestimate the human race in their capacity for poor judgement.
‘Nuff said.
The subject matter and impression of the characters and their relationship is really up to the viewers’ discretion to decide how they feel. To me the movie is about loneliness and connection. This is a ship with just over 5000 people on it including passengers and crew who have chosen to take this voyage knowing that no one they know will be alive when they awake (except of course other crew members for the 200-300 crew), not that it matters much anyway given that they will be on a very distant planet unable to be reached in any kind of realistic timeframe. This doesn’t necessarily mean these are ‘broken’ people or people running from anything. I know more than one person who would do it for the spectacular nature of it alone. But it does make for a look into the question of what we’re looking for individually and from each other.
Now while I did find it interesting, one of the many things I consider when rating a movie is re-watch-ability. The worth of movie to be re-watched is in itself based on many factors. Are there beautiful visual scenes like Inception? Are the characters rich and diverse and full of intricacies to be explored like Girl, Interrupted? In this movie unfortunately neither is true. The character study while interesting is a little 2 dimensional. There isn’t really much else to be explored, we know their motivations, we understand their feelings, and if anyone doesn’t, I don’t think there is much else to find in there to inform their thoughts on the matter. Visually it was nice, some pretty nifty shots of space and close up of a star, but nothing earth shattering to make us have to go back again and again to take in the majesty.
It all kind of looks like this.
Overall I think this movie is worth a watch – if you know what you’re getting yourself into. However if you never see it, I don’t think your life will suffer…and I do think that about some movies.
I give it 3.5 hibernation pods out of 5.