passengers movie review

It’s lonely out in space, Elton John was able to observe as far back as 1972. Jim Preston, the character played by Chris Pratt in “Passengers,” learns this truth in a hard way. Jim is in a hibernation pod on the spaceship Avalon, headed from Earth to a colony planet called Homestead II, when the ship (which looks like a hybrid of a couple of crafts from “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” embraced by a helix) goes through a meteor shower. This jars the craft, and causes his hibernation pod to open. A little while after awakening, and enjoying the amenities of the giant ship—it carries 5,000 passengers to help colonize the new world, and is fully stocked for a four-month period during which the sleepers are awake to get acclimated to their soon-to-be-home—he realizes something terrible has happened. He was awakened after only 30 years in space, and the Avalon won’t get to Homestead II for another 89 years.

This freaks Jim out a bit. He does have one friend on the ship, an android bartender, Arthur, played by Michael Sheen . But Jim, an engineer, is not particularly bookish—had his character been more like that of Burgess Meredith in that “Twilight Zone” episode about the last man on Earth and a library, we would not have a movie here—so he runs out of high-tech things to amuse himself with over the course of a year. He drinks too much. Grows a beard. (Or, rather, Pratt is fitted with a very unconvincing beard, full Kurt Russell in “The Thing,” and it doesn’t suit the actor, at all.) And then he develops a crush on another sleeper, one who looks just like Jennifer Lawrence , and is played, appropriately enough, by Jennifer Lawrence. He learns about her—her name is Aurora Lane, she’s a writer, nobody in her life has ever noticed that her name sounds like that of a thoroughfare—dreams about her, and eventually makes a very ill-advised decision. He wakes her up.

He makes it look like an accident, he commiserates with her as she freaks out, and he cultivates their friendship. As Humbert Humbert once noted of a protégé of his, “you see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.” Nevertheless, the movie is a little coy about developing their romance. But then again, the movie is always a little coy where it’s customary to be a little coy, just as it hits the most predictable beats while hammering its way to a conclusion that’s as egregiously contrived and corny as it is predictable.

This movie is directed by Morten Tyldum , who made 2014’s prestige picture “ The Imitation Game ,” and its direction is even more dutiful and personality-free than that of the Alan Turing biopic. The movie has a remarkably lumbering pace. The cliché-laden script—during one conversation with Aurora, Jim says “Can’t slogans be true?” which I reckon must be something screenwriter Jon Spaihts has asked in his own actual life—demands, of course, that Aurora learn of Jim’s deception. She does, and this was the point in the film when I felt compelled to look at my watch, and I was shocked to see we were only an hour into this 116-minute opus.

Despite their individual charms as performers, Pratt and Lawrence have very questionable chemistry. No matter how buff Pratt gets, his performing mode has an ineradicable “which way did he go, George?” haplessness to it, but that haplessness has some entitled bro notes as well. This makes Jim’s heinous action—“You murdered me,” an indignant Aurora screams at him, and she’s completely right—play even more despicably than had Jim been played by any actor with a genuinely creepy aura.

It gets worse. As their romance was blossoming, the ship’s systems had, unbeknownst to them, been failing. Things get really bad just as another figure, a casting choice that I’d like to think was a tribute to Paul W.A. Anderson’s “ Event Horizon ” but is probably just a coincidence, turns up to give some advice on fixing the craft’s nuclear core, and other stuff. “We’re stranded on a sinking ship,” Aurora observes, but the pair engages in all manner of Mr. Fix It derring do, complete with explosive bolts flying around and various sacrifices being proposed, made, and then rescinded by filmmakers committed to nothing more than letting Aurora and Jim have the very best make-up sex ever.

The movie’s production design is polished to the point of looking chintzy, and the special effects—well, let’s just say as elaborate as the movie’s zero-gravity sequence is (it involves an entire swimming pool’s water rising out of it’s enclosure, wowie-zowie), it reminded me of how much better “2001” did it. And I’m not even going to discuss, in detail at least, the elephant in the ideological room that “Passengers” inhabits, which is its spectacular sexism. The coeval to which is the movie’s sadistic requirement that Lawrence’s character swallow what’s been done to her by way of Pratt’s character proving himself “worthy.” Even if you believe in forgiveness, the way this movie stacks the deck to get to that place is, well, unforgivable.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Chris Pratt as Jim Preston
• Jennifer Lawrence as Aurora
• Michael Sheen as Arthur
• Jon Spaihts
• Maryann Brandon
• Morten Tyldum

Cinematographer

• Rodrigo Prieto
• Thomas Newman

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• Common Sense Says
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Common Sense Media Review

Interesting drama about love, mortality, iffy decisions.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Passengers is a romantic sci-fi drama about two people (Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt) who find themselves on spaceship headed toward a distant planet with nobody else to keep each other company. It takes on thought-provoking themes like loneliness, agency, identity, and…

Why Age 14+?

