Passengers is a movie that sounds like it should have been a success. It boasted an original story – no mean feat in Hollywood these days – from Jon Spaihts, who would go on to co-write both Dune films. Its director, Morten Tyldum, previously helmed the Oscar-nominated The Imitation Game. It also had the distinction of uniting Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence at the height of their careers; Lawrence had just wrapped up the Hunger Games saga while Pratt exploded onto the blockbuster scene with Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World. But after its release, Passengers received mixed reviews – especially concerning a plot twist that was hidden in the marketing. With Passengers currently riding high on Prime Video's charts, it's worth looking at this twist and how it impacted the ending (and not necessarily for the better).
What Is 'Passengers' About?
Passengers takes place in the far future, as deteriorating conditions on Earth have left humanity no choice but to flee in massive starships for a new home. The journey is said to take decades, so passengers on the ships are placed in hibernation – but a malfunction wakes up engineer Jim Preston (Pratt) 90 years ahead of schedule. Jim nearly goes mad from isolation, but eventually stumbles across a pod containing Aurora Lane (Lawrence), a successful journalist. Jim wakes up Aurora, telling her that her pod malfunctioned, and the two start falling for each other. It isn't until a year later that Aurora learns the truth, and to say she's devastated is putting it mildly.
Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence Aren’t the Only People Woken Up on 'Passengers'
Image via Sony Pictures
Even with Pratt and Lawrence's star power (and instant chemistry, despite the disturbing settings), Passengers ups its stakes when it awakens another passenger: chief deck officer Gus Mancuso (Laurence Fishburne). Gus reveals to Jim and Aurora that multiple collisions with asteroids not only led to him and Jim waking, but damaged the ship to a point where everyone on board will die. Since Gus has access to certain levels of the ship, he intends to try and fix it, but falls ill due to his hibernation pod failing. Before he dies, Gus gives Jim and Aurora the tools they need to access the ship, including codes to the bridge.
'Passengers' Ends on a Romantic (but Unearned) Note
Jim and Aurora learn that the fusion reactors powering their ship have been heavily damaged, and the only way to save the ship is to vent the reactor. With Passengers being a sci-fi film, things go horribly wrong and Jim has to manually vent the reactor – which almost kills him. Aurora is able to save him, and the ship is finally restored to its full power now that its reactor is repaired. After being repaired in the medical bay, Jim discovers that its pod can function as an emergency hibernation unit and urges Aurora to get in so that she can awaken with the rest of the crew. She chooses to spend the rest of her life with him instead, and Passengers closes with the rest of the ship's inhabitants awakening to find that Jim and Aurora lived a whole life. While this would have been perfect in any other film, it serves as a microcosm of P assengers' issues.
'Passengers' Is Never Sure What Kind of Movie It Wanted To Be
Image via Sony Pictures
The major issue with Passengers, other than the fact that it hides an arguably disturbing twist in its marketing, is that it's never able to commit to one genre of film. The sci-fi romance was executed far better in films like The Fountain and the Matrix trilogy. The revelation that Jim woke up Aurora is handled well at first (she tells him in no uncertain terms to stay away from her, and he makes things worse by constantly begging her to talk to him) but she eventually decides to forgive him at the end, even though she'll die without seeing her family or friends. A handful of reviews even pointed this out, with Vox saying that it was "three movies in one" while Time and Rolling Stone both felt that the movie would have been more interesting had it committed to staying with a darker tone once Jim's secret is let out.
But the person who probably has the most reservations about Passengers is Lawrence herself. During an interview with The New York Times, she revealed that Adele had advised her not to sign on to the film, and that she wished she had taken the singer's advice: "Adele told me not to do it! She was like, ‘I feel like space movies are the new vampire movies.’ I should have listened to her." Ultimately, Passengers is a movie at war with itself; it might have been crafted as an epic science fiction romance, but its story called for an approach that its cast and crew might not have been up for.
Passengers is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.
