Passengers Doesn’t Need To Fit Into Any Specific Genre To Gain Your Feels

Passengers is hard to categorize: it happens in space – on a space ship – but it’s not exactly a space opera or a space western; there is action, but not enough to be labeled an action flick; there’s romance, but it’s not overwhelming (though it is occasionally sentimental). I can get down with that mix. Set in the near future, Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, as Jim Preston and Aurora Lane respectively, are passengers on their way to Homestead II, a colony 120 light years away from Earth. Much too soon, there’s a malfunction and they find themselves outside of their hibernation pods. The small cast allows for character depth and development and, most importantly, moral peril. First, the movie invites us to understand these characters and even though I didn’t want to, I found myself caring what happened to them – hand-gripping-the-armrest type of caring. Even in the movie’s more predictable moments, my investment overrode my I-know-this-movie-trick cynicism which was surprising to me-the-cynic, and really nice for me-the-audience-member. Because we end up knowing the characters well, the choices that they are forced to make and the questions they ask themselves take on extra import. They launch those kind of post-movie conversations that mindless action movies don’t. Which is to say this is actually a good romantic or platonic date movie: there’s a few sexy moments (if you’re into that kind of thing) and a lot of thought provoking ones so see this movie with a nerd, go out …