Passengers

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  • Passengers

    Ai yi yi yi yi. Just saw a screening of this thing. This is yet another time where you really wish that whoever it was that cut the trailer had actually written and directed the movie because that movie -- I mean the movie that you thought they'd made when you watched the trailer -- that movie really looked good.

    Too bad that wasn't the movie I ended up seeing when I actually saw Passengers.

    That movie, alas, was an utterly misbegotten disaster.

    Okay, let's be fair. One man's opinion. In my opinion -- Passengers was an utterly misbegotten disaster.

    So -- for those of you who are interested in my humble opinion, it follows, complete with spoilers.

    Okay, start off with a really cool giant space ship. This isn't one of those faster than light universes, so it take a century plus to get fully automated ships full of hibernating passengers and crews across the deeps of space.

    This has been going on for some time so there are already functioning colonies in various places. This is a going concern. When a ship gets close to a colony, around four months out, everybody is woken up. The crew takes over, the 5000 colonists go through a briefing, orientation phase, then they're landed and take up their places on the already thriving colony world.

    That's how it's supposed to work.

    So we're in deep space with this cool-looking space ship travelling close to light speed with this sort of force field thing at the front and -- guess what?

    We run right into a meteor shower or one of those Empire Strikes Back style asteroid belts where the asteroids are all around twenty yards away from one another (you know, the kind that don't actually exist anywhere, never mind in deep space) and the ship's deflector shield is sort of overwhelmed and the ship is damaged.

    The only immediate result of this is that one of the hibernation pods in the passenger section -- repeat ONLY ONE -- deactivates and Chris Pratt wakes up.

    Okay, what follows is actually a pretty good section of the film. Because of the damage, the ship doesn't quite know what's happened. And Chris Pratt, at first, also doesn't realize that he's the only one that's woken up. And when he does, because he's sort low down on the totem pole as passengers go, the ship won't tell him anything. That makes perfect sense. The automated aspects of the ship are designed to keep passengers away from anything that they shouldn't be messing with. So he can't access the crew quarters, where all the crew members are still in hibernation. He can get access to the bridge, to any computer systems that relate to controlling the ship or to ship systems. The automated systems simply relate to him according to their very limited protocols. They let him into the quarters and entertainment facilities that have been assigned to him, give him the super low grade food that he's entitled to -- and that's about it.

    And he's a technician second grade -- basically a mechanic, so his skills are limited. He can't get the hibernation pod to refreeze him. He can't get into the crew quarters. He can't do anything. And there are ninety years to go before the ship reaches its destination.

    So other than hanging out with the "Shining-style" robot bartender, he is just plain f-cked.

    Now, here is where Passengers runs straight into a freaking supernova. No, I don't mean literally, because that would have been interesting. I mean story-wise.

    Okay. A year goes. Yes. An entire year, and Chris Pratt demonstrates how low he's gotten by growing a beard (always a bad sign). Finally, his beard gets so long that he decides to commit suicide. He climbs into the "have fun by floating outside the space ship" suit, goes outside the ship and looks around.

    Yes, it would have been really easy to just cut himself loose at this point, but -- you know, reasons. Instead, he comes back inside, closes the air lock, and then he's about to blast himself into space -- and. No! he can't do it. He crawls back inside and there, in front of him, is a hibernation pod and in the pod is --

    That's right. Jennifer Lawrence. And lets face it, no matter how long you've let your beard go, who can blow himself into outer space when you've got Jennifer Lawrence lying there in a hibernation pod looking all, you know -- Jennifer Lawrence-y.

    So now he's torn. Yeah, that's right. This is how this movie is playing out. Is Chris Pratt. Super nice guy. Nice guy of the freaking universe, going to wake Jennifer Lawrence up out of hibernation so that he can have a f-ck buddy for the next ninety years -- or at any rate for however long she's presentable.

    Oh, but no. It's not that. He truly loves her -- you can tell it's true love because he spends days pining over her video profile. Yeah, "pining" I think is the word they use for it in the future.

    Finally, his (ahem) love grows so great that he can't help but completely exploit this girl and use her for his own totally selfish ends. So, telling the robot bartender not to tell Jennifer under any circumstances that he's responsible for waking her up because, you know, that's just about the worst thing a human being could possibly do to another and if she found out she'd hate his guts forever, so keep it on down low -- you know?

