2016's Passengers, starring Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence and Hollywood heartthrob Chris Pratt should have had an easy journey to sci-fi greatness. Its script was championed in the 2007 Hollywood Black List, it enticed an Oscar nominated director and Sony believed in it so much they upped the budget to $120 million. There was a lot riding on the success of the Starship Avalon's 120-year voyage to Homestead II.

The problem is..... it's meant to be romantic, but just ends up feeling, well, really creepy.

Passengers is a movie with a lot of promise. It wants to be a cautionary tale on our reliance on technology and trusting of big corporations, the social and class divide between the rich and the poor, for us to ask questions about moral quandaries, to empathise with a character’s isolation and loneliness and the broader implications of artificial intelligence but it kinda takes all these interesting and rich discussions and bookends them with “yeah, but they’re both really hot” and never really satisfactorily answers any of the moral questions it asks of itself. 

It's a shame. The thing is, it could very easily be fixed with a few choice edits....

I would love to hear your thoughts on Passengers! You can get in touch on

Twitter @verbaldiorama

Instagram @verbaldiorama

Facebook @verbaldiorama

YouTube @verbaldiorama

Letterboxd @verbaldiorama

or you can email me general hellos, feedback or suggestions:

verbaldiorama [at] gmail [dot] com

Thank you to our Patreon Producer Sade, and also our new patrons Simon and Jardiel for supporting Verbal Diorama! To support the show on Patreon from just $2 a month, have a look over at https://www.patreon.com/verbaldiorama and choose your Keanu.....

You can rate or review the show in iTunes or at Apple Podcasts and I'd very much appreciate that!

My website is at https://verbaldiorama.com

Thanks to the following for their contributions to this episode:

Twitter peeps

@BlkGirlsDoStuff

@capunderstands

@SYIMS_Podcast

@BTipplers

@MoviesWork

@iused2watchthis

@alwayscriticpod

@RoleplayRetcon

@robinhoodpod

@kolbytoldme

@core_xtra

@cwordpod

@CuylerisGreen

@litgamingarena

@reeltroublepod

@agentcoop007

@RobynandDani

@Wizard_Matt

@JasonKruppa

Instagram folk

@contrarianprime

@eatcrime

Facebook buds

Erik Carlson

Theme Music: Verbal Diorama Theme Song

Music by Chloe Enticott - Compositions by Chloe Facebook

Lyrics by Chloe Enticott (and me!)

Production by Ellis Powell-Bevan of Ewenique Studios.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podscribe - https://podscribe.com/privacy
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy