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TGM
12-21-2016, 04:07 PM
PASSENGERS

Director: Morten Tyldum

imdb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1355644/?ref_=nv_sr_1)

TGM
12-21-2016, 04:08 PM
Yeah, really not getting all the hate for this one at all. I have a few minor issues with some of the things that happen near the end, nothing major though, and otherwise, thought this was a pretty damn good flick.

Mal
12-27-2016, 12:37 AM
Visuals are pretty good but this movie, for me, was amazingly worse than Independence Day: Resurgence on the stupidity level. The entire controversial Fuckboi crux isn't even as bad as when we learn why Lawrence's character is on the ship and when it tries to finish out the film. Seriously inept screenwriting.

Thankfully she beats the shit out of him when she finds out what he did but good god THEY SUGGEST SHE SPENT THE REST OF HER LIFE WITH HIM. WHAT THE FUCK.

Henry Gale
12-27-2016, 02:13 AM
I think I went from very interested (when I heard about it) to mildly curious (when the trailers hit) to not sure I cared at all (when the reactions and reviews surfaced) to now suddenly kinda really interested again just by reading as much about it as I have, spoilers and all. I don't even expect it to be fun-bad, I just want to make sense of what it is at this point. Plus I just enjoy watching Pratt and Lawrence in general.

Then again I didn't even think Tyldum's Imitation Game was good so what am I really hoping for here?

Peng
01-03-2017, 06:48 AM
The appeal of movie stars may be fading with the general public (per the film's underwhelming box office right now), but apparently it still works well enough for me. I would not have seen this film if not for Chris Pratt (who gets a lifetime pass from me with Parks & Rec's Andy Dwyer) and Jennifer Lawrence (who is so perfectly cast as Katniss Everdeen and has been a great screen presence since). One of them alone might not be enough with this level of critical pan, maybe, as I have no plan to see The Magnificent Seven or Serena yet, but two of them together are just too irresistible.

And for a while, their presence and the fascinating mechanics/design of the spaceship are enough to be compelling for about an hour. Alas, the sci-fi and thorny drama get completely overtaken by the romantic soap opera, complete with misplaced balance between creepy/romantic (magnified by using a life-or-death moral situation as a normal romantic-hitch-before-final-act trope) and a very generic third act conflict imaginable for this type of story. Really turns bland and tasteless by the end. But Pratt and Lawrence still make it watchable despite all that, just barely. 5.5/10

Weird how this accidentally has a neatly opposite message from La La Land too.

Stay Puft
01-05-2017, 05:57 PM
There were a lot of places you could take a premise like this... but a bog standard Hollywood romance? Not a good look. The third act ramps everything up from naïve to misguided to outrageously wrongheaded at breakneck speed. As Zac Efron suggests, the worst part is just how poorly the script handles Aurora. I started to check out around the time she was watching old messages from friends, which contextualizes her journey as a search for meaning and fulfillment in the arms of a man. And how convenient, because here's Chris Pratt to save the day. Literally.

What a load of garbage. I read an interview with the director afterwards and his response to the "controversial" plot twist is so harebrained that now I can't shake the impression that this is grossly irresponsible filmmaking. Or just lazy and cynical at best.

transmogrifier
01-06-2017, 08:43 AM
Mild nay. It's all about the third act being a total waste of an excellent premise, by basically forgetting about it when [redacted] turns up. The first hour is very, very good though.

Spinal
01-14-2017, 09:44 PM
The film chickens out on taking Jim's redemption all the way, which is a shame, because there's a lot about the moral murkiness that I really enjoyed. There was a few different ways to end this movie and have it be really memorable.

However ...

... she decides he's the love of her life and they live happily for the rest of their days ...

... was probably not the right answer.

I still liked it.

transmogrifier
01-14-2017, 10:12 PM
There was a few different ways to end this movie and have it be really memorable.


Yep. One suggestion I read elsewhere (Letterboxd, I think) was particularly interesting:

Have her never forgive him and only work with him to save the ship out of self-preservation. He dies at the end in the venting (or when drifting in space, if you want to get especially dark and have her pointedly refuse to go out and save him), and then end on her a significant amount of time later sitting next to a pod of a young-looking male passenger, contemplating.

That would have been a significantly better choice than what actually happened, which glossed over the entire waking up entirely.

Spinal
01-14-2017, 11:31 PM
I could have lived with that ending. I think they even could have made the ending they chose better ...