    Then -- he does it. He wakes her up. He pretends not to know. She's sad. Can't anything be done? No.

    Okay. Guess what happens next? Maybe something having to do with that meteor storm that hit the ship around a year before? Nah.

    Something having to do with Chris Pratt feeling like a complete piece of **** for having done this and that interferes with -- Nah.

    No. For the next year -- YES, YOU HEARD ME. Okay, actually, you're just reading this. YES, YOU JUST READ ME. For the next year, Chris Pratt proceeds to court Jennifer Lawrence and win her over with his Chris Pratt-y charm and she proceeds to fall in love with him.

    She swims. They date. She buys him food with her First Class Passenger wrist band. They watch the ship zip past a sun and it's like really cool and beautiful and has nothing to do with the story. He makes her an engagement ring with his mechanical skill and he's going to propose and then --

    Okay, well, we know what's going to happen next but certainly there's got to be some really clever way that she's going to find --

    Nah. The robot bartender just tells her. Period. No reason. That smarmy British robot bitch could just as easily have told her a year ago and saved us all a great big chunk of this movie but no. Story God decided to just reach down into this great swirly of a movie and make him tell her now, for maximum dramatic (and we use the term loosely here) effect.

    What obviously should happen and does -- Jennifer Lawrence is like super upset and tells Chris Pratt to throw himself out the nearest air lock.

    What obviously should happen and doesn't -- Chris Pratt takes a freaking sledge hammer and smashes the f-ck out of that g-dam big-mouthed robot bartender.

    So -- guess that put a little bug in Chris Pratt's little love plan, eh? I wonder what's going to happen next?

    Well, he goes into the giant storage locker that holds thousands of tons of whatever the hell you could possibly want and he defrosts -- ? Well, what do you think. A tree. That's because Jennifer Lawrence sort of likes trees.

    And he cuts a hole in the middle of the big dining area place and he plants the tree there because -- hey, if you'd intended to travel to a new world and some stranger thawed you out ninety years too soon in order to trick you into becoming his love toy -- surely having having a tree planted in the middle of a big dining room would make it all okay. Right?

    Unfortunately, this question remains forever unanswered because guess who shows up right at this juncture. It's gruff crew member Laurence Fishburne.

    One might almost think, at this point, that both Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence would be rendered completely irrelevant, now that somebody who knows what the hell to do has finally shown up -- well, you'd be right, except -- reasons!

    It appears that the defrosting procedure, which worked perfectly fine with the two attractive stars seems to have malfunctioned with the less attractive supporting actor and even as the ship's systems are rapidly failing -- ditto with Laurence Fishburne's systems, despite what the newly introduced med bay and it's super-duper auto-doc is able to do, which is pretty much nothing when it comes to supporting characters.

    Fortunately (for the audience and our rapidly diminishing supply of patience with this movie) after two years of pretty much nothing but soap opera bullshit between these two, the advent of Laurence Fishburne means that some heavy duty nasty disaster-type stuff is rapidly heading our way.

    So, at least we get to see that really cool scene from the trailer where the gravity fails and Jennifer Lawrence gets trapped in that giant bubble of swimming pool water. Because, no doubt, this would be a perfect opportunity, given that she and Chris Pratt are still totally on the outs because of Chris Pratt being an A #1 **** heel for having woken her up in order to get himself a mail-order un-freeze-dried girl friend, for Chris Pratt to make his way through the zero G space ship and save her from drowning from the giant swimming pool bubble and thus begin to heal their relationship. Right? Am I right?

    Nah. Chris Pratt floats around and saves himself on his own in his part of the ship. The sick Laurence Fishburne just sort of floats around in his cabin. And Jennifer Lawrence sort of drowns -- and I mean we actually kind of see her drown inside the giant water bubble without anyone saving her.

    And then the gravity comes back on and she and the water drop back down into the pool -- and, I imagine you didn't know this, but if you've actually drowned and stopped breathing, being dropped into a swimming pool, even if still completely submerged, the force of that impact will cause you to wake up, and come up out the water and be fine again. Because that's what happens.

    And none of this effects any of their relationships or really even the story at all. It just happens.

    So, end of story. They get to the core. A meteor has damaged it. Fishburne's dying. Pratt's got to go into the core. They've got to lower the temperature by opening the airlock. Huh? What? At this point, I sincerely didn't give a ****. But he does, he's blown into space. His tether comes lose. She goes after him. Oh gosh, He's not breathing! It turns out his dead. The end.

