Jim “James” Preston (Chris Pratt) wanted to live on a world where he mattered.
And so the engineer joined more than 5,000 other passengers and crew to board a giant spacecraft leaving Earth for a new home light-years away.
To reach this intergalactic colony and not die in transit, James and everyone on board this high-tech cruise ship was placed in hibernation pods to sleep through the 120-year trek, waking up only weeks before their destination having not aged a day.
After a computer malfunction revives him from his slumber only 30 years into the long-distance voyage, James discovers to his horror that he is the only human awake, with his only companions made of metal and circuits. This includes his new best friend, the android bartender with a British accent, Arthur (Michael Sheen), who provides the only meaningful conversations James has. Arthur also has no legs and is affixed to a small track behind the bar, which limits their interaction and relationship.
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt and Michael Sheen.
Rating: PG-13 for sexuality, nudity and action/peril.
As his lonely days blur into weeks and months, James wants nothing more than to climb back into his hibernation pod and return to sleep, but much to his horror he learns that this process can only be completed on Earth. His cruel fate, it seems, is to live out his remaining years in solitude, marooned on a ship as it rockets silently to a new world he will not live to see.
And then he finds a sleeping beauty named Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), a writer from New York who wants a fresh start. It’s not much screen time later before James has fallen deeply, almost creepily, for this passenger he’s never met, as he sits next to her hibernation pod and pines for what he cannot have. Or can he? And thus the first act of “Passengers” is punctuated with this striking moral dilemma: Does James show true love for Aurora and not doom her to die with him, or does he give in to his feelings so that he won’t die alone?
Of course, James does wake Aurora, and after her initial confusion and reluctance to accept her fate, she begins to fall for him.
It’s an abrupt transition in the movie from coldhearted to warmhearted, as director Morten Tyldum (“The Imitation Game”) reboots into an entirely new genre if not a new film. The only connection between the first and second act of “Passengers” is the computer-generated imagery of the spacecraft and its future-is-cool technology surrounding Aurora and James. Much of it is on-screen for no reason other than to make the movie bigger and more impressive.
Nevertheless, this drastic change in tone works because of the terrific chemistry between Ms. Lawrence and Mr. Pratt, as Aurora and James discover they are soul mates in a series of perfect dates: They dine in the ship’s fancy restaurants — all of which are conveniently manned by robots — they have dance competitions against holograms, cozy up during movies and play games of one-on-one basketball. And of course they end the evenings knotted up together.
Neither Aurora nor James has ever been happier. She also thinks that it was a computer malfunction that caused her to wake up 90 years too soon. James doesn’t want to tell her the truth, at least not yet, and Arthur assures him he will not share his secret.
And so “Passengers” the cerebral science fiction film becomes a Nicholas Sparks romance with a heavy twist: What happens when Aurora discovers the truth, that it was James who needlessly woke her?
“Passengers’ ” third act — an Irwin Allen disaster movie with a big budget and only two stars — is just as oddly out of place as its first two when placed side by side. Perhaps sensing he might be losing his audience, Mr. Tyldum rushes through this series of increasingly serious and nonsensical problems in the last half-hour that Aurora and James face, including the destruction of the ship that’s somehow linked to why the computer was having issues. Love is never easy, especially in space.
“Passengers” screenwriter Jon Spaihts (“Doctor Strange,” “Prometheus”) does offer some original and fun ideas, including what happens when you’re swimming in an indoor pool in a spacecraft and gravity suddenly is lost, as well as those oh-so-familiar moments that we know what will happen before the movie does.
Save for the on-screen coupling of Ms. Lawrence and Mr. Pratt, “Passengers” is a quick trip just as quickly forgotten.
Kirk Baird: kbaird@theblade.com or 1-419-724-6734.
First Published: December 21, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
