Passengers. Ouch.

I just saw...
Passengers

First off, let me say that this is not a love story or an action movie, in spite of what the trailers promise.  The only thing that could have saved this movie for me was if it turned into a pyschological thriller, like The Shining or something, in space.

However, Passengers does explore (feebly) a science-centric question, and so as a script it qualifies as "science fiction" according to the rules I use.  There's a 120 year voyage, with everyone in hypersleep.  This is one of many different reasonable space travel scenarios that could come to pass, depending on how science develops, right?  In this case, people sleep for the whole journey, and arrive looking and feeling the same age as when they left.  It's like a fancy cruise. But if everyone sleeps for a period longer than a human lifespan, anyone who wakes up early is basically sentenced to death - a very long long slow death, in isolation.

This idea has been explored a bit before, by other authors.  "Marooned in Real Time" by Vernor Vinge, is one of my favorite examples.  In that, the handful of people still alive on Earth use technology to put themselves and their environment into stasis for long periods of time, travelling farther and farther into the 'future' to see what is there.  One person is left outside, 'marooned in real time' and dies of old age between the time when the people went into stasis, and when they came out again.  It's basically murder, like locking someone outside in a blizzard - you didn't kill them directly, but your action sentenced them to die with nature as the murder weapon.

The same thing applies here, only the person condemned to die decides they'd like to force someone else to die with them.  Plenty of other bloggers have explored how psycho this is, but in essence, Chris Pratt's character gets lonely, sees a hot girl, and decides that what he wants is more important than anything she could possibly be doing with her life.  The only thing that is important to him is that he has the person he wants.  He's a crazy person.

It's science fiction, though, because it's a scenario that can only really be brought into existence by science.  This isn't a dilemma faced by people on Earth, yet.

There are about ten different ways to make this movie better, while still retaining the basic structure of the rest of the plot; you know, that the ship is falling apart and good thing these people were awake to fix it, or they'd all be dead.

Here's one:  Give these two a pre-existing relationship.  They were together on Earth.  They broke up so she could go on this journey.  He is a stowaway.  His presence actually causes the malfunctions that could destroy the ship.  He wakes her up because he's crazy, and she despises him because of it.  He dies at the end, saving the ship, and she lives.  Unlike him, she decides to die of old age rather than condemn another person to the same fate as her own.

Here's another:  He wakes up, just like in the movie.  He wakes her up, and they have a creepy romance.  She finds out he's basically her sociopathic kidnapper/murderer, and they break up.  He stalks her around the ship, and it turns into a horrific, psychological thriller.  He causes the malfunctions, trying to force her out of hiding, and ends up being the vehicle of his own demise.  She, left alone and crazy from the ordeal stares down at another passenger at the end, a handsome looking man.  Should she open the pod?

How about this?  A couple of the pods open, and several more malfunction.  The people inside are awake but can't get out.  The people who are out have to break the pods to save the people.  They, as a group, discover they are stranded in real time, and will die of old age before they reach their destination.  They have a variety of relationships that all fall apart.  Every one of them finds some corner of the ship that's 'theirs' and spends most of their time there.  When the ship starts to fall apart, they have to come together and save the ship.  Some of them die in the process, others live.

A fourth idea:  He wakes up, gets lonely, picks the girl he wants, wakes her up.  Turns out she's really kind of obnoxious, and has this annoying laugh.  After a while, he starts looking at the other passengers, and eventually wakes up someone else.  That one seems great for a while, but things don't work out.  Meanwhile, the first one he woke up is angry that he's shopping for girlfriends, and to spite him, she opens one of the pods with a guy in it.  After a few months, they've opened up hundreds of the pods, and then discover that they'll use up all the food, air, and other resources in a matter of a couple years, because the ship only has stores for 4 months, for 5,000 people.  The remaining passengers in stasis become their food source, but even that isn't enough.  Eventually, every passenger is dead.  The crew wakes up with four months to go, and discovers the ship is a horror show of long-dead cannibals strewn about the halls.

That last idea is pretty dark.  But it's still better than movie, because at least it recognizes that there is a dilemma about waking people up in this case, and that waking someone up in this case is as unforgivable as kidnapping and murdering someone you've been stalking.

Okay, but what about at the end, where he discovers that there is a way to put one person back into hypersleep?  And she decides not to go to sleep, and instead to stay with him?  Sounds like Stockholm Syndrome to me.  But let me get this straight.  You have a floating city that 5000 people are going to live in for 4 months, and there's one pod for fixing people up?  One?  You wouldn't want to have at least two, in case there's an accident that requires more than one person to get fixed up simultaneously?  That's dumb.  Also, if the medical pod can put someone into stasis, I presume it can take them out of stasis, too.  You could take turns in it, and sleep for a few months at a time, then spend a week together, then the other person sleeps, until you both arrive at your destination as old people.

Also, wouldn't it have been great if many generations of creepy inbred children had wandered out of the forest at the end, and like, ate the crew?