    No, not really. She takes him to the autodoc, which she can now use because Fishburne gave her his crew wrist band thing before he died (oh, did I mention that Laurence Fishburne died? He died.) And now, because Chris Pratt, unlike Laurence Fishburne is a star, it promptly brings it right back to life and he's fine.

    But wait! There's more! Because now, even though we've established over and over that once you've been brought out of hibernation, you can't be put back in because putting you in is like a really complicated process and it takes -- nah. It turns out that the auto-doc can actually put someone into hibernation or anyway, something that's just like it.

    But no! It can only work for one person. And that person must be --

    You see? This way Chris Pratt gets to not be a compete piece of crap by means of a story device that is simply dropped in out of interdimensional ****-space.

    Oh, let's just check the operating system on this autodoc. Oh, right here. It's the Deus ex Machina mark 2.1.

    Oh, but wait. Is Jennifer Lawrence really going to leave the noble (really, is he?) Chris Pratt alone on this ship for the next 88 years. Well, not that he's really going to live that long. Besides, once she's asleep he'll probably just find some other chick to wake up.

    However will this Hollywood-style moral dilemma be resolved?

    Well, flash forward 88 years as the rest of the passengers finally wake up and what do they see? It turns out that Chris has continued his truly reckless gardening in the central plaza in order to please Jennifer's need for greenery -- and now it's spread to the point where the whole area resembles a vast forest. This is, I imagine, supposed to make us happy at the "world" that Chris and Jennifer made for themselves.

    Personally, in watching this, I could only think of two things.

    One, I could only imagine the unimaginable damage that uncontrolled plant like and root systems can cause when it starts to work its way through electronic and mechanical systems.

    Second, I couldn't help but picture the generations of inbred Chris/Jen mutants that would begin to crawl out from under the roots and start to feast on the helpless Passengers - this would no doubt be the subject of the Sequel, Passengers 2 -- The Devouring.

    To Be Continued ---

  • #2
    Re: Passengers

    [/QUOTE]
    I assume that readers of the above can tell that I was significantly disappointed in this movie. There are certain basic decisions that pretty much doomed it from the start.

    You all know what I'm talking about. Chris Pratt woke her up! What the hell! Who in God's green earth thought that was a good idea?

    Now let me be clear. I'm not saying that you couldn't tell that story. But if you're going to have a protagonist who does something like that you have to have deeply flawed main character because that decision put someone so beyond the normal pale of sympathy that you need to have a hero who we accept in morally ambiguous roles. If it was someone like Michael Fassbender where you really don't know if you're dealing with someone who might be a good guy or then again -- maybe not. But that becomes a very different movie. It's a much darker movie. It's not a Chris Pratt Jennifer Lawrence movie.

    Everything about those two is telling us what kind of movie it is. That casting tells us that it's a love story. It's a science fiction adventure. And more importantly, it's telling us that it's a story about characters who are basically decent.

    Well -- "basically decent" and making that decision, to wake her up and to condemn her to a life alone on that ship -- essentially stranding someone for life on a desert island with one other person -- is just a horrible thing to do. I don't care how lonely you are or how terrible your life is.

    Plus -- who says that just because you like the way someone looks on the other side of a hibernation tube, or the way her profile looks, that you're actually going to get along with the actual real person, or that she's going to get along with you. Imagine that you read someone's dating profile and thought -- okay, I'll just press a button and it'll be her and me alone on a desert island for life. And no way to go back on it.

    What are the chances that that would ever work out?

    Ultimately, what is the reason for it? What story purpose is served by it?

    And just what is the story? What is the central need, the central problem that drives this whole thing?

    The point is, these two (and ultimately three) are on a ship that's slowly dying, and when it dies, not only will they die, but over five thousand other innocent people will die.

    So if there is a point to it, you have these people who have their personal issues -- their loneliness, their love, their hate, their lives, their personal needs, but ultimately, they have to come to realize that all of those things are secondary to the larger issue -- which is that they have to put all of that aside to save this ship and the people on it.

    It's not as if that's a new story form, or one that hasn't been told before with enormous emotional power.

    There's just no reason, if you want to have a sympathetic lead, a "Chris Pratt" kind of lead, which is perfectly fine -- to have him wake up the girl on purpose.

