Taking a ride with Passengers
Harry Topley
We got to see the new space opera Passengers recently. We've had a bit of time to reflect and think on the film and the fact that we've done so often is a clear sign that we were impressed.
The movie is visually stunning and the story is compelling, the main characters play out a spectacularly intricate dance of emotional turmoil on a wonderfully fleshed out sci-fi set piece. Our space-fairing humans are aboard a massive ship designed to take people to new habitable worlds, seed them with life and terraform them to create new homes for humanity, but our protagonists have woken up a little (lifespan) early. The rocket ark these people are "alone" aboard is an exquisitely detailed craft, it almost seems like someone found this spectacular ship design and wrote a story around it, with it as a character as powerful as the hotel in The Shining (and sporting a non-living bartender too!). Not to say the ship is haunted, this isn't another Event Horizon affair; the function and design have a clear impact on the story though. The set pieces were designed with a slight nod to sleek retro futurism and a bit of Art Deco for flavor. The classic sci-fi tropes of food dispensers in the cafeteria and little cleaner/fixer bots roaming the halls was a welcome sight as well. I always love a robot; good help is hard to find. To get to the meat and potatoes of our thoughts though we need to get to spoiler territory, where no man has gone before.
+ * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + Spoiler Zone * + * + * + * + * + * + * + * + *
The concepts of this movie were an excellent way to pit man against environment with an entirely man-made environment. A cascading ship malfunction on a tightly designed ship is brilliant and realistic impetus for the plot to get moving. Some of the most interesting discussions this movie has sparked revolved around the access system which grants/restricts access to various parts of the ship using an automated ID system, and how this affects our protagonists' lives. But the part that we keep coming to, the point of contention, is the end, or if it even was one. After many conversations we started to realize that the ending of this movie, while poetic and beautiful has brought up a much larger question of the fate of those on-board. Here's the big one guys... the ship still doesn't arrive at it's destination by the end of the movie... this left us wondering, will there be a sequel? We hope not since that will probably just go poorly regardless of the talents attached, it's just the way it is in sci-fi, sometimes you have to leave questions unanswered. That being said. maybe a story of another one of these ships reaching its destination and what awaits travelers there. But I keep wondering if the things done on the ship during their time alive before the other passengers awoke, may have put the other passengers in a less than advantageous position. 2 people consuming a limited amount of food for years instead of days, creating a greenhouse garden of Eden in a concourse of a working flying space ship...it raises a lot of questions. Maybe they'll be answered someday, maybe they won't.