A couple has sex; naked backsides, including buttocks, are briefly seen. Additio

Some swearing, including "damn" and "s--t."

A spaceship has a massive mechanical failure that threatens the lives of those o

Social drinking by adult characters; one character gets drunk and belligerent.

Any Positive Content?

Promotes courage and forgiveness, which can lead to closure. But the decision th

Aurora is open, adventurous, and willing to ask herself difficult questions. To

Parents need to know that Passengers is a romantic sci-fi drama about two people ( Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt ) who find themselves on spaceship headed toward a distant planet with nobody else to keep each other company. It takes on thought-provoking themes like loneliness, agency, identity, and mortality (as well as courage), and it all hinges on a decision that one character makes without another's ability to weigh in, removing her ability to make her own life choices. A spaceship has a massive mechanical failure that threatens the lives of those on board. Viewers see it play out in large-scale accidents, including a scene in which a character nearly drowns. You can also expect sex scenes (naked buttocks shown, but nothing more graphic), kissing/making out, and some swearing ("s--t," "damn," etc.) and drinking -- sometimes to excess.

To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A couple has sex; naked backsides, including buttocks, are briefly seen. Additional scenes of Jim's naked bottom and Aurora in a swimsuit. Kissing/making out. Aurora changes out of her dress, but nothing sensitive shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

A spaceship has a massive mechanical failure that threatens the lives of those on board. Viewers see it play out in large-scale accidents, including a scene in which a character nearly drowns. In another scene, a character is stabbed by shrapnel and pulls it out. Loud arguments. A character has a health emergency and coughs up blood. A character almost commits suicide. A woman is so angry she hits someone.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Promotes courage and forgiveness, which can lead to closure. But the decision that one character makes completely takes away another's choices/power.

Positive Role Models

Aurora is open, adventurous, and willing to ask herself difficult questions. To a certain extent, Jim is, too, but he also makes a decision for her that she might never have wanted, forever altering her life (in other words, this isn't a "girl power" story).

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents Say (36)
• Kids Say (62)

Based on 36 parent reviews

Entertaining movie but...

Don't look at the bad reviews, because those are misjudging this wonderful movie., what's the story.

In PASSENGERS, Jim Preston ( Chris Pratt ) is an engineer who decides to join thousands of others on the Avalon , a spaceship whose passengers are supposed to stay in an induced state of deep sleep for 120 years while they travel to a deep space colony. But just 30 years in, Jim wakes up due to a mechanical glitch, effectively leaving him on a desert island, with the clock ticking toward death. He's alone and lonely, save for the company of an android ( Michael Sheen ). So when Jim spots Aurora Lane ( Jennifer Lawrence ), composed and beautiful in her sleep pod, he's smitten. He researches her and her life and grows more enamored by the day, ultimately arriving at the decision to wake her up. But this means taking away Aurora's plans to live out her days on the colony, forever altering her life plans and taking away her power over herself. Meanwhile, the Avalon seems to be in trouble.

Is It Any Good?

Pratt and Lawrence are wonderful and share decent chemistry, and Sheen adds wit, but, there's no mistaking the disturbing nature of this movie's premise. Positioned as a romance and at times offering insight into the nature of relationships, Passengers nonetheless tries to succeed while grounded in a plot that's frankly off-putting. Are we to see Jim as a harmless romantic, when his love for Aurora is based on expectations he placed on her without truly knowing who she is and his subsequent decisions are pretty much positioned as forgivable in the face of love? The special effects make for a visually stunning movie, and the film's complicated themes make it a knotty, interesting watch. But the film's problematic nature does distract from its strengths.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how Passengers depicts relationships. Is Jim and Aurora's relationship healthy? How does the movie portray sex ? Parents, talk to your teens about your own values regarding these topics.

Are the main characters role models ? Why or why not? How do they/the movie promote courage and communication ? Why are those important character strengths ?

Why do you think someone would remove themselves from their present life to live one more than 100 years away?

