Passengers: Critics Have Released Their Initial Reviews, They're Not Impressed [SPOILERS]

By Jack Bing - 17 Dec '16 07:01AM

"Passengers" has all the elements of a fantastic movie. It's an action-thriller science fiction romance starring two of Hollywood's most loved stars (Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt), is directed by the man behind the Oscar-nominated "The Imitation Game" (Morten Tyldum), and features up and coming screenwriter John Spaihts ("Doctor Strange").

"'Titanic' in Space". The movie was marketed as "'Titanic' in space," an epic love story filled with action and adventure but set in outer space. And yet, ironically, it's an even bigger disaster than the Titanic.

The story revolves around two passengers on a space ship heading for the distant colony Homestead II. However, something with their hibernation pods goes wrong and they wake up 90 years too early. The pair is stranded in space together and they must figure out a way to survive.

That was the story the trailer sold. But the actual movie was nothing like the trailer at all.

Plot Spoilers. The movie starts aboard the Avalon space ship on its way to Homeland II, "the jewel of the Occupied Worlds," with 258 crew members and 5,000 passengers. Jim Preston (Pratt) is a mechanic whose hibernation pod flickers and suddenly he wakes up confused.

Jim tries to fix the problem but he realizes he can't and he sees a beautiful lady in another pod and decides to wake her up too. Aurora Lane (Lawrence) wakes up believing Jim has saved her when in fact he has given her a death sentence.

Eventually, the android bartender Arthur (played by Michael Sheen) tells Aurora the truth and she's pissed. And the rest of the movie is a two-hour movie about science fiction Stockholm Syndrome.

Morally Complex Plot. Given the setting and the obvious morally complex plot, the movie does nothing to do a deeper exploration of how wrong it was to wake Aurora up. Instead, the movie tries to use Pratt and Lawrence's bubbly charms to get through the rest of the movie, rather than make this the 'Boxing Helena' in Space that this movie was meant to be.