“Passengers” is a film directed by Morten Tyldum, which stars Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, and is primarily about these two folks who are on a 120 year flight to another planet that is similar to Earth. They wake up from their slumber earlier than anyone else, there is nobody on the ship other than themselves which they can talk to, and this movie covers what these two do along the way along with how they interact with one another.

When I was going into this film, I was thinking I was going to watch some sort of science fiction thriller, and maybe a romance in between as well. While this is a science fiction thriller this movie has such a huge focus on its romance plot. Is that a bad thing? I wouldn’t say so considering it is executed well. Anyway, lets move onto the characters.

Chris Pratt is the movie’s lead actor and he plays a character named Jim Preston. At the beginning of the movie, I was surprisingly interested in everything he did, because the beginning of the movie was mainly just exposition and while that is a case here, it was done in a way that made Chris Pratt somewhat down to Earth, and it even gave me some chuckles. Yes, the movie has humor, not much, but it has some. At what I believe is somewhere around the 20 minute mark of the movie’s runtime, Pratt does an action that I won’t reveal to avoid spoilers, and I almost thought he was moronic for doing it, but after analyzing, I understood why he did it, if you saw the movie you’d probably know what I’m referring to.

Jennifer Lawrence plays the character of Aurora Lane. I kinda like the name Aurora, sounds somewhat sensual. I digress, but still a nice name. This isn’t in the trailer, but I probably won’t be spoiling much. In the movie, Aurora is a journalist, and the fact that she is a journalist kind of made her character ten times as interesting as I thought she would be. When she is talking to Jim and mentions her occupation she says that she wants to go on this 120 year flight to Homestead II (the destination planet the which the movie’s ship is cruising to), analyze what’s there, and come back to Earth in order to write all about it. That right there is an interesting character, and one of the better character motivations I’ve seen this year.

As a romance, this movie is pretty solid, and I’d say it did its job. The romance overall is kind of like James Cameron’s “Titanic”, and this is especially true towards the end of the movie because that’s when some of the heavy stuff happens. If there are any problems with it however, there are quite a few cliches that you may have seen before once it starts off but that’s a minor issue in my book.

One character in the movie that I’ve yet to talk about is the android bartender known as Arthur, played by Michael Sheen. The characters of Aurora and Jim spend a good amount of time in the ship’s bar throughout the movie so this character has plenty of screen time. It was kind of charming to see him on screen, if I had any complaints about him however, it’s just a minor one, but give him some funny lines and make him some sort of comic relief character. Although it’s a robot so I would probably think twice on that one. Also the sound that was going off whenever this android moved was music to my ears, so good job there!

One thing I want to talk about is the ending, I’m not gonna spoil anything, but I’m still trying to process it. There’s a part of me that’s like, “Huh, that’s kinda neat.” Although there’s another part of me that’s like, “Hmm, I don’t buy it.” While the ending itself was somewhat satisfying, and I can imagine myself not liking the movie ending the way I thought it was going to end as the ending was happening, there was a part of me that thought it would be more logical if the movie ended the way I thought it was going to end, for now, this is going to lower my score for the film, but this could change. You never know.

In the end, “Passengers” had an interesting romance, likable characters, great CGI, but based on everything I saw, I wouldn’t by this movie once it comes out on Blu-Ray. In fact, I can only imagine myself watching this again if I found it free on Amazon video, or if it happened to come on TNT or TBS or some network like that. I’m going to give “Passengers” a 5/10. Keep in mind, this IS a positive score. It’s a watchable 5, I might bump it up to a 6 in a bit but who knows? Just a couple announcements, I already saw “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”, in fact I actually saw it on premiere night, so if you want to read my review of it, click the link below this paragraph. Also, this Thursday I’m going to see “Patriots Day”, the movie which is based on the true events behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing so stay tuned for my review of that film coming soon and stay tuned for more reviews coming soon. Scene Before is your click to the flicks!

“ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY” REVIEW: https://scenebefore.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/rogue-one-a-star-wars-story-a-movie-built-on-hope/