Welcome back to Movie Recaps.
Today I will show you a sci-fi, romance, drama film from 2016, titled Passengers.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
The interstellar spaceship Avalon can be seen travelling through space, headed to a colonized
world called Homestead 2.
All of its quarters are empty, the vessel is on autopilot.
The 258 crewmembers as well as the 5000 passengers are in hibernation.
Suddenly, the ship passes through an asteroid belt, that's weakening its shields.
Power is diverted to the main shield, but the ship is on a collision course with a giant
asteroid.
Suddenly, the asteroid collides with the ship, causing various malfunctions.
The ship begins self-reparations, but one of the hibernation pods activates.
The passenger awakened is Jim Preston, a mechanical engineer.
His pod opens and an automated system helps with his awakening, telling him that he's
spent 120 years in suspended animation and that the ship is only 4 months away from Homestead
2.
He's told that he will be able to spend that time enjoying the luxurious aspects of the
ship.
Jim receives instructions about his ID band, his cabin and the primary activities he's
to take part off, prior to the arrival on the planet.
Excited and nervous to meet the people on the ship, he gets ready, leaves his cabin
and walks into an automated class meant for an entire learning group.
Jim looks a little anxious, as the hologram explains the situation on Earth, calling it
overpopulated, overpriced and overrated.
It tells him to hold his questions to the end of the lesson, but Jim keeps asking why
he's the only one there.
He realizes that the hologram can't answer him and goes to search for other people.
He gets to the main concourse of the ship.
No one is there either, but an automated informational desk offers to help.
Jim asks to talk to a real person and it sends him off to talk to a steward, but when he
finds that no one is there too, he asks to speak to the captain.
When he gets to the bridge, even though he doesn't have access to go inside, he can see
that none of the main crew is awake either.
Jim eventually goes to the observatory, where he finds out that the ship is actually 90
years away from Homestead 2.
He realizes that he woke up to soon, so he rushes back to the concourse and sends a message
back to Earth asking what he should do, because he doesn't know how to get back into hibernation.
The communications system informs him that the overpriced call to Earth would take approximately
55 years to get an answer back.
Jim is devastated.
He walks around and finds the ships bar, where he sees another person.
As he's talking to the bartender something seems strange about him.
When he goes to get him a drink, Jim realizes that he's an android.
It's called Arthur.
Jim wants to find out more information from him, but he can't even explain to the android
how it's possible for him to be there ahead of time.
Jim wakes up in his cabin the next day and goes to the cantina, where he quickly realizes
that most of the things on the menu are reserved for gold class passengers only.
He gets his plain coffee and tries to figure out how to fix his hibernation chamber.
After he gets all the tools, he manages to get it operating and lies down inside of the
pod.
But nothing happens.
Next, he decides to use the tools he found to get into the crew's hibernation chambers.
That doesn't work either.
Small malfunctions happen around the ship.
Jim keeps returning to the bar to drink, but mostly to talk to Arthur.
The android gives him some advice, that convinces him to brake into one of the gold class rooms
and try to have some fun on the ship.
Jim tries all the restaurants, the games, the entertainment system.
But as time passes he becomes even more miserable to be there alone.
One day, he gets drunk and wanders around the hibernation pods, when he stumbles into
an airlock with spacesuits designed for spacewalks.
Jim gets into a suit and goes to the airlock, pushes a lever and then the button to release
the airlock door.
Once outside the ship he's mesmerized by the view.
He's the only conscious human being experiencing that moment in time.
Jim releases the magnets on his boots and floats in space, feeling devastated.
He comes back inside, takes off the suit, but goes back to the airlock without it on.
He pulls the lever, ready to end it all, but changes his mind in the last moment, runs
back inside and slips on a bottle.
Jim stands up and is instantly drawn to a woman in one of the pods, named Aurora.
He searches for her files in the directory and listens to her passenger interview, becoming
enamored with her.
Later his seen sitting next to her pod, still listening to her interviews.
Back in the bar, he's reading some of her work and is talking to Arthur about her writing.
He becomes obsessed with the irony of his situation, going to another planet for a better
life, waking up early and not getting there, and finding his perfect woman, only for her
to be out of reach.
Jim keeps thinking about her and starts getting the idea to wake her up too.
He talks it over with the android, but he doesn't understand the conundrum.
If he wakes her up for his own benefit, he'd be stranding her there with him, to die on
the ship.
Jim decides against it first, but as time goes by he can't let it go.
Until one day, he changes his mind.
He goes to her pod and manages to activate it.
