Passengers (2016)

[Adam Lenhardt]

Title: Passengers

Tagline: There is a reason they woke up.

Genre: Drama, Romance, Science Fiction

Director: Morten Tyldum

Cast: Fred Melamed, Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Andy García, Aurora Perrineau, Kristin Brock, Julee Cerda, Matt Corboy, Emma Clarke, Jon Spaihts, Vince Foster, Kara Flowers, Conor Brophy, Alpha Takahashi, Matthew Wolf, Jean-Michel Richaud, Curtis Grecco, Joy Spears, Lauren Farmer, Tom Ferrari, Emerald Mayne, Quansae Rutledge, Desmond Reid, Chris Edgerly, Jesus Mendoza, Kimberly Battista, Inder Kumar, Ivana Vitomir, Shelby Taylor Mullins, Kevin Tan, Robert Larriviere, Nazanin Boniadi, Marie Burke

Release: 2016-12-21

Runtime: 116

Plot: A spacecraft traveling to a distant colony planet and transporting thousands of people has a malfunction in its sleep chambers. As a result, two passengers are awakened 90 years early.

Jon Spaihts's script was included in the 2007 Black List, and has been bouncing around Hollywood ever since. Keanu Reeves and Reese Witherspoon were attached to star at one point. The bones of the story go back to the timeless scenario of two people stranded on a desert island. Even the science fiction analog is an old chestnut at this point: The Avalon is on a very long journey to colonize a distant world. Even with the advanced propulsion, the journey is longer than any human lifetime. So the entire population about the ship has been placed into 120 years of hibernation. But 30 years in, an apparent malfunction with the hibernation pods yanks two passengers out of stasis much too soon. The massive ship has more than enough resources to keep them alive, but they are separated from the rest of humanity by decades in either direction. The director is Morten Tyldum, the only Norwegian ever nominated for a Best Directing Oscar.

Here's the trailer:


Reportedly, this is the most expensive movie the notoriously stingy Tom Rothman has ever greenlight. Chris Pratt is getting $12 million, while Jennifer Lawrence netted one of the largest paydays for an actress ever: $20 million against 30 percent of the profit. Most of the running time is a two-person character drama, framed within an absolutely massive scale.

It looks great. Chris Pratt has made a name for himself with some of his broader performances in big action-adventure movies, but I've missed the quiet character work he was so great at on "Everwood". This looks like a return to that.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I'm avoiding the trailer because I was told that it seemed very spoilery, but I'm definitely onboard for the movie. We get so few space movies, even less that aren't horror/monster/invasion stories, so I'm delighted to get a space-set movie that from what you've said seems very mature.

 

[Sean Bryan]

This looks very interesting. I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Chris Will]

I'm onboard!

Yes, if you want to avoid spoilers then stay away from that trailer. It basically telegraphs the whole movie unless there are some huge surprise to come.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I'm onboard!

Yes, if you want to avoid spoilers then stay away from that trailer. It basically telegraphs the whole movie unless there are some huge surprise to come.

I'm sure I'll end up seeing it before one of the November blockbusters like Fantastic Beasts or Doctor Strange, but I'll try my best. If I see it, I see it, but I find that I've stopped seeking out trailers for the most part. I love trailers that can telegraph the vibe of a movie without actually ruining the plot.

 

[Malcolm R]

EW Grade: D+

If you click the review link, be aware there are spoilers, but they warn you before they begin:

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/12/15/passengers-ew-review

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I'll hold off reading the reviews until after I see it, but I have mixed feelings after the trailer - mostly because it felt like one of those trailers that just gives away the whole movie. That could be a misimpression, of course, maybe they edited it that way to make it seem like the whole movie and it wasn't, but I'm not holding out much hope for this.