How does the film handle a romance that's complicated and based on a pretty disturbing decision? Does it gloss over that decision? Does it find a way to justify it? Is Jim just "a hopeless romantic"? How would you feel in Aurora's position?

How does this movie compare to other sci-fi tales/dramas you've seen? Who do you think it's intended to appeal to? How can you tell?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 21, 2016
• On DVD or streaming : September 25, 2018
• Cast : Jennifer Lawrence , Chris Pratt , Michael Sheen
• Director : Morten Tyldum
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Columbia Pictures
• Genre : Science Fiction
• Topics : Space and Aliens
• Character Strengths : Courage
• Run time : 116 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sexuality, nudity and action/peril
• Last updated : July 21, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Passengers Reviews

Its science-fiction premise about lovers in space starts with promising questions, but soon approaches a horizon that lacks depth and is lost, from the beginning, in a black hole of clichés. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | May 13, 2024

Passengers has a lot going for it, but the entire treatment feels mishandled, misguided, and a missed opportunity.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 5, 2022

Passengers biggest issue is its finale.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 14, 2022

The worse possible waste of a heap of charisma

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 10, 2022

It becomes clear before long that the futuristic sci-fi outing Passengers, aka Grab 'Em By the P***y: The Movie, could only have been written by a man.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 17, 2021

As an exploration of human isolation and a moral fable about personal freedom, however, Passengers is threadbare and trite.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2021

A few tweaks could have turned it into a creepy look at Jim's desperation or an amusing film about technology gone wrong - imagine if Hal from 2001 was an automated customer service attendant - but instead its done in by the story's sexist undercurrent.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 3, 2021

Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence can't even save this sinking ship. This movie is a boat you should miss.

Full Review | Dec 23, 2020

The last-man-on-earth concept isn't exactly new, but adapting it into a far-flung intergalactic environment provides oodles of potential.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Dec 5, 2020

An ultimately unsatisfying yet passable from a cast capable of and likely expecting so much more.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.0/4.0 | Sep 19, 2020

What he does next is unforgivable, as is his duplicitous cover up, but perhaps a smarter, bleaker film could have played it as a brutal moral dilemma faced by a desperate man who must then face the consequences.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 26, 2020

It's rare to find a film in which one problem is so morally reprehensible that it ruins the entire thing.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jul 15, 2020

There's a saying that in space, no one can hear you scream. After watching Passengers, in space, no one can hear you endlessly groan or watch you roll your eyes.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 15, 2020

Passengers has no idea how to deal with the consequences of its choices, so it simply chooses not to.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Jul 2, 2020

I had fun in this movie.

Full Review | May 8, 2020

It was like a Nicholas Sparks action movie in space.

From here the movie descends into blandness and stays there until the whimper of an ending.

Full Review | Mar 30, 2020

The good news is, in six months, nobody will remember that Passengers ever existed.

Full Review | Feb 18, 2020

It's rare for being good sci fi that doesn't involve zapping things with ray guns. It's a story about how technology sometimes puts people in impossible situations that no human has ever been faced with before.

Full Review | Jan 15, 2020

The considerable charisma and chemistry of Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence keep the sci-fi adventure Passengers afloat, even if the script easily fixes its most fascinating problems.

Full Review | Jan 14, 2020

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Review: Two ‘Passengers’ Trapped on a Spaceship Find Love Amid Despair

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By Stephen Holden

• Dec. 20, 2016

There is a blazing light at the center of the interplanetary romance “Passengers,” and its name is Jennifer Lawrence. In a love story whose attempt to be an interstellar “Titanic” eventually falls flat, Ms. Lawrence’s character, Aurora, is an ambitious journalist aboard the Avalon, a commercial spacecraft making a historic 120-year voyage. Its destination is Homestead II, a pioneer colony of an overcrowded Earth. The spunky, whip-smart Aurora, who bought a round-trip ticket, hopes to write the first book about Homestead II upon her return to New York.

But when Aurora is prematurely roused from a state of suspended animation, her hopes are dashed. Her awakener, Jim (Chris Pratt), is a hunky mechanical engineer who is jolted back to consciousness when an asteroid hits the Avalon and is aghast to find himself alone. Realizing that he faces 90 years of solitude on the spacecraft, can’t return to his hibernation pod and will never live to reach his destination, he begins to fall apart.

