Passengers

Morten Tyldum’s 2016 film came out of a Jon Spaihts spec script from 2007 that sat in development for years, at one point with Brian Kirk directing and Keanu Reeves and Emily Blunt attached. Sony acquired it only in late 2014. The real problem is order of presentation. Because we spend a year alone with Jim before he opens Aurora’s pod, the act reaches us as unbearable temptation rather than crime. Jennifer Lawrence later told Vogue she agreed with people who said the film should have opened with Aurora waking up, and that she was disappointed in herself for not spotting it. No such version was ever shot: it is a suggestion made after the fact, not an alternate cut. The ship rests on a single idea. Guy Hendrix Dyas derived the Avalon’s three rotating hulls from the helicopter descent of sycamore seeds, and lit the sleeping bays with ultraviolet columns so dormant passengers keep making vitamin D. Michael Sheen’s bartender Arthur was a practical rig built by Dan Sudick, with the actor’s legs digitally erased by Eric Nordby, which is why Arthur never steps out from behind his bar. Not for you if: the last half hour drops the two-hander for reactor repair and a snapped-tether spacewalk. The quiet chamber tension of the first hour never returns.