The screenplay for “Passengers” first appeared on The Black List – an annual survey of the best unproduced screenplays conducted by studio and production company executives – way back in 2007. Throughout those nine years, Keanu Reeves, Reese Witherspoon, Rachel McAdams and Marc Forster – the director of “Quantum of Solace” – have been attached to the project at one point or another. For nearly a decade the script for “Passengers” has bounced around Hollywood and changed ever slightly to accommodate the personas of its various participants.
What we see in the 2016 version of “Passengers” probably wasn’t there in the 2007 version. I mention this because, at some point, a red-faced Hollywood producer threw the screenplay on the boardroom table of his production company and yelled, “Why is this horror movie about Stockholm Syndrome so creepy? Where’s the warmth? Where are the laughs? Why can’t we give the obsessed, manipulative lead a buddy? Maybe a wisecracking bartender who is also an android? Look, I need you to take that Mark Wahlberg movie ‘Fear’ and make it really cute and life-affirming. Is that too much to ask?” I just want to believe that “Passengers” wasn’t always this wrongheaded and off-putting.
“Passengers” starts out reasonably enough with Chris Pratt arising groggily from a cryogenic sleep chamber. Apparently, Pratt is a passenger aboard the Starship Avalon traveling to Homestead II, a second earth that was established after our world became overpopulated and too pricey. However, due to a cryo-chamber malfunction, Pratt wakes up 90 years before he reaches his final destination. Yet, in spite of the fact he’s inadvertently walked into his own death sentence, Pratt seems more bored and annoyed than anything. At this point, “Passengers” should be a “Shining”-like account of Pratt’s descent into madness. Instead, it’s more like a melancholic version of “Big” as man-child Pratt goofs around on The Avalon, playing around with all of its toys and cracking jokes with a robotic bartender (Michael Sheen).
So far, so slight.
But wait just one moment because it isn’t long before “Passengers” goes from Zzzzzz to Ewww. Pratt suddenly notices Jennifer Lawrence (her character is called Aurora Lane, so, I guess in the future all women have lazy, stripper names?) slumbering within her cryo-chamber and becomes dangerously obsessed. As Pratt eats breakfast every morning alongside her prone, unconscious body, he stalks her futuristic, Facespacebook profile and plans his next unsettling move. Should he disable her cryo-chamber? Sure, he would be in effect committing murder and yes, he would be crushing her poorly thought out dreams of being the first journalist to write about her year on Homestead II (Never mind the fact that this would take 450 years to do, wouldn’t this be extremely old news at that point? Almost as if Mark Twain was unfrozen from a block of ice and wrote a cutting edge profile on Mr. Edison’s amazing new direct current idea?) but, c’mon!
Pratt really disliked playing Dance, Dance Revolution alone and was getting tired of pushing his pillows together like that. He’s a nice guy! He weighed his options before selfishly ruining Lawrence’s life.
A smarter movie would have either taken the more contrived route of releasing Lawrence and Pratt from their cryo-chambers at the same time or at the very least treated the characters’ relationship a little more honestly. Lawrence’s interest in Pratt is never questioned. Even though he’s literally the only other person on the floating hotel resort/prison on which she’s forced to live out her final years, the subject of Stockholm Syndrome is never broached.
Explicitly or implicitly.
Additionally, even though the film (very gently) wags its finger at Pratt’s selfishness, it also can’t wait to let him off the hook by making him a hero in the very sudden third act twist that plays like a hastier, dumber remake of “Gravity.” Once again, I want to believe the 2007 version of “Passengers” was a different movie, because glimpses of something better do pop up every now and again in this film (particularly in the cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto which has the look of the sterile emptiness of The Overlook Hotel if it was inside the Discovery One from “2001”). Unfortunately, in its current form, the only list “Passengers” should appear on is The Worst Films of 2016.