    First, you could simply have had her wake up at the same time he woke up. That's very much what the trailer implies. There's no problem doing it that way.

    Second, if you want him to have some culpability -- well, say he's about to commit suicide as he is in the story -- but what stops him isn't the sight of Jennifer Lawrence, (attractive though she may be). Instead, he's gone outside and he's about to cut himself loose -- and he sees all the lights on the station go dark. Now, suddenly, instead of wanting to cut loose, he's desperate to get back in, but he can't. Everything has shut down. After a moment, it all comes back on.

    But now he realizes that something serious is happening. Whatever minor glitches he's noticed, this is major and he has to do something. But he's run out of ideas. So he figures, he can't figure out how to beat the computers, but there's got to be somebody in all of these 5000 passengers who's smart enough. So he goes through the passenger records and he finds the smartest computer guy he can find -- and he goes through the override system -- and he activates it -- but when he goes down below he realizes that something's gone wrong. He hasn't activated the computer genius's pod. Instead, he's woken up Jennifer Lawrence's pod.

    Even worse, the computer system has sensed tampering and it's now locked down it's anti-tampering protocols so he can't even get in any more. It's now just him and Jennifer Lawrence. And what can she do? Oh, she's a writer.

    So, it's a terrible mistake. He's horribly sorry. They're worse off than they were before, and she brings nothing to the table. Oh, by the way, they're ninety years away from their destination.

    So instead of plonking a dating movie in the middle of an action movie, you have this conflicted relationship that has to be resolved in order for the two of them to solve this larger on-going problem, because the ship is still failling (and this might nice time for that scene with the failed gravity where Jennifer is stuck in that water bubble and just maybe Chris Pratt could save her life instead the scene serving no actual purpose).

    And how about this? Instead of having the screenwriter reading his ink-stained hand down into the screenplay to wake up Laurence Fishburne, why not have the two of them, after doing nothing for two years, figure out how to get into the crew quarters. Maybe, for instance, if they can't get in through that big internal door, Jennifer Lawrence asks if maybe there's an outside door leading into the crew quarters. There wouldn't be any reason to make that an armored door because the passengers wouldn't be able to get to that door.

    Then you could have a neat scene where Chris Pratt would have to go outside the ship and go off tether to reach the crew quarter from outside.

    And then we'd be able to get a real answer to that question that was bugging me -- which is why, when Laurence Fishburne wakes up and needs help, that he doesn't just go in and wake up a bunch of other crew members. Because they'd be doomed to live the rest of their lives on the ship. Well, boo hoo, isn't that too sad. What are they being paid for?

    Or, here's a thought. Maybe install twenty or thirty or fifty more of those auto-doc systems that can put people back into hibernation once they wake up. They'd be pretty useful in emergencies.

    But suppose that somebody (maybe someone who actually thought this thing through) had written this thing -- and Chris Pratt finally managed to get into the crew quarters after all of this time. What does he find? Things are worse than he thought. All of the hibernation pods in the crew quarters have malfunctioned. There's only one left working, barely. That's Laurence Fishburne's. And when he's woken up, he doesn't come back in full working order. He only has so much time left, so he has to make use of Chris and Jennifer to do whatever needs to done.

    And here's how it ought to end. Before they go to fix whatever they have to fix, the dying Fishburne should tell Pratt that the crew section has it's own auto-doc and it can be set for emergency hibernation mode. But because of all the damage, it can only hold one.

    Then Fishburne dies and Pratt sacrifices himself to save Jennifer Lawrence and and he tells her to go to into hibernation and remember him.

    And she's the one that wakes up and guides the others to the new world.

    This movie is virtually an advanced degree in the kind of bad writing choices that lead to a truly horrid result. All of the elements were present for a good movie. The premise was promising. The cast was good. The various elements in terms of visuals and effects and potential set pieces all seemed promising and yet result - disastrous.

    NMS

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Passengers

      Was Fishburne's character in the Spaihts script? I don't recall that.

      Good review, and funny, and highlights a lot of the reasons I didn't want to see this movie.

      I LOL'd at smarmy British robot bitch.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Passengers

        Thanks again, Mr. Stevens. Another movie I won't have to waste time on.

        And your critiques are always more interesting than the movies.
        "I just couldn't live in a world without me."

