‘Passengers’
Rating: PG-13 for “sexuality, nudity and action/peril.” Running time: 105 minutes.
We seem to be shooting our best movie stars into outer space with alarming frequency. George Clooney, Sandra Bullock, Matthew McConaughey, Matt Damon and now Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt have all been rocketed out of the stratosphere. Perhaps they’re trying to make the best impression possible with alien life forms. Maybe they’re seeking to colonize new worlds of moviegoers. In any case, the stars have never looked so starry.
And the movies – “Gravity,” ”Interstellar,” ”The Martian” – have been among the best blockbusters in recent years. Space isn’t just the last frontier; it’s the new Western.
But in Morten Tyldum’s “Passengers,” Pratt and Lawrence have been handed a faulty flight log. Pratt plays Jim Preston, one of a few thousand people in suspended animation on the Aurora, a spiraling starship hurtling through space on autopilot, headed toward a distant colonized planet, Homestead II. But after a particularly big asteroid dings the ship, Preston’s pod opens 30 years into a 120 year trip. He’s a bear woken from hibernation too soon. Despite his efforts to restart the process, hitting the snooze is out of the question.
For anyone who has found themselves unreasonably wide awake in the middle of the night, Jim’s nightmare will have a ring of familiarity. But his math is grimmer. With 90 lonely years to go, he’s essentially been roused to his death. The otherwise desolate ship is his coffin.