ALL SCI-FI

[Custer]

The "ice shield" is in The Songs of Distant Earth, a quick visit to Wikipedia informs me.

[The Spike]

Crusoe and Girl Friday.

Pretty much reviled by professional critics, Passengers has overcome that to hold affection with a good portion of the sci-fi loving public. More safe sci-fi footings than anything remotely ground breaking, it ends up a a tidy romantic piece that's laced with pertinent questions involving man and his/her reactions to extraordinary scenario's.

Although the viewer is for the most part hankering for action to explode off the screen, it's only when - in the film's last quarter - you realise that it was actually working fine as a character study without the fireworks.

Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence have bunches of charisma, in fact more than enough to carry the story through its more shaky elements. They in turn are aided by Michael Sheen who is perfectly cast as the Android (not Robot!) bartender Arthur.

The effects work is impressive and director Morten Tyldum stitches the set pieces together admirably, the highlight being a rather superb gravity loss sequence. While the sound mix is also to be applauded.

Newcomers should expect a Robinson Crusoe love story in space as opposed to a sci-fi actioner, though one with more cerebral strains than at first hinted, because then the pic delivers a good time and adds to what is turning out to be a rather great decade for sci-fi fans. 7/10
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The quality of mercy is not strnen.

[orzel-w]

Passengers is the story of two passengers aboard an interstellar ship on a 120-year journey, awakened from suspended animation prematurely — 90 years prematurely — with no means of re-hibernating.

Strictly speaking, one crewman also awakes a little later, but I won't get into that.

The barrier to re-hibernating is that it's an involved process, performed at the planet of departure. The ship isn't equipped to re-initiate the hibernation process because "no hibernation pod has ever failed".

This is one of those sci-fi movies where you're likely to become distracted focusing on the accuracy of the science and physics. Visually, the film is top rung. The CGI is state-of-the-art, and the ship is nicely designed. Technically, there are a few slip-ups. Here are three I spotted, together with their time markers.

<< SPOILER WARNING >>

0:23:26 Jim (Chris Pratt's character) is doing some EVA sightseeing with a tether attached to his suit at the lower back. The ship spins to create artificial gravity, so Jim is orbiting the ship at the end of the tether, facing outward. (1) Since he is farther out from the axis than the environmental "ring", he would be experiencing a somewhat higher g-force than the presumably Earth-normal effect on the ship. Yet his legs are straight (as in a standing posture); not even slightly bent as we are accustomed to seeing real astronauts doing EVA in zero-g. (2) As he is overcome with emotion, a tear runs down his cheek toward his chin. Now, the way he's facing, "down" is supposed to be directly in front of him. The tear should be heading for the bridge of his nose, not his chin.

1:18:20 A power failure occurs and the ship stops spinning, resulting in a state of zero-g. For the ship to stop spinning would require a counter-force. A power failure wouldn't do it.

1:19:00 Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence's character) happens to be in the swimming pool when the zero-g occurs. The water, along with Aurora, floats out of the pool and collects into a few spherical clusters. Aurora is trapped inside one of the larger globes and can't get out. The problem here is that it shouldn't be any problem to swim out of the water. The propulsive effect of swimming has nothing to do with gravity. A couple energetic strokes should have freed her from the water.

Another technicality has to do with relativity. The ship is said to be traveling at half the speed of light. The 120 year duration of the voyage is understood to be ship's time. There appears to be no allowance for the time distortion between the ship and Earth (or their destination). The dialog seems to suggest that the same amount of time will have elapsed everywhere.
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Eadie]

Concept art:


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Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

[alltare]

It's been a while since I last watched this movie, so I may have forgotten an important point, but let me ask this question.

The 2 passengers must have had access to plenty of food, else they couldn't have survived more than a few days.

Even the plants and trees that they planted on the ship survived until the end of the voyage (90 years), so there was enough water and nutrient for them too. I would argue that one of the criteria for selection of passengers would be the ability to procreate. So why aren't there any offspring of the 2 passengers? Where are all the kids?

