PassenFUCK THIS MOVIE-- *ahem* PassengFUCK THIS MOVIE

[SirMustapha]

Review: The Blue Lagoon Passengers

First order of business: FUCK THIS MOVIE.

A little aside: isn't it funny how Hollywood always fills its mouth to say how their movies are powerful and influential and culturally significant and important and how they make people laugh and cry and change their lives and shit, and then whenever someone raises the more delicate, questionable aspects of how films can influence audiences, the first thing they say is "relax, it's just a movie!" ? I always admired coherence...

Anyway, on with the review: Passengers is the name of a musical project created by U2 with producer Brian Eno. Their one and only album, Original Soundtracks 1, is a really interesting collection of "soundtracks for imaginary films", as well as a few actual films. It's also the name of yet another shit film, in which an interesting science fiction premise is bulldozed and ravaged by some of the most pedestrian, hackneyed script writing in history. Also, FUCK THIS MOVIE.

The bluntest, most concise thing I could say about this pile of shit movie is this: there's nothing to take away from this. It leaves no impression whatsoever. Worse: the premise, as well as the first couple of minutes, make a whole load of promises that are promptly discarded at the first opportunity. The story takes no risks; if you make any predictions of where the story is going at any point in this movie, your predictions will be guaranteed to be better than the actual movie. None of its themes are meaningful or related to something relevant; when, for example, Dawn of the Dead (the original one!) had its characters enjoying the pleasures of the shopping mall while the world outside exploded, it made some pretty interesting and uncomfortable real life parallels; here, there are no parallels. The characters are thoroughly, meticulously uninteresting and unappealing, and to talk about "acting" here would be nonsensical.

Of course, I'll give a brief overview of the story; there will be spoilers, because fuck this movie. The movie starts with guy (no, that's not his name; since the character is perfectly shallow, and the word "acting" here would be misapplied) being awoken from hibernation in a spaceship en route to a colony in an Earth-like planet, at some point in The Unspecified Future. To his horror, he realises he's the only one awake in the entire ship, and there are still 90 years to go before the ship reaches its destination. He makes a futile attempt at contacting Earth, realises he can't go back to hibernation, and can't break into the bridge of the ship to try and find help. Now go and write the rest of the script yourself; the result will certainly be better than everything else this movie has in store.

After contemplating suicide and chickening out, guy happens to spot girl (that's not her name either, but you know the drill) in her hibernation pod, and Falls In Love. He learns he could force her pod to malfunction and cause her to wake up, and struggles with his moral dilemma for a while. To our luck, we don't need to live with guy's thoughts and fears for too long, because he interacts with quirky cyborg bartender comic relief. Because, of course, you only need to drop a Kubrick reference into your movie to make it special (except not). Of course, he wakes up girl, acts like he didn't do it, and the movie quickly turns into Blue Lagoon In Space.

Mind you, these characters have no reason whatsoever to fall in love, all of their scenes are boring to watch, and the only thing this portion of the movie does is fruitlessly attempt to build up tension. You know she'll find the truth eventually, and all you can do is anticipate how much you'll cringe. The only thing you get is the occasional reminder that the pod failure that caused guy to wake up early is just the first in a series of mysterious cascading malfunctions all over the ship. When she finds out, it's painful. When the malfunctions go out of control, it's painful. When Laurence Fishburne wakes up to serve as the most expensive plot device in the history of filmmaking and dies 10 minutes later, it's painful. When the movie has the slightest chance to do something risky and interesting, and then promptly drops it, it's painful. The entire process is absolute PAIN, and it's made even worse because you're constantly reminded of the potential this movie's premise had.

Some reviewers talk about how this movie could be much more interesting if it told the events in a different order, or switched the perspective from guy to girl. I disagree; for me, this story is stupid all the way down to the core. It shouldn't have been a romance. These characters shouldn't have fallen in love. The revelation shouldn't have been made just as guy is ready to propose to girl. The action flick bullshit at the end doesn't work. These characters shouldn't have survived. Every wrong decision this movie could have taken, it takes. There's nothing salvageable.

Yes, this movie pissed me off to no end. Every attempt at making me care for these characters or these events fell flat on their face. There were so many moments that felt like they were deliberately mocking our expectations (girl gets within an inch of murdering guy, and doesn't do it! Fuck!) that I felt legitimate disbelief towards what I was witnessing. I couldn't accept that such a movie happened. Even trying to list pros and cons feels hopeless, because there are so many cons that can't even be bothered to list them.

As for the pros, well, to its credit, it didn't use phony satire and fake mockery to advertise other movies, and the writing was not the result of a Hollywood exec gobbling up a fuckton of Reddit posts and shitting them out in the form of a script. I mean, not that any movie ever did that, right? That would be downright awful, and maybe even would qualify as the worst movie I've ever seen. As for Passengers, there's a scene in which girl almost drowns to her death when swimming; if she didn't get miraculously saved in the nick of the time, she'd be dead in a pool.

The Accountant is pretty entertaining, though. Geez, and people keep saying I'm "too negative"!

[c_nordlander]

That sounds... absolutely dire.

I've seen some people bashing it for wanting us to sympathise with a guy (not that it would be any better if the genders were reversed!) for being a nice guy who should get the girl even as he does some really horrendous things to her (in this case, condemning her to a lifetime of loneliness on a spaceship just so they can be together). And... it's not really *that* bad, is it? I mean, the writers can't possibly want us to sympathise with him for that?

