Spaceflight gone wrong

Despite a unique story, Passengers is nothing more than a missed opportunity

unfailingly be labelled as brave. And stupid. Brave, because attempting a concoction of two such momentous films takes some spunk. And stupid, because you’re unlikely to whip up a concerto grosso. You might be left with a mishmash of epic proportions instead. 

That is what precisely encumbers Passengers. Chris Pratt plays Jim Preston, a voyager on the interstellar spaceship Avalon who, along with 5,000 others, is making his way to a distant planet to start a new life. Much to Preston’s horror though, his hibernation pod malfunctions and he is crudely woken up just 30 years into a journey that is actually slated to take place over 120 years. Lonely, frightened and colossally dazed, Preston finds solace in Arthur, a robot bartender played by Michael Sheen. Expectedly, this is no Brian Clough-like character for Sheen, but he does whatever little director Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game) asks of him elegantly well. 

If you thought the notion of space romance sounded a little mawkish, then wait till you get fully acquainted with the grandeur of Avalon. Basketball courts, dance studios, swimming pools and stupefying viewing galleries — that is the kind of extravagance you’re in for if you take the fatuous decision of abandoning everything on earth and head to a new planet that is a zillion miles away. 

Enamoured with sleeping beauty Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), the writer daughter of a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who Preston chooses — after several morality-driven deliberations — to preposterously disable her hibernation pod. A guy and a girl alone on a spaceship with almost 90 years to kill? What can they possibly do? Well, they might as well fall in love. And, Preston and Lane do not disappoint, showering affection on each other within weeks of meeting for the first time. Next, Tyldum makes the two fall for each other some more, shooting kissing scenes in lavish suites, dining rooms and gymnasiums. Essentially, at all places where a camera could go. Their space romance bubble is eventually burst when Arthur reveals to Aurora that her pod was disabled on purpose. 

The problem with Passengers is not so much the plot — it is imaginative and looks sublimely real — but in the execution of the story. Instead of just focusing on the questions that generally arise during such voyages — human existence, loneliness, past decisions, isolation, to name a few — Tyldum tries to swerve into a territory that he necessarily didn’t have to. Power outages and misbehaving robots and breakfast tables force Preston and Aurora to find out what’s actually wrong with the ship. The film also features a somewhat pointless cameo by Laurence Fishburne (Gus Mancuso) as the ship’s chief deck officer. 

Miraculously, Preston, only a mechanical engineer, manages to find solutions to the problem. He traces a colliding asteroid’s path through the ship’s hull from two years back, that damaged the computer administering the reactor. The two eventually save the ship from any further impairment. 

With Pratt and Lawrence, Tyldum has at his disposal not only two of Hollywood’s prettiest faces, but also two remarkable actors. Yet, he manages to make their chemistry sparkle only sporadically. And, all the ravishing good looks fail to rescue Passengers in the end. There are some stupendous scenes, though. Preston spacewalking with a harness attached — the darkness illuminated by blots of neon — makes for compelling viewing. In another sequence, Aurora is shown drowning in the pool with the gravity falling. Thomas Newman’s background score, however, is mostly middling. 

In Pratt’s defence, he slips into his character rather well but is undone by the vapidity of his facial expressions, which remain terribly dreary throughout the film. Lawrence doesn’t do too much wrong, but this is unlikely to go down as one of her most memorable works. 

Despite all its virtual prowess and grandiosity of script, Passengers is nothing more than a missed opportunity. With a seasoned cast, it could’ve been an unforgettable film. It is still that, but not in the way the makers would have wanted.