PASSENGERS
** (out of four)
DIRECTED BY Morten Tyldum
STARS Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt
It becomes clear before long that the futuristic sci-fi outing Passengers, aka Grab ‘Em By the Pussy: The Movie, could only have been written by a man. The picture stars Chris Pratt as Jim Preston, one of the 5,000 hibernating passengers aboard a spacecraft heading to a habitable planet 120 light years away. A glitch causes Jim to awaken 90 years too soon; realizing he will die alone long before the ship reaches its destination, he decides to wake up a hottie, Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), to keep him company.
It’s an interesting if troubling premise, and scripter Jon Spaihts initially plays fair with the moral implications of such a scenario. But the final stretch finds the picture copping out at every turn — not only by having the characters (particularly Aurora) make ridiculous choices straight down the line but also by steering right into absurd action-film conventions. The film’s visual design is excellent, but even it gets trumped by the story’s icky implications.
This article appears in Dec 21-27, 2016.
You misunderstand, or weren’t paying attention (shouldn’t a movie reviewer pay attention?) to the reason Jim woke Aurora up. He read her writing and fell in love with her persona; this was explicitly stated. There are no icky implications. Watch it again…
Aint that sexist, what you are saying is a women can never desire a man? A women can never feel loneliness to the point where they are willing to murder someone to end that loneliness? That women don’t like companionship just as much as a man does?
An like many other premise ultimately Jim decides to accept loneliness, to accept he will never see another human being in his life and offer her a way back to her life, a way see to see the future. Aurora could have had her revenge, she could have punished him but she choose not, we don’t truly know if they spent their life in happiness, as friends, as lovers, or just as passengers on a ship living their lives, what we do know is that Jim took a liking to gardening and did a bit of wood carpentry. I would like to think that Aurora spent most of her time writing novels, stories and other bits.
I actually suspect if this was a horror movie many reviewers would have called it derivative and boring, if it was a action movie they would have said the same. I would love to have seen what the critics would write if the roles was reverse, Aurora was the one that was woken up by accident, she was the one that couldn’t spend longer than a year alone, that she was the one that woke Jim, that he was the one that went to her room and started beating her up.
Why do I suspect the reviewers would have had sympathy with her, would have understood her view, would have attack Jim for beating her up and even accepted their reconciliation in the end.
Love the comments from people being like, “hey, he was in love with her so that’s why he woke her up. Not a problem.” Isn’t that what stalkers say? “I was in love with her so I followed her around then abducted her. It’s not icky; it’s love.”
Thanks for writing, Titus. And thanks for restoring my faith in humanity — the previous comments from the two rape apologists / stalker apologists left me sadly shaking my head.
Matt Brunson So stalking is to admire someone from the distant and to try and learn about that person before introducing yourself to herself? or turn it around is it wrong for a women to get to find out a few details about a man before introducing themselves to them?
Let put it this way Matt, have you ever ask a friend about a girl before talking to her, or ask her girlfriends about her dislikes and like are? Have you ever went and look at their twitter, google plus, facebook profiles etc etc before asking a girl out?
There wasn’t any rape in this film. There was consensual sex throughout this film. An the stalking was nothing most people in teens, twenties and thirties haven’t done in the age of social media and the internet.
People in love make ridiculous choices, by the end of the film contrary to her better judgement, Aurora was just as much in love with Jim.
Ok, dude. Matt’s not really the first to point this out so it’s not like everyone else in the world was just perfectly fine with this movie. Most reviewers and audience members were pretty strongly on the side of “this movie is gross” but you keep fighting the good fight. Stalkers everywhere are getting a bad name, am I right?
Titus Most reviewers love jumping on bandwagons. I have had a similar discussions on other reviews so I’m not just picking on Matt.
Actually if you accept he was a stalker, which I don’t, then this film actually give them a good name, after all he choose to give up his prey, to give the person he fell in love with by watching her videos, reading her writings and eventually by talking to her. Not many real world stalkers would do that.
Oh my god…see, I didn’t call him a stalker. I said that the thing people were saying in response to someone calling out major plot points in this movie as grossly mishandled sounded like what stalkers say to justify their actions: it’s ok because I O.M.G love this person. That was my point. Everyone making apologies had the same rationale as that. They basically said that a man doing terrible things to a woman is fine if he thinks he really loves her.
Can we stop now? We’re not going to change each other’s minds and I’m tired of getting email notifications for this.