Review of Passengers, directed by Morten Tydlum

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I feel like a lot of my blog introductions, especially when it comes to movies, have been lamenting on the fact I don’t have a ton of time lately. I used to work as a film critic (which, in fact, was so incredibly underpaid that I now make more off of this blog’s display ads than I ever did publishing anywhere else), and then when I was in graduate school I was writing a lot about film, so I used to watch so many movies.

But now I work an 8-5, come home, and then doom scroll my evenings away instead of watching the movies I used to love so dearly. And recently I realized I want to stop doing that, so I’ve set limits on my phone and am fully prepared to sit back and watch more movies and read more books in order to feed my brain.

Something I’ve been trying to do is that when there’s a movie that interests me, I end up just pressing play and seeing what’s up with it. That’s how I ended up watching Passengers during a work night—I had no interest in seeing the movie until I randomly saw it was added to Netflix, then decided it was time.

Let’s get into the review!

When one man wakes up decades too early on a spaceship, he wakes up a woman in order to cure his loneliness.

This film takes place on a ship called Avalon, which, after 120 years, is going to go to a planet where its occupants can start their new lives. Everyone on the ship is in hibernation pods, including the crew, but when an asteroid hits it, one man wakes up: Jim. On Earth he was a mechanical engineer, but for now, when he realizes there are 90 years before the ship arrives to the planet, he freaks out.

He tries breaking into the crew room and fails, while the robots on the ship are unable to comprehend anything happening and people waking up early. He decides to spend his days living out his best life (or as best as it can be) on the ship, but after a year he craves a real human to talk to. After debating suicide, he spots a beautiful woman inside of a pod.

As he stalks the logs he realizes her name is Aurora and she’s a writer. He wants to wake her up to keep him company, but realizes that’s unethical and will end her life as she expects it on the planet, but then he stages it like a pod malfunction and goes through with it. At first Aurora freaks out at the fact she’s going to die on this ship, but gradually comes to terms with the situation and begins writing about it.

Eventually the two fall in love with each other, but when his android buddy accidentally reveals that Jim woke up her up, it leads to Aurora feeling betrayed and angry at him. She even attacks him at one point, then starts avoiding him on the ship. But then something else happens: the chief officer wakes up from his pod.

The group enters the bridge room and sees that there’s damage across the ship. If they don’t fix it, then the entire ship is going to die. Gus becomes sick and they realize he’s dying due to his pod failure. With only hours to live, he gives the duo his code and ID badge before passing away.

They enter the area and discover the asteroid collision that woke up Jim caused some major damage in the hull and power plant. Together they start fixing as much as they can, but then Jim has to go out and do a spacewalk in order to fix the power plant. He has to stay out there while Aurora is outside, and they have an honest conversation.

Turns out she still has feelings for him and is deeply afraid of something happening. After they do their work, he’s sucked into space when his tether breaks. His spacesuit is also leaking oxygen, but Aurora manages to get him back inside. She revives him on the ship, as he dies, and they discover they fixed the ship properly.

They go to bury Gus, then they learn that the Autodoc can be a hibernation pod. Jim tells Aurora to use it, but she denies that chance, saying she’d rather stay with Jim. Almost ninety years later, the crew wakes up to find a tree, vegetation, and a cabin in the middle of the main concourse.

Aurora leaves behind a recording describing their life, as they’re no longer with the occupants of the ship.

Overall Thoughts

I honestly came into this movie with little to no expectations, and I was pleasantly surprised. I think if I came in with actual expectations I might’ve been a little disappointed, as I thought overall this movie lacked any real tension or problems that made me worry for the characters.

It’s kind of a cute film if you’re into romance, but for me I found it to just be there. I also thought the romance in this film was a little weird because of how it started. Like if I found out a guy pretty much ruined my life by falling in love with me while asleep, I would be more than ready to throw myself off of that ship.

Like kudos to her, but that would not be me, nor do I find it realistic in many different ways. I can see how other people might love this movie because of that though—and that’s okay, movies and books are about escapism a lot of the time.

Go watch this if you haven’t already and are interested. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but I could see someone else really loving this.

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