Passengers

Passengers.

An interesting and engaging movie. Not entirely without its flaws, but I consider them minor and not grating enough to ruin the movie, as is sometimes the case.

Rare for a “major movie”,it is not merely an interesting story with interesting characters, but intelligently looks at some interesting philosophical issues. There is the central one of the morality of what to do if you’re doomed to live alone until you die but can wake up someone you love to be with, but share your fate.There is the issue of what to do when your life plan is ruined: mope, or live the fullest life you can.It even includes the main characters discussing the moral relationship between the company who built the starship and the passengers who chose to join it – and for once, the company is not portrayed as a villain.

It also had some nice doses of humour to alleviate the tension, including a line from Laurence Fishburne that will amuse Matrix fans.

Don’t use it as a textbook for either physics or economics, but that goes for pretty much all movies. The economic issue of how a corporation could make squillions of dollars sending enormously expensive starships (surely the fares of only 5,000 passengers could go nowhere to paying for it) on journeys that last 120 years is ignored. But hey, I don’t let defective plot backgrounds destroy a movie when they’re just a plot background.

This is the first time in a long while that I’ve been to a movie and the cinema was nearly full. Not that popular taste is any test of the quality of a movie!