It's nice that Passengers has a polished look to it in terms of production design. The spaceship the two lead characters inhabit is nicely brought to life by way of some solid looking sets and I enjoy that the various technological marvels to be found on the ship are treated in the same way Futurama and Star Wars treated their own futuristic gizmo's; as everyday nuisances, in the same way we might gripe about an iPad mildly malfunctioning despite such a device being unthinkable to exist even as late as a decade ago. That's a unique enough approach that also leads to some brief diversions into dark humor that I wish Passengers had utilized more instead of just dipping its toes into the waters of mildly dark humor two or three times.
Then again, I wish a lot of things about Passengers had been done differently, because all of those component sets and visual effects are in service of one disastrously tone-deaf story. As I said in the disclaimer at the start of this piece, Passengers has been telling a big o'l bald-faced lie in its trailers and various commercials. From the very first scene of this movie, the actual story is revealed to concerns Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), whose been awakened from his hibernation pod on a spaceship that's only 30 years into a 120 year long voyage. Jim, it turns out, has awakened far too early and for a whole year he does the whole Cast Away routine of living on his own on a big o'l spaceship.
Then, after being alone for so long, Jim decides he wants some company. So he awakens a lady he's become obsessed with named Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence) and then lies to her by telling her that her hibernation pod also malfunctioned, how about that. I assure you, this creepy as hell plotline plays out in an even more disturbing fashion in the movie proper, since, once Aurora wakes up, she and Jim begin to have a romantic relationship. The duo go on various dates to the various recreational areas on the spaceship that the movie wants to be cute but the entire crux of the plot (that Jim woke up this woman without any real concern for her well-being) looms over the cutsie-poo antics happening on-screen.
The incredibly dark plotline is not handled in anywhere near a suitable fashion, instead coming off as something a Reddit-dwelling Men's Rights Activist would come up with as his version of a romantic story, one where a handsome "Nice Guy" gets a lovely lady as a prize to treasure. Hell, a Men's Rights Activist writing this movie would at least give a logical explanation for why Aurora is given zero depth as a human being. Her shallow personality traits (she's a writer like her dad, which has no real bearing on the plot) aren't even numerous enough to fill out a Tinder profile. Plus, she gets the whole "Hard working lady learns to find actual fulfillment in a man" character arc (one of her friends in a recorded message urges her to stop working and find happiness through someone else) that only furthers the ickiness of the entire project.
Why anyone would think of wasting the talents of Jennifer Lawrence on this part that's basically all about how the character she plays has no individuality to herself is beyond me. Both Lawrence and Chris Pratt get their best attributes as actors severely undercut by the story, with Lawrence never getting the chance to exhibit any idiosyncratic facets that could Aurora interesting and Pratt being stuck playing a creeper instead of the sort of endearing goofball's he's most adept at portraying. To boot, the duo don't really have great chemistry either, which is kind of a big deal for a movie all about how two human beings click on a romantic level. Meanwhile, Laurence Fishburne gets wasted in a brief supporting role that offers a guy whose just oozes gravitas absolutely nothing to do.
Sure, Passengers is reasonably pretty to look at in terms of the special effects and sets it uses, but what good is all fo that if they're in service of such a poorly executed story? It feels like Passengers at one point desperately wanted to be this generation's big romantic love story, but what we get is an outright disaster from a story perspective, a one-sided romance robbing the woman in the romantic equation of all sense of individuality. If you thought the Harley Quinn/Joker romance in Suicide Squad was #RelationshipGoals, then Passengers is the movie for you. For everyone else in the human race, I'd suggest seeking out the numerous better movies the two lead actors of Passengers have starred in.
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