Spotting the recumbent Aurora, radiant in her pod, he savors her beauty, admires her thumbnail biography and falls in love. Against his better moral judgment, he revives her. Once outside her pod, Aurora is devastated to learn that she, like Jim, will almost certainly die en route to Homestead II.

But soon Jim and Aurora embark on a romantic courtship and quickly fall in love. Given their beauty, that may not sound bad until you consider their future in joint isolation with nothing to do but eat, drink, make love and play shadow games with holograms.

At its most gripping, “Passengers,” directed by Morten Tyldum ( “The Imitation Game” ) from a screenplay by Jon Spaihts (a collaborator on the scripts for “The Darkest Hour,” “Prometheus” and “Doctor Strange”), conveys the panic and despair of finding yourself trapped in a luxurious corporate prison in the middle of nowhere. Solitary confinement, even amid opulence, is solitary torture.

Even after “Passengers” ends, this creepy premise haunts your imagination. And the contrast between the chilly impersonality of the Avalon and the anguish of its human cargo lends the first half of the movie a desperate poignancy. Were I in Jim’s shoes, I would also drown my sorrows nightly the way he does at the well-stocked bar tended by a friendly android, Arthur (an amusing Michael Sheen).

Movie Review: ‘Passengers'

The times critic stephen holden reviews “passengers.”.

In “Passengers” Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt play hibernating travelers who wake up decades too early on a 120-year space journey. In his review Stephen Holden writes: At its most gripping, the film conveys the panic and despair of finding yourself trapped in a luxurious corporate prison in the middle of nowhere. Solitary confinement, even amid opulence, is solitary torture. Even after “Passengers” ends, this creepy premise haunts your imagination. And the contrast between the chilly impersonality of the space craft and the anguish of its human cargo lends the first half of the movie a desperate poignancy. But the film increasingly succumbs to timidity and begins shrinking into a bland science-fiction adventure whose feats of daring and skill feel stale and secondhand.

Their idyll abruptly ends when Arthur spills the beans to Aurora about Jim’s role in her awakening, and she explodes in a stunning fit of fury that is the movie’s dramatic high point.

In its more relaxed first half, “Passengers” allows room for needling satire of the airline industry. Depending on the ticket price, the 5,000 passengers can expect different levels of service once they’re revived in the journey’s final four months. As a “gold star” passenger, Aurora is entitled to a sumptuous breakfast, while Jim has to settle for cold cereal. We also learn that the corporation behind this space travel is a very successful operation.

Before its midpoint, the film begins its retreat from the moral questions raised by Jim’s selfishly dragging Aurora into his personal hell. He may be handsome and charming and mechanically adept, but he’s rather dull and inarticulate with no defined personality.

Aurora and Jim are the latest embodiments of Hollywood’s ever-evolving ideal of young lovers. Both are white and beautiful, with the likable Mr. Pratt suggesting a new-and-improved perfect specimen of a familiar jock type. It is Ms. Lawrence’s feisty wonder woman who warms the movie with her sizzling volatility and intelligence.

But “Passengers” increasingly succumbs to timidity and begins shrinking into a bland science-fiction adventure whose feats of daring and skill feel stale and secondhand.

Things briefly improve when another accidentally reawakened passenger, Gus (Laurence Fishburne), appears, and helps the couple figure out what’s wrong with the ship. But because his character is dying, his appearance amounts to little more than an extended cameo. It seems the asteroid strike set off the Avalon’s slow breakdown, and it is up to Jim, with Aurora’s help, to set things right, save them, and in the process redeem himself in her eyes.

In its haste to tie up loose ends as efficiently as possible, “Passengers” becomes a banal, formulaic pastiche of dozens of other like-minded space operas in which the human drama gives way to technological awe. And Ms. Lawrence’s light softens to a 40-watt glow. Except for one special effect, its action scenes are anything but awesome. None are more disappointing than the couple’s perfunctory, suspense-free spacewalks.

The one exception is a scene in which the gravity aboard the ship suddenly fails. Aurora is swimming when the water in the pool suddenly rises and she risks drowning inside an aquatic plume. Such delicious moments of movie magic are in painfully short supply.

Passengers Rated PG-13 for discreet sexuality, nudity and perilous action. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes.

