Chris Pratt’s sci-fi flop, Passengers, is streaming right now on Freevee.
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 hour ago
Since he’s both continuing to dazzle as Star-Lord and even voicing Super Mario, it’s fair to say that Chris Pratt is doing well. But while some fans have expressed their displeasure at Pratt’s Mario voice (we all know it pales to the work of Charles Martinet), this backlash was nothing compared to what Pratt and his co-star Jennifer Lawrence faced for their infamous sci-fi flop Passengers.
The plot of Passengers starts out as your normal sci-fi stuff: Chris Pratt is one of 5,000 colonists in hibernation aboard the sleeper ship Avalon, and the hibernation is meant to keep everyone fresh for their 120-year journey to the planet Homestead II.
Watch our video to find out why Passengers failed.
However, an accidental asteroid collision wakes Pratt’s character up only 30 years into the journey. Instead of waking up and exploring a brand-new planet, he is left as the only human wandering the ship, and his only company is a barman played by Michael Sheen.
Apparently, Sheen’s company isn’t enough for Chris Pratt’s character, and he begins contemplating suicide until he falls in love with a woman in stasis, who is played by Jennifer Lawrence. He wakes her up, and they begin a relationship that goes south when she realizes it was her partner, not a malfunction, that woke her from stasis.
The two eventually patch their relationship up, even as they patch up a malfunctioning starship that threatens the lives of everyone onboard. Audiences were less than impressed with this happy, romantic ending for Pratt’s selfish character.
The movie turned out to be a critical flop despite decent box-office numbers, and many audiences reacted with revulsion at the idea that we were supposed to root for Chris Pratt’s character. He may have been lonely, but he effectively chose to ruin someone else’s life because he fell in love with a pretty face. And even though Pratt and Lawrence have solid chemistry together, the very premise of the movie seemed to doom it from the start.
Speaking of having a doomed start, it took about a decade to bring Passengers to life, with the movie being stuck in development hell for a very long time. At different points, the movie would have starred different actors, with the filmmakers really wanting Keanu Reeves and Emily Blunt instead of Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. Ultimately, it seems the studio made the right call because both the chemistry and the sheer star power of Pratt and Lawrence are the primary things this movie has going for it.
For fans of either Chris Pratt or Jennifer Lawrence, though, this film is an interesting time capsule glimpse at their respective careers. Riding hot off the success of The Hunger Games, Lawrence was ultimately paid more for the film than Pratt ($20 million to his $12 million), who had only broken into blockbuster movies with the first Guardians of the Galaxy film two years before.
Since Passengers, Lawrence has focused chiefly on smaller, more artistic movies, while Pratt has continued to work on blockbusters such as the Jurassic World films. That experience should help him when he stars alongside yet another CGI dinosaur in the next Mario movie.
Passengers is now free to stream on PlutoTV.