Also, wow, now I'm reminded of the absolutely worst Futurama episode of all time, "In-a-Gadda-da-Leela". I really could have gone another 90 years without remembering that one...

EDIT: When I first saw the topic, I wondered what Passchendaele did to you.

[SirMustapha]

I've seen some people bashing it for wanting us to sympathise with a guy (not that it would be any better if the genders were reversed!) for being a nice guy who should get the girl even as he does some really horrendous things to her (in this case, condemning her to a lifetime of loneliness on a spaceship just so they can be together). And... it's not really *that* bad, is it? I mean, the writers can't possibly want us to sympathise with him for that?

As far as I'm concerned, I don't make that criticism because to say the movie "wants us to sympathise" is giving it too much credit. The movie does nothing more than to explore all the trite, textbook "romantic" scenes, without giving them any substance, without putting anything into those hollow shells they call "characters". So yeah, the movie is a failure even at being creepy.

Well, to its credit, the movie at least knows that his decision was bad. It just doesn't do anything with that fact, and just goes through the obligatory motions: girl is in love with guy, now girl is angry at guy, now girl is very angry, now girl is less angry and so on. To finish off the mountain of not-give-a-shit, the movie doesn't even try to justify his decision; instead, through the obnoxiously long, contrived and painfully schmaltzy ending in which they save the ship from destruction, they just make it so that, in hindsight, his decision was "good" all along. It's so half-arsed and lazy that it's almost not worth it to question its moral compass, and I'd feel extremely petty and bitter if I said this movie is fucked up.

This movie is fucked up.

[Nidotamer]

Well I take it you didn't like it? For some reason, from your description alone, it sounds like the premise of Red Dwarf but somehow less grim and also crappy.

Like I am going off your word here but it probably would be meaningful (and SEMI justifiable) if it was someone guy was already close to that he woke up. Like if it was, say, his wife or a close sibling. Then there'd be half a reason to malfunction their pod (as in, girl probably wouldn't be happy to wake up and find her husband had been long dead, or whatever, guy doesn't want to spend 90 years deprived of his soul mate, ect)... It'd still be a dick move but at least it's a rather sympathetic reason.

[c_nordlander]

Well I take it you didn't like it? For some reason, from your description alone, it sounds like the premise of Red Dwarf but somehow less grim and also crappy.

Like I am going off your word here but it probably would be meaningful (and SEMI justifiable) if it was someone guy was already close to that he woke up. Like if it was, say, his wife or a close sibling. Then there'd be half a reason to malfunction their pod (as in, girl probably wouldn't be happy to wake up and find her husband had been long dead, or whatever, guy doesn't want to spend 90 years deprived of his soul mate, ect)... It'd still be a dick move but at least it's a rather sympathetic reason.

Sounds to me like that would make a much better movie.

[SirMustapha]

Like I am going off your word here but it probably would be meaningful (and SEMI justifiable) if it was someone guy was already close to that he woke up. Like if it was, say, his wife or a close sibling. Then there'd be half a reason to malfunction their pod (as in, girl probably wouldn't be happy to wake up and find her husband had been long dead, or whatever, guy doesn't want to spend 90 years deprived of his soul mate, ect)... It'd still be a dick move but at least it's a rather sympathetic reason.

That would be a good idea if you wanted to avoid the main character being completely creepy, yes, and there would probably be room for more interesting character dynamics than "bland guy and bland girl fall into bland romance for no proper reason other than that they have no choice but it's soo romantic". Yes, I'm still annoyed by this movie, but trust me, my companion was even more annoyed than I was.

Also, some YouTubers have suggested that the movie could work far better if it were told from her perspective, so that his character would be as mysterious to her as he is to us, and the revelation would come as a true shock. I... partly agree. My main issue with this movie is that it shouldn't have been a romance; of, if it had to be a romance, then it would have to be very bittersweet, tapping into whether they're in love or desperate (well, you know... like I DID in Treasure Hunt! Why doesn't THAT story become a multi-million budget movie??), or just changing their relationship entirely. But I suppose having two bland, boring Hollywood starts fall in love with each other sells far more tickets.

[Nidotamer]

Another possible route I thought of: making it a horror movie. I mean, two people, isolated in space with mysterious things going on? Isolation like that is always a good setup. Not so much "in a cabin and no phones for... maybe a mile or two" but "in the middle of somewhere inhospitable and if you left you'd die and not even from the main threat". Kinda like how the Thing took place in Antarctica where going outside even for a bit would leave you frostbitten if the weather is bad and all the equipment is shit and then it's all broke. Especially if it's at least initially unclear if there IS a cause or if it's just being stranded in space alone with god knows how many people in suspended animation is fucking with their heads. I mean it probably would, or be like some sort of Cabin Fever on steroids...

[c_nordlander]

@Fernie: I heard that it wasn't meant to be a romance to start with. It was just meant to be a film about the guy, and they tossed in Jennifer Lawrence because her name sells movies. Sounds plausible.

I like May's suggestion too. Heck, sounds like pretty much anything would be an improvement on this film.

[missy_misery]

I admit I got some sweet joy out of this one tanking big time. I could see what the producers wanted to say, but they utterly failed at saying it.

[c_nordlander]

I admit I got some sweet joy out of this one tanking big time.

It did? That makes me happy.

[missy_misery]

Yep, as far as I know it never made its money back!