Why Passengers is essentially WALL-E (Passengers Review + SPOILER ALERT!!)

Image belongs to Variety

**PASSENGERS SPOILERS ALERT!!!!
If you haven't seen the movie, it's probably not a good idea to keep on reading.**

First off, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Gosh I'm so bad at this. I realize I've been so bad at answering texts. I think my New Year resolution should be about being more tech responsive. I apologize for that. So sorry! Anyway, I really wish this month is November, or be made into a NaNoWrimo's month, because I've been actively writing the sequel to Translucent since the end of last year (*gasp* 2016 is last year?!).

On another news, and the main topic of this blog post, I just watched Passengers today. I thought it didn't live up to the bad reviews and turned out to be better than expected. It wasn't amazing but it's still quite impressive and stunning to watch.

In case you haven't been under the movie radar lately, Passengers follows a starship traveling from Earth to a distant planet outside our galaxy for 120 years. However, a brief asteroid impact caused a malfunction in one of its passenger's sleeping pods, waking up Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) 90 years too early. After several desperate attempts of trying to fix the pod, Jim spots a beautiful young woman, Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), sleeping in her own pod. His longing for company drives him to do something against his own will, but doing so would mean his chance of survival in the ship.

Image belongs to Variety

So overall, yes, I was entertained with the movie. Aside from the stunning, visually engaging and simple, pristine production design (not as heavy as previous scifi movies), There are so much emotion poured into its two characters, making the movie seemingly simple but deeper than you think. Yes, it's a romantic drama movie taking place in space, so expect lesser space action sequences compared to those blockbusters you've raved in the past. If you expect a deep, concept of space travel with mathematical calculations a la Interstellar or The Martian, Passengers is none of those. However though, Passengers did a good job in displaying the character's flaws and explores the theme of morality that the characters feel substantial. By this, I really emphasize on Jim, who especially questions to put his own needs above others at the beginning. Aurora starts off as an interesting character, but after she meets Jim, her characteristics spiral down. The compelling element of hers is that she is a writer full of wanderlust, but it almost appears she has no motivation than falling in love with Jim after spending their time together. (Ahem, Stockholm Syndrome, ahem)

I love Arthur, the android. I always love an android-assistant/observer like David 8 in Prometheus, who knows nothing, does everything according to technical training, merely observes the human behavior around him. I'd really like to know what happened to him at the end though. His naivety towards his surrounding really put a dynamic to the movie.

Image belongs to Variety

Gus Mancuso (Laurence Fishburne), the chief deck, is one of the characters that appears late in the movie. But he seems to feel like a filler. He tapes all the problems together and then gone later on, because the director or writers still want just Jim and Aurora to end up together. Gus is important, of course. He holds the key to the ship's technical problem, which Jim and Aurora fails to gain beforehand. Plus, they were fighting with no other solution. Hence, voila, Gus is there to save the day. His brief performance feels so much of a filler. It is a little waste of talent seeing Fishburne is a great actor.

Overall, despite the plotholes and its weaknesses, Passengers offers an impressive trip to space experience unlike before. I would still recommend it if you're a visual person. I would still recommend it if you are especially Jennifer Lawrence's fan, because her acting is very compelling on this. Also, definitely see this movie if you're looking for some emotional-provoking science fiction that explores humanity and challenges morality as a flawed being.

Well, but that didn't conclude my review just yet. As I was watching, I couldn't help but notice how closely similar it is to WALL-E. It is that similar that you don't have to wait until the movie finishes to realize it. Not that it's a bad thing but it's good to note them.

I'll make a list of the similarities:

**MORE SPOILERS AHEAD!!**

1. Set in a luxurious starship/spaceship that carries the human colony sponsored by a multibillionaire company
   • Passengers: The Homestead Company
   • WALL-E: BnL


2. Let's not forget the almost-similar spaceship names, starting with an A with three syllables.
   • Passengers: AVALON
   • WALL-E: AXIOM


3. Similar music vibe and composition. But it's not a a surprised since both movies share the same composer that is Thomas Newman. (Ah, figured)


4. Both EVE and Aurora are depicted to be charming, sleek, and elegant, which is the first reason why both WALL-E and Jim are respectively attracted to.


5. The guy is of a lower class. The girl comes from a higher/more advanced class with more privileges.
   • Passengers: Jim is of a lower class seeing from the limited breakfast option he has. Aurora is of a Gold Class member with more luxury.
   • WALL-E: WALL-E is a forgotten scavenger on Earth. EVE is a highly-equipped advanced probe droid with a special purpose.


6. The guy makes friends with the girl when the girl is “asleep” without her knowledge, before actually becoming friends.
   • Passengers: Jim has a crush on Aurora while she's still sleeping. He browses about her and has breakfast besides her pod, pretending to have a conversation with her.
   • WALL-E: When EVE goes on a sleep mode after finding the plant on Earth, WALL-E, also develops a crush on her and takes her around while she's “sleeping”.


7. The guy hides when the girl first appears.
   • Passengers: Pretty much, out of guilt, Jim runs to his suite
   • WALL-E: WALL-E hides behind a rock when EVE lands on Earth.


8. The guy and the girl become friends and floats outside the ship as a date.
   • Passengers: Obviously.
   • WALL-E: Define Dancing.


9. The good ship captain/staff who is there to help them and basically tries to get them both together.
   • Passengers: Gus Mancuso helps the couple find out what actually happens to the ship. At one moment, he serves as a third figure who tries to reconnect the conflicted couple.
   • WALL-E: The obese captain shows an interest in WALL-E and EVE. He helps getting the ship on a stable mode too almost at the end, after fighting with the antagonistic autopilot robot.


10. The guy gives the girl the tree/plant thing. The tree/plant will be important later.
    • Passengers: Jim plants a tree in the middle of the Grand Concourse for Aurora.
    • WALL-E: WALL-E gives the plant to EVE.


11. At the end, the ship experiences a technical problem which requires the guy to manually fix it. The guy ends up having to holding something up and sacrificing himself in the process. He gets injured badly.
    • Passengers: Jim holds the reactor door manually to cool the engine down. He gets injured in the process.
    • WALL-E: WALL-E gets crushed while holding up a moving chamber as he is trying to deliver the plant to the captain.


12. The girl rushes to her aid. The guy briefly dies. A surgery is performed.
    • Passengers: After rescuing Jim, Aurora brings him to the healing pod to perform surgery on him.
    • WALL-E: WALL-E is severely damaged. After landing on Earth, EVE tries to fix him and performs a “surgery” to bring him back to life.
    
    Both Jim and WALL-E survive.


13. The tree grows at the end for others to see and cherish.
    • Passengers: Jim's tree grows to be a garden
    • WALL-E: In the credits, the tree that serves as an important element in the movie (which WALL-E repeatedly hands to EVE) grows


14. Both WALL-E and Passengers feature little cleaning robots with comedic sense, with similar style of wiping the floors.


15. Both WALL-E + EVE and Jim + Aurora are perceived as Adam and Eve figures.


16. The ship landings are associated with the passengers interacting with plants/trees
    • Passengers: The ship passengers wake up stunned to the garden Jim and Aurora has grown, which starts out from the smaller, original tree.
    • WALL-E: The captain teaches the passengers how to plant a tree, using the original tree as a sample.


17. Both Jim and WALL-E make friends with creatures not of their own:
    • Passengers: Arthur, an android.
    • WALL-E: A cockroach that randomly pops up in places.

Both Passengers and WALL-E are charming on its own though, except Passengers is WALL-E deals more with human emotions and of course, features more hotties on space.

That officially sums up my yet another super lengthy review. Have a nice weekend!