With its Black List approved script by Jon Spaihts, Keanu Reeves‘ dogged commitment to star that kept him attached for years (while Reese Witherspoon and Rachel McAdams circled in and out of co-starring slots), and endless cycles of development that saw the project at The Weinstein Company, eyed by Focus Features, and finally landing at Sony, it’s a shame that “Passengers” starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence was such a disappointment. Tedious, baffling, and side-stepping the big ethical questions at the core of its story, the film was seriously silly when it could’ve been the kind of rich, sci-fi storytelling we don’t get very often on the big screen. But perhaps things would’ve gone differently in the hands of director Ruben Ostlund.
Speaking with Variety about his upcoming movie “The Square,” the director of the celebrated “Force Majeure” revealed that he actually met with executives about directing “Passengers,” but they didn’t like his vision for the film.
“There was one film I really wanted to do that has been made now. That was ‘Passengers.’ But I wanted to change the setup of ‘Passengers.’ The main character is a guy who wakes up in one of those pods on a spaceship. I wanted to put his family in the other pods, his wife and kids. Then there’s this dilemma: He’s going to die on the ship because the travel takes 300 years. If he wakes up his kids, they will die on the spaceship and not on the planet they’re heading for; if he wakes up his wife, then the kids will not have a mother when they arrive. So of course, you have to wake up another woman, because you don’t want to be alone,” he explained. “Then you can swipe on pictures to see the women, like Tinder. You have to decide on the pictures and pick someone. To bring things [like] that would be relevant in contemporary times. But when I pitched this to the producers, I think they got scared.”
Well, that sounds like a great twist to Spaihts story, and one that gets right to the heart of the major decision the main character is forced to make. And presumably, in Ostlund’s movie, that moral quandary would be dealt with by more than a montage of Pratt growing a sadness beard. But I also totally understand why a major studio didn’t want to go down that road, and chose the more popcorn friendly version. It’s a bummer though.
Nonetheless, Ostlund continues to look at scripts to direct in America, but there is one thing he’ll never do: kill any characters on camera.
“…most of what I read from the U.S. is either a thriller or a love story. And I say I won’t kill anyone in my films. I really don’t want to be a part of that in the industry. I think it’s completely over-represented with the crime stories, the murders, that we make entertainment out of horrifying things, and I don’t want to be a part of that. So a lot of the scripts have these ingredients, or things or ideas that have viewpoints on love and relationships that I don’t agree on. So when I’ll do something in English or in that context, it will have to be something I feel I can be true to,” Ostlund said.
“I think it’s quite childish the way violence is portrayed in cinema. I don’t want to participate in that way. I have almost no violence in my life. Why should I create violence all the time?” he added.
So, when Ostlund does come to Hollywood, it will be for material that suits his sensibilities, which sounds like a smart play. As for “The Square,” it’s expected to premiere at Cannes.
*throws things around in frustration*
I too had a different spin for Passengers. A much darker, The Shining type thing. So the beginning would pretty much be the same, and Pratt wakes up J Law so he wouldn’t be alone. Well as things proceed instead of the bartender letting it slip that he woke her up, he also mentions “others”. J Law starts to do some investigating despite falling for Pratt just like in the movie, and she discovers other empty pods and histories of other women’s profiles viewed on Pratt’s computer. That’s when we learn via flashback and other devices that Pratt has been awake for several years (first one alone) and has awoke several other women. Problem is he finds flaws in them, gets annoyed by them or bored by them since living exclusively with one woman is I’m sure a trying thing. So he basically kills them by cutting them loose when they go outside to view space. Now the end might seem a little cookie cutter because Pratt basically becomes Jack Torrance and hunts down J Law through the ship in a game of cat and mouse. Eventually J Law tricks him in going outside and finds away to cut him loose. Then comes the kicker. We show her recovering in a little montage and after a year being by herself we see her start perusing the male passengers profiles. In the very last scene, we see her walking through the passenger pods and stopping at a very handsome man her age. She stares at him intently and we cut to black in an Inception like ending. This leaves the question of whether she wakes him up for company because despite judging Pratt for waking her up, in reality, being alone is just too tough. Pretty good eh.
that was great !
Super cool
It’s kind of ironic because essentially “Passengers” is what Lawrence has done in multiple films with Bradley Cooper. In both “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Serene”, Lawrence’s character manipulates the male lead out of a competitiveness with a woman from the man’s past. Frankly, it only worked in SLP because it was dramedy so that atmosphere distorts the fact a woman is manipulating a bi-polar man. LOL But both movies don’t really follow through with the obsession. “Serene” ends with the guy dying from some other crap not related to her and in SLP the guy figures he just loves her (There really isn’t a reason why he does so he uses the cop out line “I’ve loved you since the day I met you). Fact is you mention “The Shining” and most big movies won’t take that dark and realistic approach where dark elements are explored. There isn’t enough grit in Hollywood. Although funny you mention Lawrence and Pratt. Frankly their involvement I think is what botched this project. I guess the script actually didn’t have her character showing up till like halfway through the film but they sped it up because “It’s Jennifer Lawrence”. She basically took the film because I think she knew no one was going to pick it up (A film doesn’t go through development hell for years unless a director can’t figure out what to do with it) and she saw this as a way to get a payday because “Oh hey, I’m a big deal and Sony is desperate.”. Not a fan of hers but the films she personally funds and pushes forward like “Serene” and “Passengers” shows a bad taste for storytelling. LOL While we saw this concept in films like “Pandorum” and even, on a comedic level, the Disney film “Rocket Man”, both films side stepped also for the sake of thrills and, in “Passengers” case, sex. I’m tired of the whole “existential question’ storylines though. I just want a good, conclusive one-off that doesn’t try to be clever. LOL
The problems with “Passengers” were rooted in its heralded screenplay from the first draft. It is not a matter of aesthetic or directorial failure. If you read “Passengers” with the Blacklist/industry hype at the forefront of your mind, you might find it AH-MAAAZING. But if you read it cold, it’s a great set up followed by a blatantly obvious cop out. The whole reason we have agents and publicists in this business is to kick up that sort of perception altering hype to mask the problems, drive up the price, and get the project sold. The fact that the project switched hands so many times is evidence of the fact the previous owners could tell, as the hype faded, that something wasn’t working.
If you are going to make a movie about one character willfully stripping agency from another character, you have more than enough conflict to fill a movie…unless you don’t have the courage to actually tell that story. Spaiht’s was unwilling to follow his premise to its darker implications and attempted to distract with a third act set piece involving a meteor. He gambled that the audience wouldn’t notice.
Nice try.
That’s what I thought. A film doesn’t go through development hell for nearly a decade unless it’s struggling to find a tone. Cool start off point, cheap love story in the end. Needed more. Frankly, as I said to another guy, I think Lawrence and Pratt’s involvement was a cheap selling point and their involvement ultimately ruined the potential of the story in a rewrite. Lawrence tends to pick this same story A LOT. This story about her being this desired female who some guy picks out of desperation or lust and it all goes to crap. LOL “Serene” was just like this story but backwards and less optimistic. “Silver Linings Playbook” used it’s dramedy atmosphere to distort the fact a woman was manipulating a bi-polar man and his family was a bunch of lying crooks (Apparently sports fans that didn’t know that “Excelsior” was the motto of their team’s rivals yet are wholly superstitious). Frankly you need more grit in Hollywood. People willing to work on one good project instead of 10 a year and make a one amazing film instead of 10 mediocre to crappy films. Hollywood moves too fast for it’s own good. A few months of rewriting this puppy…could have been an epic space adventure.