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• Review: The Almost-Brilliant Sci-Fi Romance <i>Passengers</i> Runs Aground

Review: The Almost-Brilliant Sci-Fi Romance Passengers Runs Aground

Passengers is two-thirds of an amazing movie, a sci-fi romance that gives its heart away too early and doesn’t know what to do with itself after that. That’s a shame, because the deep-seated melancholy of the movie’s first third—and the idyllic, too-good-to-be true romantic bliss that flowers in the second—are rare, delicate qualities in the science fiction we’re getting these days. I’m afraid people will scoff at what they see as the silliness of Passengers even as they spend hours tripping over themselves to make a case for Rogue One as a deep, serious, anti-fascist film. (It is anti-fascist, but only in the most facile, uninteresting ways.)

But if the best science fiction is less about outer space than inner space—about the ways pushing out forces us to confront the most fearful and fragile parts of ourselves—then Passengers at least deserves a chance. The movie opens with a man waking up in a glass pod: Chris Pratt ’s Jim is a brawny mechanic who’s one of several thousand Earth people on their way to a distant planet, where they’ll start a new life. It takes a few hundred Earth years to get there, so everyone must sleep on the way. But a pod malfunction has caused Jim to wake up 90 years too soon. The poor guy went into hypersleep thinking he’d eventually awaken to a lively, bustling social life on the ship, a space-age ocean liner equipped with rec areas, an automat-style breakfast area, and a glamorous futuristic-retro art deco bar that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Chrysler Building circa 1935. Instead, Jim wakes up alone. It’s the bro-bummer of a lifetime.

So he wanders through the ship, trying to figure out how he might game the system and get back to sleep. Everything onboard is controlled by invisible, automated voices—there’s no real human in sight, and no real human voice within earshot. Jim tries to get answers to his many questions, but his pleas fall on deaf ears. It’s grimly funny very time he hears, “I didn’t understand that.” We’ve all been there.

There’s only one person for Jim to talk to, and he isn’t even a person. Arthur (a sleek, gleaming Michael Sheen ) is a painstakingly well-groomed android who looks, talks and listens like a bartender but who’s really only programmed to do so. Jim spends hours at the bar, pouring out his loneliness. He gets drunk a lot and wears ugly shorts all the time. He grows a fat, rounded, deeply unflattering Yukon Cornelius beard . This is what straight guys do without the (allegedly) civilized influence of women, and the movie is in on the joke. But if Jim’s mopiness is played partly for laughs, his despair is genuine. Pratt is a good enough actor to convey both, and when Jim goes for a lonely space walk—the ship is outfitted with special Buzz Lightyear-style suits for doing so—he’s both visibly overwhelmed by the wonder of the star-dotted velvet around him and wrecked with despair because there’s no one to share it with.

And then suddenly, somehow, Jim is no longer alone. There’s a girl he likes, a smart, funny writer named Aurora (just like the princess in Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty ), and she’s played by Jennifer Lawrence , who somehow looks more radiant than usual: Her face is a little fuller and softer—she’s like a baby Ellen Barkin. Aurora awakens early too, and Jim wins her heart, but only through an act of deception. At first, Aurora has trouble accepting that she’s doomed to live the rest of her life on a mostly deserted space ship. But she succumbs to the idea, and to Jim, too. The two go for a romantic space walk—at last, Jim has someone with whom to share the glory of space’s emptiness!—and try to kiss afterward. Their barrel-shaped suits keep them from getting too close, and they laugh. They’ve become an Adam and Eve for End Times.

The knowledge of Jim’s deceit tortures him, but he’s also happier than he has ever been. And if that’s not a great fainting couch on which to drape a science-fiction romance, what is? Passengers ’ director is Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game) , working from a script by Jon Spaihts, and he vests much of the movie with a buzzing neon glow. (The space-walk scenes, contrasting glo-stick luminescence with inky blackness, are particularly beautiful.) But the movie runs aground in the last third: It’s as if Tyldum and Spaihts know they can’t get too wiggy, so they take a hard right and try to land their ship in more conventional territory.

Along the way they make what appears to be a failed attempt to channel the intense doomed romanticism of Brian De Palma’s Mission to Mars (specifically, the sorrowful and glorious scene in which astronaut Connie Nielsen fails to save her fellow astronaut husband, Tim Robbins). By that point, Tyldum has crashed his ship, figuratively speaking—inside this failed picture there’s a sicker, darker, more truthful one crying to get out. But for a while, Passengers is really going for something. The movie it might have been is lost in space, alone, never to be seen by mere mortals. All we can see from Earth are its few brightly burning scraps, but at least it’s something.