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Passengers

          This was Bitter Script Reader's take on it.

          http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspo...assengers.html

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Passengers

            Originally posted by figment View Post
            This was Bitter Script Reader's take on it.

            http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspo...assengers.html
            Thanks. My desire to watch it is even less now. Stevens at least saw the potential for entertainment.

            This guy makes it sound like it's a root canal without Novocaine -- and wants you to think that's a good thing.

            Different strokes for different folks.
            Last edited by StoryWriter; 12-30-2016, 01:18 PM.
            "I just couldn't live in a world without me."

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Passengers

              I haven't seen this and don't intend to, but just to comment on your comments:

              There's just no reason, if you want to have a sympathetic lead, a "Chris Pratt" kind of lead, which is perfectly fine -- to have him wake up the girl on purpose.
              He's a sympathetic lead because the audience understands why he did a a bad thing. Sympathetic isn't synonymous with morally-perfect.

              First, you could simply have had her wake up at the same time he woke up. That's very much what the trailer implies. There's no problem doing it that way.
              There is a problem with that: there'd be no tension or conflict between the two protagonists. They'd just wake up, have it good for a while, and then have to deal with external problems (the ship failing), which aren't as interesting.

              Second, if you want him to have some culpability -- well, say he's about to commit suicide as he is in the story -- but what stops him isn't the sight of Jennifer Lawrence, (attractive though she may be). Instead, he's gone outside and he's about to cut himself loose -- and he sees all the lights on the station go dark. Now, suddenly, instead of wanting to cut loose, he's desperate to get back in, but he can't. Everything has shut down. After a moment, it all comes back on.
              Deus ex machina vs. the protagonist making a morally-questionable decision which drives the plot. Which is more interesting and carries more emotional weight?

              But now he realizes that something serious is happening. Whatever minor glitches he's noticed, this is major and he has to do something. But he's run out of ideas. So he figures, he can't figure out how to beat the computers, but there's got to be somebody in all of these 5000 passengers who's smart enough. So he goes through the passenger records and he finds the smartest computer guy he can find -- and he goes through the override system -- and he activates it -- but when he goes down below he realizes that something's gone wrong. He hasn't activated the computer genius's pod. Instead, he's woken up Jennifer Lawrence's pod.
              That would make him look dumb and the audience would be even less sympathetic towards him. People more easily side with jerks than idiots.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Passengers

                Nmstevens, if you could do that kind of synopsis with every bad movie I'd be happy. I enjoyed reading it. I haven't seen "Passengers" and it's because of the bad reviews. A month ago it looked - from the trailer - to be something to take my kids to see during Xmas break until it came out and even Chris Pratt's family were avoiding it (I'm kidding).

                Your take on the situation is very much how I critique a movie that disappoints. I have dozens of times bombarded regular people with a list of a movie plot holes that most of them shrug off. For the average film-goer their likes and dislikes are more instinctual. If it sucks they understand that but can't put their finger entirely why more then a few points while I explain ten off the top of my head, then warmed up I'll rattle off ten to twelve more.

                Nice job. Your breakdown was perfect.

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                • #9
                  Re: Passengers

                  Interestingly enough there was a multiple page thread from 2012 about the major "flaw" of Jim waking up Aurora in the Scripts Forum.

                  I read Passengers a while back and since it had been "vetted" by the powers that be, i.e., the Blacklist and all that buzz, I wasn't highly critical of the script. But I also don't remember it that well.

                  NMS, based on your review...

                  I agree that the casting was at odds with a dark sci-fi movie that the script seemed to have intended, from I can recall.

                  I remember thinking that ultimately the loneliness and isolation of the universe caused the character to do what he did. That is not a Chris Pratt-Jennifer Lawrence movie. And I'd agree that there are a number of fixes that would have been necessitated by the casting.
                  #writinginaStarbucks #re-thinkingmyexistence #notanotherweaklogline #thinkingwhatwouldWilldo

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Passengers

                    Originally posted by StoryWriter View Post
                    Thanks. My desire to watch it is even less now. Stevens at least saw the potential for entertainment.

                    This guy makes it sound like it's a root canal without Novocaine -- and wants you to think that's a good thing.

                    Different strokes for different folks.
                    Well, the reviewer does call himself "the bitter scriptreader" after all.
                    STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I'm a wannabe, take whatever I write with a huge grain of salt.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Passengers

                      I agree with the points made by both nmstevens and Bitter Script Reader.

                      Overall, I enjoyed the movie, despite its flaws.