Once we understand that there's a way for Aurora to be put back to sleep, presumably it can happen whenever she's ready. Instead of deciding on the spot that she's going to live the rest of her days with Jim, maybe they decide to have one last drink together, one last dinner. Maybe the emotion of the moment brings them together again to kiss. Maybe the kiss leads to something else and she decides to be put under the next day instead. Maybe the day turns into a week. Maybe she keeps finding reasons to put it off.

This could have been summarized in basically the same kind of voice over we get in the end and not taken much more time.

I don't think this is the best possible ending, because logic would dictate something much darker and emotionally difficult. However, even assuming that it's a big-budget movie that has to stay within certain parameters, I still think they could have made Aurora a lot more reluctant and slow to forgive.

Rico
02-06-2017, 12:01 PM
The first act is decent enough. Reminded me a bit of the Shining with the isolation and the creepy bartender. It goes downhill fast though for all the reasons mentioned already. So many places the script could have gone but they just play it safe and we get a generic plot.

Spinal
02-06-2017, 04:05 PM
Why does the android in the bar look passably human, but the robots in the restaurant look like they'd attack Doctor Who on sight?).


You make some good points, but I think this one is pretty easy to explain. The function of the bartender is to not only provide drinks, but also to provide human companionship. At the restaurant, you just need robots to do their job efficiently and disappear into the background when not needed. Why is there only one bartender for an entire ship full of people? Well, you got me there.

Irish
02-06-2017, 04:58 PM
You make some good points, but I think this one is pretty easy to explain. The function of the bartender is to not only provide drinks, but also to provide human companionship. At the restaurant, you just need robots to do their job efficiently and disappear into the background when not needed. Why is there only one bartender for an entire ship full of people? Well, you got me there.

The restaurant robots have some personality, though. They speak different languages depending on the food served and sing on special occasions, etc, like they're happy-happy servers at TGIF. So why don't they have faces?

I was joking about that particular comparison, but it does illustrate the way the movie treats tech inconsistently.

The bartender can recognize faces and even emotional states, but the AI on the doors can't; it requires you to swipe an ID badge to gain access, as if it were 1995. When Pratt woke up, the AI was scripted in the context of the scene. It didn't know that there's still 90 years to go on the trip. Meanwhile, the "information booth" AI on the Grand Concourse and in the orientation session does know how much time has passed, but doesn't seem aware that Pratt is totally alone.

It doesn't make any sense that the bartender is so advanced but every other computer sim is so completely dumb. The only reason it was written that way is because otherwise, the basic plot wouldn't function at all.

Edited to add: This is what I thought when I read the logline years ago ---

That the ship woke up Pratt's character for a reason. I mean, in this movie, the ship is advanced enough that it can fly itself through space but it's also dumb enough that it outputs error messages to a screen nobody on board can read. (Seriously, why do that? And why not have the ship wake up the f'ing crew when it hits the "critical error" stage?) Anyway, I thought maybe the man wakes up the woman because he needs her help -- maybe she's a skilled technician! -- and after that they fall in love and live out their lives. Same basic story, except this way the film doesn't make Pratt into a complete monster.

Spinal
02-06-2017, 06:02 PM
All good points. The film is hard to defend for many of those reasons. I will say that I do like that Pratt's actions are so appalling because I think they're also human under the circumstances. I thought it was interesting to confront that idea of imagining yourself choosing between madness and selfishness. I don't even think it's a moral dilemma because the moral choice is perfectly clear. I think the point is considering what would happen if all of your other basic human needs were met except that one. Would you have the strength to act rightfully or would your judgment slip dramatically? As I mentioned above, the ending is the wrong choice. It doesn't offer enough to redeem the character's actions and it offers us an extremely unlikely resolution from the female character's perspective.

Irish
02-06-2017, 06:52 PM
I will say that I do like that Pratt's actions are so appalling because I think they're also human under the circumstances. I thought it was interesting to confront that idea of imagining yourself choosing between madness and selfishness. I don't even think it's a moral dilemma because the moral choice is perfectly clear. I think the point is considering what would happen if all of your other basic human needs were met except that one. Would you have the strength to act rightfully or would your judgment slip dramatically?

Completely agree. There's a great story in there. (Although I'm not sure it's a story well suited for a feature film, as the necessary internal struggle doesn't play well visually. I could definitely see this as a novel from Heinlein, though.)

Anyway, I would have liked the film if it had been about that choice, instead of using that choice as a plot point that was conveniently forgotten until the next act break. Instead they gave us a paltry romance that didn't say anything specific about these characters or their situation.

Dukefrukem
02-19-2017, 02:37 AM
Oh man, I wish they didn't abandon the primary climax for a secondary one.