Passengers (2016) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction
Added 2022-11-09 06:09:25 +0000 UTCHey everyone! Here is the full-length reaction to Passengers, which is still on track to release on Friday afternoon on the channel, with early access coming sometime on Thursday. As always, it mostly depends on how the copyright checking goes. 🤞 Without giving away specifics, I'll be honest that it took me a while to get my thoughts in order for this movie. My feelings are very mixed. Kinda reminded me of The Last Jedi where I had to break down my review into "criticisms" and "what I liked". [Direct link here.]
Enjoy! Looking forward to discussing this one.
✦ KL
Comments
I appreciate you! I always get a tiny hit of dopamine when I see people interact on older reactions. I def agree with those two points. I think I would have been far more invested. I haven't given this movie a rewatch since this, not even rewatching my own reaction to it. I should one day though, see how I feel.
kaiielle
2024-06-21 20:14:55 +0000 UTCHello, I appreciate this video is like 2 years old, so I'm a bit late. But I find the whole discussion fascinating and wanted to chime in with some thoughts. I think the film is tonally all over the map. We get a Robinson Crusoe situation to begin with. Then an ethical dilemma. Then a love story. Then the ethical dilemma comes back into frame for a bit. Then a space adventure type deal, as it all circles back to a love story. Ending with possibly the worst track to end any film, ever. Now, I'm not saying that someone couldn't make a great film following those coordinates, but this isn't it. Personally, I think there are two possible changes that could have helped the film: 1. As James Hadden mentioned in the comment above, a year isn't long enough to make the ethical dilemma an actual dilemma for most people. All we see is a man, after merely a year, deciding to do something deeply problematic, if not horrific. Had the film focused on this ethical question (and thus have a slightly more serious tone), we could have followed his mental and emotional stress more profoundly, empathized with the actual dilemma presented, and ultimately maybe understood the justification for his decision—even if we didn't entirely agreed with it. 2. Why not just jettison the whole ethical question completely? Make it a Robinson Crusoe love story in space with a high stakes sci fi explosive ending. Just as Chris is ready to off himself because of the futility of his situation, Jennifer wanders into the picture having a malfunctioning hibernation capsule. The love story ensues, we replace the 5 minute angry Jennifer bit of the film with more relationship blossoming and a marriage scene. Now we are fully invested in the relationship and the decision at the end (with the extra pod thing) becomes more meaningful. Mark Kermode gave an interesting review of this movie. It was his opinion that the film was more self-aware than people gave it credit for. I'm not so sure, but his review is worth a look. Anyway, cool reaction. I must have watched about 20 of your full-length movie reactions and I keep forgetting to come back to the Patreon to hit the like button. But just to be sure I do like them all.
Sam
2024-06-21 20:04:27 +0000 UTCTo your point about The Terminator and Reese/Sarah... much less weird considering the whole time travel aspect to it and the fact that he knew and fought alongside his own son (without realizing it was his son). I'll likely be getting more insight into that with Terminator 2, but yeah, not a situation that is comparable at all for me to what Jim did with Aurora. There's been a lot of people in the YouTube comments for this reaction that have shared views similar to yours, so you're not alone.
kaiielle
2023-02-04 15:16:13 +0000 UTCWhat Jim did is clearly wrong and a terrible thing to inflict on another person, however, in my opinion anyone that would not have done the same thing has never been truly lonely. I’d question the time frame for such a decision, one year feels too short, but ultimately I still feel there were two choices, wake someone else, or end things early. “He was just being selfish” is too simplistic a view in my opinion. Yes it was selfish, but he was desperate for human interaction. I cannot agree with the murder statement, as terrible as it was, he did not end Aurora’s life, but a particular version of it. It may not be a million miles away, but still not murder in my eyes. I do agree with you regarding his choice of person to wake up. If they truly wanted to explore the morality around the decision it would have been better served choosing another engineer or someone like that, and leaving out the romance. Regarding the romance, yes a man and a woman can have a platonic relationship, but this usually involves having other people in their lives. In this scenario, when there is literally no one else to form a romantic relationship with, ever, I don’t think it’s beyond reason to think that could easily develop over time. But that’s probably saying more about me than anything else. And if she did actually love him, she may not have wanted him to be alone again, but I’m sure it would still have ended in resentment and wishing she’d have chosen the autodoc. Falling in love with someone you’ve never met or even had a conversation with, I agree, is weird. Seemingly not that uncommon though in movies, Reese appeared to have fallen in love with Sarah Connor just from a photo. I have no problem with the trailer misleading the audience regarding how they awoke, why give everyone a chance to have more preconceived opinions than usual before watching it. Again I’m not saying this leaned into the morals as much as it could have. Wow, that was a ramble, and not much people will agree with me on, but what the hell, there it is.
James Hadden
2023-02-04 12:54:27 +0000 UTCIt kinda sucks when that happens but that's the beauty of watching movies!
kaiielle
2022-11-10 05:02:04 +0000 UTCYeah, I understand where your coming from as well when you would like to enjoy the whole movie but there are things getting in the way for you to be able to do that. :)
Gary Poussard
2022-11-10 04:58:29 +0000 UTCI can def understand why people like it! Not faulting you for that at all. This movie kinda gave me The Last Jedi and Pulp Fiction vibes... in the sense that I had my share of criticisms along with things I enjoyed. ☺️
kaiielle
2022-11-10 04:40:42 +0000 UTCIm not saying its a perfect movie, like you said its weird that they only had the one working pod for a ship with that many people, but I do think the moral question that is faced is what the filmmakers were wanting to focus on perhaps there is a better version of the movie out there somewhere but I felt mostly satisfied with it.
Gary Poussard
2022-11-10 04:23:42 +0000 UTCThe film did side with Jim, though. He had the best happy ending he had wished for! I go into details about this in my edited reaction, but the fact that Aurora went through everything she did and then decided not to go back into hibernation thereby completely abandoning her original plan, and continue the rest of her life on that ship with him JUST so that he wouldn't be alone does not sit well with me. I do firmly agree with you about the ship's design and function and the idea of the story overall. I just really truly feel like this movie could have been so much more and I had thoughts about how it would have been more satisfying for me, at least.
kaiielle
2022-11-10 04:06:12 +0000 UTCI enjoyed your reaction, in regards to the issues you had Im guessing mostly that its Jim waking up Aurroa. I really feel like its addressed in the film with Gus agreeing that it was the wrong thing for Jim to have done that. Now if the film had sided with Jim I can see where people would have a problem with that. For me I also liked the ship design and the general sci-fi story of setting up a new world.
Gary Poussard
2022-11-10 03:13:19 +0000 UTC
