Passengers and The Cold Equations
Dec. 27th, 2016 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chris_gerribI went to see the new movie Passengers last night. I think this movie will go down as the modern version of "The Cold Equations." In both those stories, thanks to massive authorial manipulation, a man and a "girl" (alas, apt in both cases) are faced with life-or-death situations and great moral problems. Neither of them solve their problems in entirely likable ways.
To recap, in "The Cold Equations" a "girl" of 18 stows away on a ship which only has enough fuel for one. She either leaves or the ship crashes and eight people die. The "girl" is somewhat at fault in that she ignored a warning sign, but she did not know the penalty for ignoring the sign was death.
"Cold" was written in 1954, and was an antidote for the highly optimistic SF of the era. It was also an attempt to create a modern version of Jack London's "To Build A Fire." In that story, a man in the Alaskan wilderness must build a fire or freeze to death. He fails and dies. I discuss the two stories more here.
In "Passengers" a meteor strike on a very realistic starship causes a series of failures, including the awakening of one passenger (Chris Pratt) 89 years earlier than planned. He spends a third of the movie and a year of time alone, then decides to wake up a young female passenger. He agonizes over the decision, but does it, and lies to her about how she became awake. When she finds out the truth, she gets royally upset and even tries to kill him in his sleep. Literally with the weapon in hand, she decides not to do it. A cold truce between the two ensues.
In the very busy last third of the movie, Laurence Fishburne, playing the Chief Deck Officer, has a pod malfunction and is awakened. His pod malfunctioned in such a way as to give him only hours to live, and the ship's malfunctions are getting worse and worse. Our two passengers are forced to work together to save the ship. Pratt's character makes a decision to sacrifice his life for the ship, and the girl (Jennifer Lawrence) saves him. A period of time later, Pratt offers Lawrence a chance to hibernate in the ship's autodoc pod (which only has room for one sleeper). She turns this down, deciding to end her days with Pratt. We're led to believe this proves to be happily ever after.
"Cold" and "Passengers" both have a real moral failing, in that "the girl" is either kept uninformed or deliberately lied to, yet in the end does "the right thing" here defined as "what the author wants." In both cases, many lives are at stake, although again, that's because the author has stacked the deck against "the girl."
Having said that, "Passengers" almost works. There is a scene in which Lawrence, realizing that Pratt probably won't survive, screams that she doesn't want to be left alone. At that point, the author had no choice but to continue the action. But after the action is resolved, the author had two choices to save the movie.
Choice one, which would have saved the Hollywood ending, would be for Lawrence to have a scene after the action in which she explicitly realizes that she would have done something similar were she in Pratt's shoes and explicitly forgive him. This is what in fact happens, but it's way too implicit. Choice two, which would have been a better movie, would be for Pratt to die and Lawrence to figure out the autodoc on her own.
I also have a problem with Fishburne's roll. He's literally a "magical Negro." He shows up, provides a bit of exposition, hands them his wristband-ID and command override which opens every door on the ship and enables the autodoc hibernation mode, then dies. We need the character, I guess, but I'm not sure we got the right actor.
On the one hand, I'm glad we're getting SF movies that aren't retreads of stuff we've seen years ago. On the other hand, that means some of what we get will be problematic.
To recap, in "The Cold Equations" a "girl" of 18 stows away on a ship which only has enough fuel for one. She either leaves or the ship crashes and eight people die. The "girl" is somewhat at fault in that she ignored a warning sign, but she did not know the penalty for ignoring the sign was death.
"Cold" was written in 1954, and was an antidote for the highly optimistic SF of the era. It was also an attempt to create a modern version of Jack London's "To Build A Fire." In that story, a man in the Alaskan wilderness must build a fire or freeze to death. He fails and dies. I discuss the two stories more here.
In "Passengers" a meteor strike on a very realistic starship causes a series of failures, including the awakening of one passenger (Chris Pratt) 89 years earlier than planned. He spends a third of the movie and a year of time alone, then decides to wake up a young female passenger. He agonizes over the decision, but does it, and lies to her about how she became awake. When she finds out the truth, she gets royally upset and even tries to kill him in his sleep. Literally with the weapon in hand, she decides not to do it. A cold truce between the two ensues.
In the very busy last third of the movie, Laurence Fishburne, playing the Chief Deck Officer, has a pod malfunction and is awakened. His pod malfunctioned in such a way as to give him only hours to live, and the ship's malfunctions are getting worse and worse. Our two passengers are forced to work together to save the ship. Pratt's character makes a decision to sacrifice his life for the ship, and the girl (Jennifer Lawrence) saves him. A period of time later, Pratt offers Lawrence a chance to hibernate in the ship's autodoc pod (which only has room for one sleeper). She turns this down, deciding to end her days with Pratt. We're led to believe this proves to be happily ever after.
"Cold" and "Passengers" both have a real moral failing, in that "the girl" is either kept uninformed or deliberately lied to, yet in the end does "the right thing" here defined as "what the author wants." In both cases, many lives are at stake, although again, that's because the author has stacked the deck against "the girl."
Having said that, "Passengers" almost works. There is a scene in which Lawrence, realizing that Pratt probably won't survive, screams that she doesn't want to be left alone. At that point, the author had no choice but to continue the action. But after the action is resolved, the author had two choices to save the movie.
Choice one, which would have saved the Hollywood ending, would be for Lawrence to have a scene after the action in which she explicitly realizes that she would have done something similar were she in Pratt's shoes and explicitly forgive him. This is what in fact happens, but it's way too implicit. Choice two, which would have been a better movie, would be for Pratt to die and Lawrence to figure out the autodoc on her own.
I also have a problem with Fishburne's roll. He's literally a "magical Negro." He shows up, provides a bit of exposition, hands them his wristband-ID and command override which opens every door on the ship and enables the autodoc hibernation mode, then dies. We need the character, I guess, but I'm not sure we got the right actor.
On the one hand, I'm glad we're getting SF movies that aren't retreads of stuff we've seen years ago. On the other hand, that means some of what we get will be problematic.
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Date: 2017-01-12 06:20 pm (UTC)they even named Lawrence's character Aurora, if you hadn't managed to pick up on it otherwise.
so far as the movie goes, the 'twist' where the Magic Negro reveals that the ship is doomed unless those awakened can repair completely guts everything that has come before.
it makes no never mind whether Pratt's character had awakened Lawrence or not, she would have died ( along with everyone else ) had he not done so.
the whole movie is littered with logical inconsistencies in this fashion.