                      1. I thought the premise was interesting. OF COURSE our hero does something morally wrong! That's what gives the story depth and makes it more than just another space adventure. It makes the audience think about what they'd do in the situation.

                      2. The world-building was good and it was cool to look at.

                      3. The dialogue was (mostly) intelligent and there were a few LOLs.

                      4. Most importantly, the characters were well-developed and played by very appealing actors.

                      I thought Passengers was far better than Rogue 1, which I loathed. (I know this puts me in the minority.)
                      "People who work in Hollywood are the ones who didn't quit." -- Lawrence Kasdan

                      Please visit my website and blog: www.lauridonahue.com.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Passengers

                        I think NMS Stevens has some personal vendetta against Sony or Spaihts. it was (like Immortan Joe) MEDIOCRE! But not atriocious.

                        The cool sets makes it a fun viewing experience, and the characters and situation was interesting to ponder, but like my dad said, it was "too boring." More needed to happen here. Like an antagonist for example!

                        It's the one thing that saved a similar film -- Sunshine from boredom. I don't want the bad guy to be mechanical failures FFS.

                        It's funny, I really liked the spec script. But this film ignored the original ending completely.

                        Just add it to the "Sony screws up another script" pile.
                        I'm never wrong. Reality is just stubborn.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: Passengers

                          Originally posted by FoxHound View Post

                          It's funny, I really liked the spec script. But this film ignored the original ending completely.

                          Just add it to the "Sony screws up another script" pile.
                          What was the original ending?

                          And does anyone have a link to the original script?
                          "People who work in Hollywood are the ones who didn't quit." -- Lawrence Kasdan

                          Please visit my website and blog: www.lauridonahue.com.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: Passengers

                            Originally posted by LauriD View Post
                            What was the original ending?

                            And does anyone have a link to the original script?
                            I had a link to the original script, but the link is dead.

                            Here's a link that discusses the film and difference btwn original and filmed endings.

                            http://www.slashfilm.com/passengers-ending/

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: Passengers

                              Originally posted by entlassen View Post
                              I haven't seen this and don't intend to, but just to comment on your comments:



                              He's a sympathetic lead because the audience understands why he did a a bad thing. Sympathetic isn't synonymous with morally-perfect.



                              There is a problem with that: there'd be no tension or conflict between the two protagonists. They'd just wake up, have it good for a while, and then have to deal with external problems (the ship failing), which aren't as interesting.



                              Deus ex machina vs. the protagonist making a morally-questionable decision which drives the plot. Which is more interesting and carries more emotional weight?



                              That would make him look dumb and the audience would be even less sympathetic towards him. People more easily side with jerks than idiots.
                              You talk about a morally ambiguous decision driving the plot. That raised the fundamental question off what exactly the plot of this thing is. It would have been nice if they'd decided.

                              Again -- I didn't say that they couldn't have made a movie about a morally questionable protagonist making a morally questionable decision. Hell, you can tell a story about a protagonist who is thoroughly vile and make horrible decisions and an audience will follow that character.

                              But if you're making MacBeth, don't cast Chris Pratt in the lead -- and don't cast Jennifer Lawrence as lady MacBeth. And don't turn it into an action movie and give it a happy ending. It's sending the wrong signals.

                              Decide what story you want to tell. If this is a story about a ship that's failing, don't have it hit by a freaking asteroid, then be fine for three-quarters of the movie, then have this super-creepy morally ambiguous thing happen -- then put that on the shelf for what amounts to a romantic sci-fi comedy for half the movie -- then oops, the robot gives it away for no reason, then go back to your morally ambiguous thing for ten minutes, then -- oh yeah, ship's about to blow up, let's service that story.

                              As I said (I think I said this somewhere) -- if you want that issue to be what the story's about, then all of the rest of it should have been jettisoned and the ship should have been fine -- it should just have been a glitch that woke the guy up - the casting should have reflected a guy who we would accept as someone who wasn't a Hollywood nice guy and they should have unfolded the story in terms of a real conflict between those two characters -- because just because you get all dreamy-eyed about somebody looking at her in a hibernation pod doesn't mean when you thaw her out that the two of you are going to get along in any way -- which might actually have been the basis of real conflict.


                              But if you're going to make a movie like that, it's basically a small human drama, and not a a mega-budgeted Hollywood epic -- and try to get that movie made.

                              NMS

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