On a purely marketing/studio level, I'm really surprised that Sony is opening up their big sci-fi space movie five days after Rogue One. I think it's just gonna get crushed in Rogue One's wake. I've been trying to figure out where and when I can see Passengers, and so far, because of Rogue One, Passengers will not be able to play on any of the best screens. It's a 3D movie, so I don't want to see it in 2D, but because of Rogue One, there's no IMAX 3D version, no Dolby Cinema version, etc., etc. I don't know that I want to pay $20 to see it in RealD on the smaller screens in the house, but so far, that's all that's been announced.

 

[Alf S]

EW Grade: D+

If you click the review link, be aware there are spoilers, but they warn you before they begin:

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/12/15/passengers-ew-review

It's getting ravaged on RT.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Ive gotten to where I generally only watch trailer one, maybe trailer two, which come out early on, and then I ignore everything else including web and media reviews. I go more with reviews from places like this and AVS, HDD, etc...

I do not go to the theater anymore, so I will preorder in UHD and if the reviews are bad enough, Ill just rent on netflix.

 

[TravisR]

I'll hold off reading the reviews until after I see it, but I have mixed feelings after the trailer - mostly because it felt like one of those trailers that just gives away the whole movie.

Yeah, I agree. I could be wrong too but that trailer has been on literally every movie I've seen in the last month and a half (even Fantastic Beasts) and it seems like any surprises in the movie are ruined by the trailer.


EDIT: I finally didn't see the trailer on Rogue One last night.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Ive gotten to where I generally only watch trailer one, maybe trailer two, which come out early on, and then I ignore everything else including web and media reviews.

That's basically where I'm at too. I used to watch and rewatch trailers like crazy and seek out every bit of international trailer and TV spot footage, and read every preview, etc., etc., and I just don't anymore. I'll watch the trailer if I happen to see it in a theater before something else. I won't stream them at home anymore. Sometimes it actually works out. I'm a fan of the different X-Men movies and usually see them in theaters, but somehow I made it all through the promotion of X-Men: Apocalypse without ever seeing a single trailer - but to escape that completely is rare.

Yeah, I agree. I could be wrong too but that trailer has been on literally every movie I've seen in the last month and a half (even Fantastic Beasts) and it seems like any surprises in the movie are ruined by the trailer.

Yeah, same here. I really tried to avoid the trailer because I was warned that it seemed so spoiler heavy, but it just started popping up everywhere. I saw it behind anything sci-fi or fantasy related that I've seen (like Doctor Strange, Fantastic Beasts, and Arrival) and then behind every single other Sony movie I've seen (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk). For me, it's turned into the most unavoidable trailer of the year.

I'm not sure which is more discouraging - that the trailer seems to ruin any sense of fun or mystery, or that by releasing it less than a week after Rogue One, it's not playing on a single premium-type screen, and so far only one theater in NYC has even announced that they'll play it in 3D. I suspect that since it's opening on a Tuesday (bizarre), most theaters will wait until after the weekend to see how many screens they want to hold for Rogue One. I wish we lived in a world where the marketplace could sustain two very different seeming films that happen to have a sci-fi/space component to them, but I'm not sure if we do. It seems likely to me that Passengers will die a quick death, and that all involved will just conclude "People don't like original sci-fi not based on an existing movie or comic book" instead of thinking for a moment and realizing that this movie had a lousy trailer which has been aggressively overplayed, and then released at exactly the moment where everyone interested in it was guaranteed to be seeing something else, and that those who weren't maybe weren't so interested in seeing what looks like an IMAX 3D-type spectacle on a tiny multiplex screen.

 

[George_W_K]

They've been bombarding the airwaves for this movie for months, I had a feeling it was going to be bad. I liked the first trailer I saw, but the amount of advertising was a red flag for me.

True, I can still be proven wrong, but I doubt it.

 

[Lord Dalek]

True, I can still be proven wrong, but I doubt it.

If the early reviews are to be believed you were right on the money in your assumptions.

 

[Tino]

I have a friend who is a screenwriter who saw it and said it was ok. That's all I'm expecting.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I feel like I saw four million trailers before Rogue One, and yet, the only thing that didn't show was this. I guess I have seen the Passengers trailer for the final time.

