Passengers will have sci-fi fans hooked with its intriguing plot

MOVIE REVIEW: If you enjoyed Gravity and The Martian, then the intriguing plot line of Passengers should have you hooked.

PASSENGERS (M)

Director: Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game)

Starring: Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Sheen.

Rating: 3 / 5

Early to rise, but late to wake up to the danger

FOR Passengers to take you on the wild thrill ride you might be hoping for — especially if you have already fallen for the charms of its selectively deceptive trailer — then you are going to have give this movie the benefit of the doubt.

And mark my words, there will be doubts aplenty provoked by this unorthodox hybrid of futuristic science fiction and old-fashioned romantic drama.

However, there are benefits to be reaped if you can find a way to forgive Passengers its obvious flaws.

If you do have the movie positioned in the same broadly accessible universe of spacey storytelling as Gravity and The Martian, then its intriguing plot line should have you hooked from the get-go.

In a far-off future, a luxury-liner spaceship is en route to an Earth-like planet in another galaxy. Every person on the craft — including the crew — have been snap-frozen to survive the 120-year journey.

Once they arrive at their destination, everybody will embark at the same young age and in the same rude health as when they left. Then they can move on to colonising and populating their new home.

Now comes the big twist. Roughly 30 years into the trip, a software error pops open one of the flight pods, and awakens the gentleman inside.

Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) is an electrical engineer by trade, but his skills are not comprehensive enough to begin to fix a problem which could turn out to be the loneliest death sentence imaginable.

After a year of wandering the cavernous spaceship in search of a way back to sleep, Jim resigns himself to his fate. He will die en route. With only the pre-programmed conversational cheer of a robot bartender named Arthur (Michael Sheen) for company.

Michael Sheen’s robot bartender Arthur serves the Pod released Jim Preston (played by Chris Pratt). Picture: Supplied

Now comes the second big twist. Jim gets some human company. A beautiful young writer named Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) has also suffered a shock early ejection from her pod.

Initially, Aurora goes through the same phases of panic, pragmatism and then grim resignation that Jim experienced.

Once these feelings subside, the way is clear for Jim and Aurora to become mutually attracted, and later, a deep-space version of Adam and Eve.

Jennifer Lawrence’s Aurora Lane and Chris Pratt’s Jim Preston fall in love inside a spaceship in a scene from Passengers. Picture: Jaimie Trueblood / Columbia Pictures / Sony via AP

However, they gradually discover their well-appointed new home is anything but a Garden of Eden. The same sporadic glitches that may have popped their pods begin to occur on a far more frequent basis.

Unless Jim and Aurora can put a stop to these terrifying programming bugs, they will not be the only casualties of the malfunctioning technology powering the spaceship.

Screenwriter Jon Spaihts recently penned the winningly warped script for Doctor Strange, and he applies the same vivid flourishes of imagination and humour on occasion here.

However, as a complete movie experience, Passengers does have its problems, some of which are never adequately solved.

Consistent pacing and pronounced lapses in momentum are the two most marked shortcomings (even if they are due to certain key events in the story that cannot be mentioned here).

Just as importantly, not all viewers will respond to the screen chemistry conjured by Pratt and Lawrence, who both go through lengthy spells where their characters are somewhat difficult to relate to.

Chris Pratt’s Jim Preston finds there is someone else alive on the spaceship — Jennifer Lawrence’s Aurora Lane. Picture: Jaimie Trueblood / Columbia Pictures / Sony via AP