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Summary Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jim (Chris Pratt) are two passengers onboard a spaceship transporting them to a new life on another planet. The trip takes a deadly turn when their hibernation pods mysteriously wake them 90 years before they reach their destination. As Aurora and Jim try to unravel the mystery behind the malfunction, they ... Read More

Directed By : Morten Tyldum

Written By : Jon Spaihts

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Jennifer Lawrence

Aurora lane, chris pratt, jim preston, michael sheen, laurence fishburne, gus mancuso, andy garcia, captain norris, vince foster, executive officer, kara flowers, communications officer, conor brophy, crew member, julee cerda, instructor (hologram), aurora perrineau, best friend, lauren farmer, party friend, emerald mayne, kristin brock, tom ferrari, quansae rutledge, desmond reid, emma clarke, voice of the avalon, chris edgerly, infomat, deejay, fred melamed, observatory voice, matt corboy, critic reviews.

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Haunting and beautiful

• May 15, 2017

Long way to go

• May 12, 2017

A highly enjoyable ride that unfortunately got rolled over by the Critics.

• Samirsbureau
• Dec 21, 2016

Romance and sci-fi in outer space

• TheLittleSongbird
• Oct 23, 2017

movie starts at the wrong place

• SnoopyStyle
• Jan 8, 2017

A decent sci-fi rental that plays it too safe.

• Damien_King86
• Apr 6, 2017

Waking Her Saved Them

• May 21, 2022

Romancing the vastness of space

• Jan 26, 2017

Epic yet thoughtful

• nick-615-60770
• Nov 2, 2022

Don't go by the critics and enjoy the beautiful movie

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• Oct 7, 2019

Very original, beautifully made.

• Sleepin_Dragon
• Dec 1, 2018

An good sci-fi flick with some excellent special effects.

• Mar 6, 2017

Romance movie pretending to be sci-fi

• Paradroid78
• Jan 14, 2017

Passengers (2016)

• Feb 23, 2017
• Average_Armchair_Critic
• May 9, 2018

Nice love story in space

• tero-j-ojala

Moderately Engaging SF Romance That Needed Darker Elements

• Theo Robertson
• Dec 30, 2016

The Critics -- wrong again

• handmethatspanner
• Nov 26, 2022

Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt is what makes this movie worth to watch!

• lucashammar
• Dec 20, 2016

Eminent Science Fiction

• Dec 22, 2016

A visually impressive Sci-Fi romance

• eddie_baggins
• Jan 31, 2017

Ignore the critics- a great movie with lots of suspense

Decent chick flick, frustrating sci-fi.

• danielgj-85299

First boring, then unrealistic to absurd

• stefan-morcov
• Jan 23, 2017

Nothing mind blowing but a very enjoyable film!!

• jamiejohnstone2015

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‘passengers’: film review.

Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt play fellow passengers on a troubled interplanetary flight in 'Passengers,' an adventure drama directed by Morten Tyldum.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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The meet-cute between Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt in Passengers isn’t so cute; it touches on messy ethical questions, and matters of life and death. As future-world earthlings en route to another planet, they’re supposed to be in a state of suspended animation, not awake and functioning and falling in love. But things happen when you’re in a sci-fi adventure.

There is, at first, a thrilling what-if in Jon Spaihts’ screenplay, which concocts a sort of Titanic in outer space, with dollops of “Sleeping Beauty” and Gravity thrown into the high-concept mix. Under less shiny, by-the-numbers direction, the story might have soared, or at least been more stirring. Yet while Passengers offers a few shrewd observations about our increasingly tech-enabled, corporatized lives, its heavy-handed mix of life-or-death exigencies and feel-good bromides finally feels like a case of more being less. Whatever the critical consensus, though, the marquee leads are sure to entice moviegoers seeking grown-up action-adventure.

Release date: Dec 21, 2016

As he showed in his first English-language feature, The Imitation Game , Norwegian director Morten Tyldum knows how to hit the prescribed emotional notes, but subtlety is not his strong suit. Even with striking visual design and seamless digital effects, he struggles to conjure an all-encompassing sense of wonder — and danger — from the deep-space setting, however insistent Thomas Newman’s score.

Among the quandaries that Passengers poses, the most terrifying might be “What if you were trapped on a cruise ship for the rest of your life?” In this case the ship is the Avalon, an ultra-automated luxury interstellar airliner that’s ferrying 5,000 paying passengers and 200-odd crew members, all enclosed in devices designed to keep them fresh and healthy and inanimate for the 120-year journey from Earth. At the other end of the trip is a new start on Homestead II, the antidote to “overpopulated, overpriced and overrated” Earth, as the marketing spiel of the project’s mega-profitable corporation describes it.

