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.
