What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

passengers: in which I predict the thing

okay so look, I’m as eager for original concept SF films as the next raging dork, but I’m so damn sick of the same ten white actors being cast in everything and on the basis of the trailer of the new Passengers movie, which seems to belong firmly to the Pretty Straight White People Save Humanity While Obligatory Romance genre, here are my (jaded) predictions for it:

- Chris Pratt’s character always knew they were going to wake up early because he was originally put on board to sabotage the thing. He needed JLaw’s character to wake up because she’s related somehow to whoever made the Big Sekrit Ship and therefore has Big Sekrit Ship Secrets, but it all goes wrong because he falls in love with her/can’t kill her and subsequently has second thoughts about his mission. OR, and this would be such a stupid thing but I am not above predicting Hollywood stupid, the “you die, I die” line is literal and there’s some dumb technical life support reason why a minimum of two humans can be awake at the same time or it all shuts down, and JLaw got picked at random so the oxygen etc would actually turn on when Pratt woke up.

- He’s going to be a working class guy with a Tragic Backstory (10 points to sexism if it’s a fridged wife and/or daughter!) who’s been sent to infiltrate The Rich People because the Powers That Be realised he had nothing left to lose, and he was happy for it all to go wrong. The PTB being, in this instance, ultimately other rich people with possible delusions of altruism, but then it all goes wrong Again because they put in a failsafe to make sure their lone human riffraff element didn’t fuck up their plan.

- The film will not pass the Bechdel test. (Consider this a free space.)

- I guarantee there’s Something Wrong with the planet they’re headed to. Like, yeah, you don’t send all the rich people off to the new world first, that makes no sense, which means a bunch of workers probably went first to set things up only Wrongness Occurred, or else it’s a sham and there never really was an actual world at the end and that’s why Pratt is there, to try and turn the ship about or change JLaw’s relative’s Master Scheme or whatevs. The borked endpoint could be a minor point or a major one, but yeah. I will be HELLA shocked if there’s just a “get to the end and the nice planet really exists” dealie going with no surprise elements whatsoever. Or maybe they’re just slingshotting back to Earth on the thesis that it’ll be ruined in 120-odd years and they’ll have all their power and shit again.

In conclusion I would LOVE to be excited for this movie but unless I hear something substantially more appealing plotwise than a 0.3 second glimpse of Lawrence Fishburne and Michael Sheen as a robot, I will not be holding my breath for deeply innovative storytelling. 

  1. chalionkat reblogged this from fozmeadows
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  3. northshoreblues reblogged this from fozmeadows and added:
    OK LIKE, I agree with everything in this post, I don’t think this movie hasn’t already been made FIFTY THOUSAND TIMES...
  4. maharetr said: ugh, basically all of this. :/
  5. dangerbats said: the script is already online
  6. boreasmedusa reblogged this from fozmeadows
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