2 Kernels

In anticipation of the new season of Outlander, I renewed my Starz subscription on Amazon last night. I do love being able to do that whenever I want to, rather than paying an exorbitant amount through my cable TV service for a bunch of channels I do not need. When the series that I want to watch is over, I just cancel it again and save $8.99 a month.

Anyway, I said all that to say that last night I watched the movie The Passengers on Starz, which I had not seen at the theatre.  I’m not much of a SFI freak, but this movie was somewhat interesting. It’s about a passenger ship streaming through outer space heading to a new planet. On board are 5,000, plus 200 plus crew members, in a hibernation inside individual pods to make the trip that will take longer than their earthly lives.

As the ship silently travels through space, it hits an asteroid belt.  The shields deflect what it can but some damage to the ship occurs.  As a result, one poor man, Jim Preston, played by Chris Pratt, wakes up ninety years too early and is stuck on a ship with no other life except one android bartender, robot floor sweepers, and hologram computers, talking to him as if he’s arrived at his destination.

After spending over a year alone, he does the unthinkable and awakens a beautiful girl out of a pod, Aurora Lane, played by Jennifer Lawrence. At first, he lies to her that she, too, is a victim of the ship’s malfunction.  When she finds out the truth, let’s just say she’s over-the-top angry.

As they travel along, falling in love, the ship continues to malfunction and finally, a crew member is also awakened, who has a short life. Eventually, they discover that the ship was damaged while going through the asteroid belt.  Jim and Aurora are the spaceship’s only hope of salvation from complete destruction.  See, all that angry emotion, and she would have died anyway.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Jennifer Lawrence and have no concrete reasons to say why.  Maybe it’s her voice.  Maybe it’s her looks.  Chris and Jennifer are an odd pairing on this lonely trip through space. Emotions are high once she learns he woke her up and ruined or life by relegating her to ninety years on a ship with no one but him and a robot bartender for company.

At the end of the movie, I really felt hanging in many ways as you never know how their lives played out after they save the ship. The last scene shows the remainder of the passengers waking up as they near their destination. I would have thought that Jim and Aurora might have had children who would have welcomed them, but alas you never find out what transpired those ninety years.  Did they grow old together? Who died first? How many kids did they have? Perhaps she took birth control.  Did they commit suicide? Did they wake up anyone else?  I guess we will never know.  Oh, well.  Whatever, it was probably a lonely ride through space.

Filed under: Reviews, SFI Tagged: Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, The Passengers