Passengers

Runtime: 1 hour 56 minutes
Budget: Estimated to be $110 million

Did you ever wonder what happened during that time skip at the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy? Before he became Starlord and traipsed around space he had to be doing something, right? Wonder no more. Chris Pratt reprises his role as Peter Quill and you get to see the beginning of his womanizing ways. Wait, that’s not right. His character’s name is Jim Preston. Oops.

Speaking of women, the movie would’ve been an even better experience had we not known Jennifer Lawrence was in it. All the marketing materials killed some of the tension and reveals. Not all of them though and it certainly doesn’t make the movie useless to watch. I mean, you’ve probably rewatched movies before so that’d be a weak argument anyway. Sadly, it’d be impossible to not plaster Lawrence’s face everywhere when they paid her so much to be in the movie. That and they want her name to bring in more viewers. Unfortunately, there are few character surprises anymore with casting choices being published on the internet during development and pre-production.

Pay no heed to the way below average ratings if the movie looked interesting. I think tthe film delivered on what was promised and critics are far too eager to throttle numbers at the first sign of trouble.

Like many good sci-fi movies, the characters wrestle with some moral quandries. The philosophical ponderings they explored were comfortable digestable, leaving room for some of the romance genre side to show through. The juxtaposition of the vastness of space against the relationship of two humans (and some robots) make for a compelling story.

But those robots, man. They got a lot right with the way the AI speech recognition was portrayed. Awe-inspiring in what it can do, yet frustrating when it falls short of our desperate expectations.

CommBro Breaker

Maybe they will make a spin-off to Passengers called ROOMBA: THE MOVIE. The roomba guys were the best character in the film! If they greenlighted a Emoji movie, why not this?

If some exec happens to be reading this, no, please don’t actually do it…