If you were chilling in space, not knowing whether anyone was coming to save you, then I would suspect there was something wrong with you. How could there be not? Yet, director Kristian Mercado, with writer Angela Bourassa, has created the world of the film If You Were the Last, where suspension of disbelief is key to enjoying this romantic comedy. Space movies like Alien, Passengers, and many others have ominous undertones, probably because we don’t know what space holds for us and we fear what we don’t understand. Here in this movie, we are totally guaranteed that space is kind of a weird plaything where spaceships float and people can have cool lives living inside of them. Death is neither certain nor completely off the table, but it’s not much to fuss about. Living life to the fullest is what counts. The story of If You Were the Last revolves around Jane and Adam, two NASA employees, who are drifting in their spaceship that has lost contact with Earth. The two people, uncertain whether they will get help, debate if they should sleep together, considering the upcoming days could be their last.
Spoilers Ahead
Plot Synopsis: What happens In The Film?
Three years had passed, but with no help from NASA back home on Earth, Jane and Adam’s hopes were dwindling. They did all their duties diligently and kept hoping that they would be able to repair the spaceship’s navigation so they themselves could maneuver it back to Earth. With no sense of time, days became weeks, and they both did whatever they could to kill boredom. They both literally meant the world to each other, as there was no one around for a million miles in any direction, and after three years, they had seen it all. There were no boundaries between the co-workers. To kill time, they saw movies together, danced a lot, discussed every topic under the sun, and had debates about the world. The latest debate began, which involved sleeping together, and everything began to change.
What Were The Arguments Against The Motion?
Adam and Jane were attracted to each other, but neither of them could accept it, fearing their friendship would be affected. Neither of them was shy, though, given they had seen everything in 3 years of staying together in space. The debate around intimacy started to catch on, and they practically started to give reasons as to why they were for or against it. The first reason, i.e., attraction, was clearly a slippery slope. Adam was a little more curious, and hence he countered the idea of not being attracted to each other as a good reason to experiment. That way, there could be no emotional attachment, and hence he was speaking for the motion of sleeping together. Jane was attracted to him as well, but she couldn’t just back out of the debate. According to her, attraction was not a factor. The chemicals in the body released during physical intimacy would inevitably attach them to each other, so they shouldn’t do what they both wanted to do. The second reason was that they were both married to other people! Their spouses could be waiting for them back home. Well, there was no way of knowing if they were, and it was possible that they could have moved on given that Adam and Jane had not made contact for 3 years and were probably presumed dead. The third reason was the main one. What if Adam knocked Jane up? The pseudo-debate was dropped immediately, and they both reached the conclusion that they should not have intercourse, but do everything else!
Why Did Jane Have A Panic Attack?
The only moment in the film where the crushing psychological reality of imminent death is revealed is when Jane has a panic attack after her music player fails to play her favorite song. Adam had to help her out and calm her nerves by singing her the song. Music was Jane’s go-to safe space, where she could forget about the facts of her existence and the weird life she was living. There was Benson’s skeleton as well, with whom they shared all of their inner thoughts. There was a goat named Gertie too, which they ate after it died. Little by little, everything was rotting away, and the means of escape were getting pretty slim. Jane also had a bacterial infection situation going on from a minor cut, as she had refused to take the last remaining antibiotic pill. The two factors could have induced a panic attack, and Adam had to finally put his foot down and make her take the pill.
How Did Benson Die?
If Jane and Adam are to be believed, Benson had gone insane after the spaceship malfunctioned. In her madness, she was going to kill both Adam and Jane. So, when Benson went after Adam, Jane had to hit her with an ax, which resulted in her death. And we have to believe them. Jane probably hid the real reason in front of the press later on because of its sensationalist nature, but they both gave the same testimony to the NASA administration as well when they landed, and there is no real reason to assume otherwise. The film indicated no tension between the two when they explained what had happened, never indicating that they were hiding something. Benson’s corpse was kept as it was in her suit and had become a doll to them they could express themselves too. That wouldn’t have been the case if they felt uneasy looking at Benson’s remains. They had to do the needful, and they didn’t seem guilty of having committed a crime. It was pure self-defense.
Will Jane And Adam Stay Together?
When Jane repaired the navigation system, everything changed. It was next to impossible, according to Adam, but she had done it. Now they could reach Earth in three weeks. The fear of getting knocked up and not being able to do something about it was off the table, and they went at it for days. They never seemed to care how it might impact their lives back home. When they landed, they had become somewhat of a phenomenon. They were essentially famous and under a lot of public scrutiny. Benson’s death was being discussed, but Jane and Adam’s main concern was their spouses. Jane was married to Tom and Adam to Savannah, and they’d both waited and never remarried in these 3 years. The awkward dynamics and the secret of what happened in the last three weeks of their space travel caused them a lot of problems.
It had to come out eventually, and it did. Jane was the first to reveal the secret to Tom, and they decided to split up. Adam was the one who couldn’t seem to muster the courage, perhaps because Savannah had become governor, and he didn’t want to complicate things. But at the luncheon at the White House, it became apparent to Savannah as well that Adam had very strong feelings for Jane when she saw them dance together on the President’s request.
During If You Were the Last‘s ending, Adam and Jane were together and alone again! This seemed to be their destiny. But will they stay together? The evidence points to the fact that they just might. Three years was a long time, and they knew each other to the core. Maybe even better than their spouses. They were clearly attracted to each other, but it wasn’t clear that they loved each other. Things weren’t really serious back in space, and they had no real choice. But back on Earth, they clearly made a choice, which showed commitment. Now, psychologically speaking, they could be in a phase where they were simply too unaccustomed to life back on Earth and needed each other to make sense of things, which is why they were together. Once the attraction faded and they acclimatized to life on Earth, they could split and look for a real partner, but if that’s not the case, which the film too doesn’t hint at at all, then Jane and Adam will definitely be a couple and enjoy the rest of their lives together.