As she's waking up and going through the same process as he did, he hides and goes back
to his room.
A little bit later he goes to the main concourse, hoping to find her.
And there she is, just as confused as he was a year ago.
Jim tells her they're the only ones awake and takes her to the observatory.
Then he tells her that he can't get to neither the crew, nor the main commands of the ship.
Aurora freaks out and wants to get back into her pod.
When they get to it, Jim explains that there is no special equipment on the ship that can
help them get back into hibernation, effectively telling her that they're stranded.
They go back at the concourse and he tells her that she should rest, since she just came
out of hibernation.
She feels sorry for him, having to spend more than a year alone on the ship.
Jim goes back to the bar, feeling regretful about what he did.
He asks Arthur not to tell Aurora that he was the one that woke her up.
The next day, Aurora wakes up.
She goes back to the concourse and asks the automated info desk about the hibernation
pods.
Jim joins her there and they go to get breakfast.
As they leave, the info desk has some sort of malfunction.
In the cantina, Aurora realizes that Jim has been eating the same breakfast for more then
a year and gets him one of the gold class menus.
They talk about the possibility to fix the pods, but, unlike Jim, Aurora isn't ready
to give up.
She searches through the infirmary, then goes through research documents, eventually ending
up at the crew's hibernation quarters trying to break the doors open.
Jim notices more malfunctions throughout the ship.
Some time later, Aurora laments about her life on the Avalon.
She writes, jogs around the ship and swims in the pool, becoming more and more aware
of her situation.
She goes to the cantina to interview Jim, thinking that his story might be interesting.
She asks why he immigrated to the colony.
Jim answers with slogans from the company first, but then further explains that he hopes
that on the new world he could be somebody, he could build a life.
Later, they end up in the observatory and Aurora finally shares her reason to be there.
Unlike the other passengers on the ship, she has a round trip ticket.
Her idea was to go to Homestead 2, live there for a year and come back to Earth, to become
the first journalist that has ever done that, writing the greatest story that ever was.
Aurora slowly gives up on finding a way to fix their current predicament and Jim figures
out a way to cheer her up.
He takes her dancing, to the cinema, and to the basketball court.
Lastly, he takes her to the bar to meet Arthur.
She relaxes for a bit, until she remembers their situation.
Jim is left alone with the android, feeling awful about what he's done to her.
The next moment he's seen tinkering with something and in the other Aurora walks into the observatory
to find a miniature of the Chrysler building he made for her.
Some time later, they go on a date at the bar.
They have diner and share stories about their lives.
She tells him that her father died when she was a teenager.
After the dinner, Jim takes Aurora to the airlock and they get into the spacesuits.
They go out for a spacewalk together.
Jim finally has someone to share that magnificent experience with.
Jim switches off the magnets on their boots and they float together in space.
They come back inside and immediately kiss, retreat to his cabin and sleep together.
Soon after, they start living like a couple.
Aurora moves into his cabin and writes about her life on the ship.
They jog together, eat together, sleep together.
Jim explores the ship further and finds the hydroponics bay.
He brings Aurora flowers.
One day the ship passes by a red giant and they go to the observatory to see it.
It's Aurora's birthday, so later that night they celebrate it in one of the many restaurants
on the ship and then the bar.
Jim goes to the washroom and prepares the ring he made for Aurora, while she stays in
the bar chatting with Arthur.
The android tells Aurora that Jim woke her up intentionally, unaware that he was still
to keep that a secret.
Suddenly, Jim comes back and she confronts him in absolute disbelief.
She runs away furious and panicked.
Jim comes back to his cabin to find all her things gone.
He runs into her in the cantina the next day, but the moment he speaks, she runs away.
Aurora is desperate.
One night she goes over to Jim's cabin, punching and kicking him, wanting to kill him.
Talking to her over the com because she keeps avoiding him, Jim tries to apologize and explain
his actions to her.
He tells her he fell in love with her, but Aurora doesn't care.
She can't forgive him for taking her life.
One night, as Jim is in his cabin, another malfunction happens.
The ship faces a critical error and the main command shuts down.
Later, he walks into the elevator and it malfunctions.
Aurora walks into the main concourse and sees that Jim has planted a tree there.
Then, she goes to the cantina, where the food dispensary is also malfunctioning.
Suddenly, both of them hear the voice of the deck chief over the coms, asking who planted
the tree.
They both run into the concourse and see Gus Mancuso standing in front of Jim's tree.
They introduce themselves and tell the chief about the situation.