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For one passenger, mechanical engineer Jim Preston (Pratt), that new start offers a sense of purpose he’s found lacking on the home planet. Jim is a salt-of-the-earth, old-school kind of guy, the sort who believes in building things with his hands — apparently a skill that’s no longer in demand where he comes from. After a meteor hit causes a malfunction that releases Jim from his hibernation pod 90 years early, he finds himself wandering the cavernous Avalon — sleekly designed by Guy Hendrix Dyas — and seeking answers, in vain, from holograms and chirpy disembodied voices. It’s the three-dimensional equivalent of trying to reach a human being on a customer-service phone line.

But Jim’s situation is far more dire than being in telephonic limbo; unless he can find a way to return to his deep sleep, Jim will spend the rest of his life alone and die before reaching the promised land. When he finally finds a way to send a message to the company’s HQ, he’s assured that he can expect a response in about half a century.

So what’s a lost-in-space guy to do but avail himself of the fine dining, game rooms and VIP quarters? He becomes a regular in the dazzling jewel-toned bar where android bartender Arthur ( Michael Sheen ) dispenses robotic words of understanding and encouragement with a touch of human sympathy, if not understanding. By the time a second passenger is prematurely up and about, Jim has become a boozy slob who’s contemplating suicide. But instead of ending his life, he chooses to end his loneliness.

The other awakened passenger is writer Aurora Lane (Lawrence), who Jim first noticed as a sleeping beauty in her transparent hibernation pod. Here the screenplay touches on a perhaps burning question for these times — Can you truly fall in love with someone on the basis of their online profile? That’s what Jim creepily claims to have done while Aurora was in suspended animation. Once they’re awake together, their rescue options exhausted, they put aside the pressing sense of mortality and embark on a proper courtship in the well-appointed facilities.

She’s a Gold Class passenger — which entails far better breakfasts, for starters — and her aim is to return to New York on a round-trip ticket having written the first book about Homestead II. The pairing of working-class guy and creative-class jet-setter is explained more than felt, as are the motivating factors that led Jim and Aurora to take such an extraordinary leap into the unknown. Though they’re clearly tough and resilient, no underlying sense of urgency or drive comes through, especially not in Pratt’s even-keeled Mr. Fix-It. The necessary fire is missing from their chemistry, until Aurora’s fury at discovering a crucial piece of information that Jim has been keeping from her.

But both leads spring into convincingly treacherous action, inside the Avalon and on tethered space walks, as the ship’s various systems falter. They’re joined all too briefly by a knowledgeable crew member played by Laurence Fishburne — a vivid reminder that even with the highest technology the world has to offer, sometimes only a human being can provide the necessary information. (Appearing even more briefly is a wordless Andy Garcia .)

Before the emergency builds to a hectic, ineffective overload of factoids and feats, Tyldum stages a top-notch set piece featuring ace f/x work. The sequence, persuasively performed by Lawrence and dynamically shot by DP Rodrigo Prieto , involves a lapse in the ship’s gravity and its effect on the swimming pool where Aurora does laps in a stylish fishnet bathing suit ( Jany Temime’s elegant costumes make her the best-dressed woman in space).

Given the imaginative setup and the material’s provocative questions about mortality — not to mention the future of humankind — the movie’s neat lessons about the nature of happiness and a life well lived feel too easy, too obvious. It’s enough to make you wonder if the work that Aurora longs to write has been a self-help book all along.

Distributor: Sony/Columbia Pictures Production companies: Columbia Pictures, LStar Capital, Village Roadshow Pictures, Wanda Pictures, Original Film, Company Films, Start Motion Pictures Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne , Andy Garcia, Emma Clarke Director: Morten Tyldum Screenwriter: Jon Spaihts Producers: Stephen Hamel , Michael Maher, Neal H. Moritz, Ori Marmur Executive producers: David Householter , Ben Browning, Jon Spaihts , Bruce Berman, Greg Basser , Ben Waisbren , Lynwood Spinks Director of photography: Rodrigo Prieto Production designer: Guy Hendrix Dyas Costume designer: Jany Temime Editor: Maryann Brandon Composer: Thomas Newman Casting: Francine Maisler

Rated PG-13, 116 minutes

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