Review: Passengers

passengersMovie: Passengers
Release Date: December 14th, 2016
Language: English
Director: Morten Tyldum
Based on: –
Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen and Laurene Fishburne
IMDb rating: 7,1/10
My rating: 4.0 Stars (4.0 / 5)

Whenever I hear about a movie that stars Jennifer Lawrence, I automatically add it to the list of movies I REALLY REALLY REALLY got to see. With Passengers, it was no different. The movie was released at December 22nd in the Netherlands, and my family and I went to see it on December 30th for my father’s birthday. The thing is: I have three sisters, a mother and a father. We all like different movies. But this movie… we all LOVED!

passengers

“The spaceship, Starship Avalon, in its 120-year voyage to a distant colony planet known as the “Homestead Colony” and transporting 5,259 people has a malfunction in two of its sleep chambers. As a result two hibernation pods open prematurely and the two people that awoke, Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) and Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), are stranded on the spaceship, still 90 years from their destination.” [IMDb]

The first thing we see on the screen is this crazy ass space ship traveling through space, with no crew in the control room, flying towards a giant cloud of meteorites. We also see the protective shield that becomes stronger when the stones hit the screen. So you might think: ah, great, the ship won’t be hit. But, as always, something bad has to happen before the movie has actually even started. One giant stone hits the ship and causes multiple malfunctions. One of them causes to wake up Jim, who’s in hypersleep to survive the 120-year long travel to Homestead II. Only his capsule malfunctions. He soon finds out he’s all alone on the ship and has a travel of 90 years ahead of him. In which he will die, if he cannot find a way to get back into hypersleep. And this… might be problematic. He’s all alone and desperate for a companion. And that’s when he sees Aurora in her capsule. And that’s all I’ll say for now.

The story line is clear, and throughout the film, the viewer will experience that something is pretty wrong with the ship. The robots are saying all is fine, because nothing on the ship can even malfunction. It has never happened before and it will not happen now. Which causes problems – there’s no way to fix the problems because nobody was prepared for them. Our characters find themselves in different kind of situations, that make us wonder if sacrifices should be made to stay alive. Or to save someone else. It’s science fiction but it’s also psychological. It challenges the viewer to think about what they would do in such a situation.

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While you now might think that this movie is very serious – it’s not. Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence are a great team and make the movie really funny. There’s a great chemistry between the two of them. Add Michael Sheen, who is a genius, and you will find yourself laughing for about 50% of the movie. There’s a great balance between fun scenes, serious scenes, romantic scenes and exciting scenes. This movie has everything you expect a movie to have. And that’s why I think lots of people will love it.

The first thing my sister said when she came out of the movie theatre, was how much she liked the special effects. I hadn’t noticed yet, but that proves how natural they all seemed. It is a scifi movie after all, so you cannot get away with crappy effects. This movie had the right amount of effects. There’s one scene where Aurora is swimming in a bubble of levitating water, which looked super realistic. The effects weren’t overwhelming or OUTSTANDING, but they were just about right and really added something to the movie.

In total, this movie was really cool. It has every element a scifi movie needs. The end was a tiny bit disappointed, I think the filmmakers made it out to easily, but over all, I really enjoyed the movie. Jennifer Lawrence pulled of a really good performance (from a really cool character to a hysteric character) and Chris Pratt was the perfect balance to her. I think everybody should see this movie, it’s not just for the real scifi geeks. Which is good! 

In a nutshell:
Liked it: Yes!
Loved it: Totally!
Re-watch: Sure, but not right away 😉
Cinema worthy: ABSOLUTELY

Nanouk Meijer

Nanouk is the founder and owner of the website. She runs the website, takes care of the lay-out, give-aways, social media, book reviews and events. She is 25 years old and graduated from 'Comparative Literature' at Utrecht University. She is Digital Product Manager at HarperCollins Holland and staff reviewer at YA Books Central. She breaths books.

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