He doesn't understand how 3 pods could fail.
Mancuso takes them to the bridge and he discovers that there is something wrong with the ship,
but the information on the systems has to be checked manually.
When they leave the bridge a robot almost falls on their heads and the two of them tell
Mancuso that malfunctions have been happening all over the ship more frequently.
He says that shouldn't happen, as he shows them how to collect the data.
Mancuso checks on the pods, when Jim joins him there.
He's figured out what happened with Aurora's pod.
The deck chief finds what Jim did to be terrible.
Later, he's at the bridge checking the collected data, when Aurora joins him.
They talk about what happened with her pod, but he tells her that he can't do anything
about it.
Jim walks in with the 16th broken robot.
Mancuso feels the hibernation sickness, so he goes to rest, but as he walks out, he coughs
out blood.
That night, Aurora can't sleep, so she goes for a swim.
Suddenly there's gravity loss throughout the ship and she starts drowning as the water
from the pool moves with her.
The gravity drive resets and she barely makes it out alive.
They both run into each other going to find Mancuso.
The three of them are back at the bridge, slowly discovering what has been going on
with the ship.
Mancuso figures out that something happened 2 years ago, taking out a major system.
They need to find and fix what has caused the failure, because the entire ship is trying
to pick up the slack.
If they don't fix it, the entire vessel will be stranded.
They go to find the problem, but Mancuso faints, so Jim and Aurora take him to the infirmary.
He's dying and there are no treatments that can stop it or prolong the time he has left.
Some time later, the three of them meet in the observatory and Mancuso gives Jim his
ID bracelet, tells them to fix the ship and immediately perishes.
Suddenly, the lights change to an alarming red and the ship starts shaking.
Jim tells Aurora that he needs her help and they run toward engineering, but there's another
failure in the gravity drive.
And immediatelly another one that afflicts Arthur as well.
Jim deactivates him.
They finally arrive in engineering and start looking for the problem.
The find it in the power plant and as they open the hatch, Aurora gets sucked in.
The asteroid has caused a breach in the hull in that area.
Jim gets sucked in too, but he holds on to the hatch, as it keeps closing on him.
Eventually he gets sucked in too, but they quickly manage to seal the breach.
Instantly after fixing that problem, Jim realizes that there is more than one breach in the
hull.
The two of them follow the trajectory of the meteor and find that it has hit the reactor
control computer.
Jim thinks he can find replacement parts for it.
They find the part and change it, but the process of venting the reactor still fails.
They do it manually, but it fails again.
Jim figures out that he needs to open the vent door from outside of the ship, so they
can cool the reactor down.
Both of them go to the airlock and as he's getting ready to go out, he gives Aurora Mancuso's
bracelet, because he might not come back.
She helps him with the suit and as he walks into the airlock she tells him to come back
because she can't live on the ship without him.
Aurora goes back to the reactor, where the temperature has hit critical heights.
A bolt from the reactor propels into her arm, as Jim is getting closer to the vent from
the outside and sees the door.
The temperature rises in the reactor room, while he is trying to bypass the vent door
to open it.
He soon realizes that he'll have to manually hold the door open so the reactor can vent
and he tells Aurora.
She doesn't like the plan, but he goes ahead with it and tells her to vent the reactor.
She doesn't want him to die and they argue, but he tells her that they have to save the
other people and she vents the reactor.
The process is successful, but the fumes from the reactor push Jim away and break his tether.
The pressure in his suit is dropping too.
He tells Aurora what happened and she moves as fast as she can to get to another suit
and bring him in.
He apologizes to her again.
She puts on a suit and flies out to get him, but her tether is too short.
She's pulled back, but suddenly grabs onto his tether and manages to pull him in.
Aurora drags Jim into the infirmary, only to find out that he's already dead.
She uses Mancuso's bracelet to override the medical protocols and to resuscitate him.
The medical pod does the work automatically and revives Jim.
Aurora forgives him.
Later, Aurora fixes Arthur and they give Mancuso a proper space burial.
Jim takes her to the infirmary and tells her that he's found a way to use the medical pod
as a hibernation one.
He tells her to get inside the pod and ride out the rest of the journey in there.
But, as is later revealed, she declines and decides to stay with him, awake on the ship.
Jim finally proposes to her and they live out their lives on the ship.
88 years later, the Avalon arrives on Homestead 2.
The crew wakes up and finds the ship in a very unexpected state.
Aurora leaves them a message, retelling the story of the life her and Jim had on the ship
while the rest were sleeping.