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has several interesting trivia items for this production.
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~ According to a news article by The Hollywood Reporter, both leads will be pulling down double digit millions: Chris Pratt will be paid $12 Million while Jennifer Lawrence is looking at $20 Million against 30% of the profits.

Note from me: God lord, Miss Lawrence got 8 million bucks more than Mr. Pratt!

~ Jennifer Lawrence was concerned about what filming a nude sex scene with Chris Pratt would be like because he was married at the time. "It was going to be my first time kissing a married man, and guilt is the worst feeling in your stomach," she said during an interview. "I knew it was my job, but I couldn't tell my stomach that."

To make it even worse, she had to film it nude. They weren't going to show her nude on screen because she had a nudity clause, but she would still be naked with her co-star. She ended up having to get very drunk to film it, which led to more anxiety when she got home. She had to call her mom for reassurance.

Note from me: Well, I can't decide whether Jennifer got 8 million dollars more than Chris to compensate her for the guilty conscience, or Chris got 8 million less because he was compensated by getting to kiss the lovely naked lady.

Either way, Jennifer sure got the best end of the deal!

~ Similar to the technique used in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), scenes where the characters had to walk inside the centrifuge were shot hamster-wheel style. The set spun underneath them as they stepped forward.

Note from me: 2001: A Space Odyssey had two errors concerning rotating sets.

One was the shot of the Moon shuttle flight attendant supposedly "walking" slowly around a vertical section of circular floor using Velcro souls on her shoes. The illusion of weightlessness was, of course, created by a rotating set.

But of course, the idea that people on the Moon shuttle would refrain from just floating around in zero-G is silly. And constantly having to yank those Velcro souls loose to take each step would be maddening!

The other scene involving a rotating set was the jogging scene (and others) which showed the astronauts moving around is if the centrifuge was moving fast enough to produce that level of artificial gravity.

I read that it was moving much too slowly for that. Oh well . . .

~ The story and screenplay for "Passengers" were developed at Keanu Reeves and Stephen Hamel's production company, Company Films. Reeves and Rachel McAdams were at one time attached to star, with Brian Kirk attached to direct. Hamel went on to produce the film in the end.

Note from me: I have a higher opinion of Keanu Reeves' acting than some folks, and Rachel McAdams is certainly beautiful enough to tempt a man into waking her up to keep him company.


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~ "Aurora" is also the name of one version of Sleeping Beauty (Disney, 1959); another beautiful woman who is woken from an imposed, static sleep by a man she falls in love with.

Note from me: Great Scott! Sleeping Beauty's real name is "Princess Cryogenic Suspension"! (In Jennifer's case, the name "Sleeping Booty" would apply . . . )
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[johnnybear]

Sleeping Booty!!! I like da sound of that!!!!
JB

[Bud Brewster]

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Today I enhanced all the post on this thread (especially the first one by me), so please look them over again.

The scenes in which Chris Pratt roams through the ship and learns that he's a "second class passenger" and can't access any of the "deluxe" features is brilliant!

And when he manages to "hack into" the upper levels and live the life of the "Rich and Famous" is equally brilliant. The visible growth of his beard indicates how long this took.

But we eventually see how incredibly frustrated and depressed he becomes when he dons a spacesuit and steps outside the ship to gaze at the cosmos. After coming back into the ship, he almost commits suicide . . . until he sees Jennifer Lawrence in her hibernation pod.

At this point, who could blame the poor, half-crazy guy for falling in love?

The scenes in which he researches the her character and learns what an amazing person she is convinces us that any man with a working brain and romantic heart could fall in love with such an amazing woman.

Frankly, I would too. After all, I fell in love the women shown below, and I painted her portrait several times. This is just one of them. Click on the image twice to see a bigger, sharper version!


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So, love can drive a man so do desperate things . . .
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)