Still would like to see it next week, but someone's gonna have to actually announce some 3D showtimes first.

Was this the movie that Jennifer Lawrence fought to be paid $20 million for? If it flops, I wonder how much of that blame will fall on her shoulders, or if it won't affect her career at all?

I'm still looking forward to seeing this, but I have no expectations for it.

 

[Alf S]

I feel like I saw four million trailers before Rogue One, and yet, the only thing that didn't show was this. I guess I have seen the Passengers trailer for the final time.

Still would like to see it next week, but someone's gonna have to actually announce some 3D showtimes first.

Was this the movie that Jennifer Lawrence fought to be paid $20 million for? If it flops, I wonder how much of that blame will fall on her shoulders, or if it won't affect her career at all?

I'm still looking forward to seeing this, but I have no expectations for it.

None and it won't, at all.

 

[Tino]

Disagree. If the movie tanks she will shoulder at least some blame. More than Chris Pratt.

 

[Alf S]

Highly doubt it.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Disagree. If the movie tanks she will shoulder at least some blame. More than Chris Pratt.

I think I'm in agreement with you. There was a big deal made before the movie went into production that Lawrence was going to join the $20 million club for this movie, and that she was being paid more than Pratt. Whether its fair or not, the success or failure of the movie will reflect on her somewhat, I think. I agree that it'll be more her than Pratt - she's being paid more, and she's got top billing, so that makes her the target. (Though the trailer makes it seem that his role is more central.)

If it is a complete and total flop, it's not like her career is over. Far from it. But her next non-franchise paycheck could be less as a consequence.

I think we're living in an age where there are no more movie stars. People now come out based on the strength of the property (if its an adaptation of an existing work) and based on how interested they are in the story. If it happens to have a star, that's great, but it's not required. Robert Downey Jr's movies will gross $1 billion each - as long as he's wearing the Iron Man costume. But his non-franchise projects have done significantly less. I know he had high hopes for The Judge to be a critical and commercial success, but it ended up failing on both counts. Chris Hemsworth will have a $90 million opening weekend if he's in his Thor costume, but as 2015 proved repeatedly, if he's not playing Thor, he doesn't have a box office draw. Going into this project (her first major non-franchise work since the conclusion of Hunger Games), I'm sure the studio had an expectation that she'd bring her Hunger Games audience with her. But I think what the studio is going to discover is that a large portion of the Hunger Games audience was there to see the Hunger Games, not to see Jennifer Lawrence - they loved her in the part, but they're not about to follow her to her next project. I don't think this means Jennifer Lawrence's career is over, far from it, but she might not get paid $20 million for a non-franchise, non-sequel part again. And it will cause studios to be even more hesitant to do original movies not based on existing source material.

As always, if the movie isn't a complete success, I suspect the studios will try to place the blame everywhere but where it belongs. They won't entertain the idea that maybe their movie was underwhelming; they'll just say that people don't like original sci-fi. They won't consider that the X-Men and Hunger Games audiences might not have been interested; they'll just say that Lawrence's star power is fading. They won't admit that opening four days after a Star Wars movie wasn't a great choice; they'll simply assume audiences don't like this kind of movie.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Just watched it (preview).

Not bad, but not great.

Spoiler

The trailer makes it out that there is some great mystery as to why they woke. Which is a complete misdirect. The real 'heart' of the story, if you will, is probably (or not) more prosaic: what happens when two people are the only people alive in the world? Your basic love story, then. Overlaid with the big question: what if one of them is there (i.e. stuck in no-man's land) because the other one wanted them there? That's it.

My missus thought it implausible that she could ever forgive him. I suppose towards the end, when she faced the risk of losing him, and indeed did sort-of lose him for a while, that she understood how he had felt being entirely alone for a year and why he was compelled to wake her up to join him, and forgave him for doing so. Plus of course he'd just been a total hero, willing to sacrifice himself for the 5K+ other people on board.

Anyway, on the plus side, everything was gorgeously rendered.