A Ship Too Far- Passengers: A Spoiler-Free Review

I'm not sure what I was expecting with Passengers. Chris Pratt's awesome scifi work aside (Guardians of the Galaxy, Jurrasic World- he made that movie), as well as Jennifer Lawrence's (Hunger Games, X-Men, etc.), I had no idea what we were walking into. Sure, I knew it was about some kind of interstellar cruise ship, maybe there was a disaster involved or it was going to crash into a star, but that was about it.

All in all, it turned out to be a decent  movie. Physics-wise, it's actually a lot more accurate than I was expecting (even more accurate than Gravity and Interstellar overall)—with the exception of the gravity incident shown in the trailer. The way they designed the ship, there was 0 reason for that to happen, it was irksome—but aside from that and a few things that struck me as odd in the beginning, it was pretty much spot-on. That, of course, let me free to enjoy the story.

If you watched the trailer you probably figure this is a romance-in-space movie with some comedy and adventure thrown in. You're more or less correct... except that you're also not correct. I'm going to have to leave it there to keep this review "spoiler-free," but I was surprised that the writers chose to go the route they did. I'm not sure I appreciated it in the moment, but the more I think about it the more I feel the twist made this movie stand out as different. I appreciate that. On the other hand, there were a few troubled spots in the action moments I didn't like. As you can tell from the trailer, things go wrong with the ship, but the reason they don't get taken care of faster is what bothered me the most about the movie. It's one of those "make something dumb so we can do the plot this way" things. It didn't have to be there, but there it was. Let's see if you can spot it (think safety!)

Okay, I'll stop this here. What's my verdict? Is it worth the price of admission? Overall, yeah, it was. I'd even see it again to try and catch more of the artistry that went into making this a beautiful movie to watch. Was it perfect? No, but it was entertaining and that (plus actually getting the physics and star ship design right for realism) made it good.