{"id":93804,"date":"2016-12-20T13:54:13","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T13:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=93804"},"modified":"2016-12-20T14:33:41","modified_gmt":"2016-12-20T14:33:41","slug":"passengers-film-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/passengers-film-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Passengers film review: lost in space?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong> Passengers<\/strong><\/em> takes the idea that humans were not designed to be solitary beings and begins in a similar manner to Duncan Jones\u2019s <em><strong>Moon<\/strong><\/em> or more recently <em><strong>The Martian<\/strong><\/em> with Chris Pratt as engineer Jim Preston following in the footsteps of the brilliant Sam Rockwell and Matt Damon respectively as lone men lost in space.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, this romantic sci-fi adventure featuring two of the biggest stars working in Hollywood today ends in disaster thanks to a creepy plot point.<\/p>\n<p>When Jim\u2019s hibernation pod on the Starship Avalon malfunctions on his way to a new planet 30 years into what was supposed to be a 120-year stasis, he freaks out, but soon learns to keep himself occupied. Watching a playful Pratt wander around his grand surroundings (exquisitely designed by Guy Hendrix Dyas, nodding to the work of Stanley Kubrick and Douglas Trumball), playing basketball, getting drunk and conversing with a bartender android (Michael Sheen) is endearing and he sells this part of the film with his natural charisma.<\/p>\n<p>However after one year alone he\u2019s desperately depressed and in need of some company. When he comes across sleeping beauty and writer Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence), he feels a strong desire to satisfy his appetite by waking her.<\/p>\n<p>To wake Aurora would be to strip her of her freedom of choice and sentence her to a lonely existence. Jim thinks long and hard about whether to make this selfish decision by cyber-stalking her, imagining he knows this woman through her written words and filmed interviews and essentially idealising her.<\/p>\n<p>From this point on it\u2019s very hard to buy into to a sweeping romance, and though the film does acknowledge what a terrible thing Jim has done, it fails to have the conviction to see that narrative through. <em><strong>Passengers<\/strong><\/em> instead opts for an icky conclusion that sees a woman fall for a man who has robbed her of a promising career and future.<\/p>\n<p>Jon Spaihts\u2019 screenplay touches upon interesting ideas that parallel modern world issues such as the notion that technology can sometimes exacerbate chronic loneliness but it loses its way with a fatal error of judgement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence are stranded together in Passengers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":93806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[2615,8],"tags":[5290],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/passengers1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93804"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}