*Spoilers ahead from the movie*
The Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence movie looked like a can't-miss going in, but one of the main plot points turned off a lot of critics, since the protagonist -- Pratt's character -- turned out to essentially be a stalker, choosing to wake up Lawrence's character 'cause he's so lonely (and she's so hot) essentially dooming her to the same fate. The decision was addressed in the movie, but it was also made into a convenience when it turns out they needed two people to work together. It was not the only criticism of the sci-fi film, but it was the one that got the most traction.
The movie ended up with a Metacritic score of 41, and a Rotten Tomatoes score of 31 percent, vs. an Audience Rating of 63%. IMDb users rated it a 7.0 out of 10, and the film has a Cinemascore of "B," showing many fans didn't share the same distaste.
But Lawrence told Vogue she agreed with the suggestion that the movie might work better if it started with her character waking up, following that perspective instead.
As "I just wish they had told the story from her POV instead of his. The movie should have started with her waking up, meeting him, realizing what he had done, and then adding flashbacks of his POV during the resulting conflict. It would have been much more interesting if we hadn't understood him from the beginning.
Also he should have died in the end, leaving her in his dilemma. Sequel city."
Here's the "Passengers" part of Lawrence's Vogue's profile:
It says a lot about Hollywood culture (or all culture these days) that what it takes for someone to be considered "real" is a habit of honesty. But if asked, Lawrence will give a respectably straight answer on, say, her 2016 sci-fi film Passengers, which was a box-office success despite a thumping from critics—she's proud of it but agrees with those who suggested the film would have benefited from a reedit and started with her character waking up. "I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't spot it," she says. "I thought the script was beautiful—it was this tainted, complicated love story. It definitely wasn't a failure. I'm not embarrassed by it by any means. There was just stuff that I wished I'd looked into deeper before jumping on."
Back in April, Pratt told Variety the criticism surprised him.
"I was really caught off guard by that. It was definitely a lesson. I personally think the movie is very good, I'm very proud of it. I'll be curious to see if it holds up — the criticism and the movie. I'm proud of how the movie turned out and it did just fine to make money back for the studio. But the critical score was disproportionately negative compared to the Cinemascore. It got the same rating on Rotten Tomatoes as 'Paul Blart: Mall Cop,' maybe worse."
"Passengers" criticism is valid, even if it shouldn't be assumed that all of the criticism was for that same reason. Some critics -- and fans -- just didn't like the sci-fi film as much as they expected to for other reasons. But it will be interesting to see how this particular film holds up in, say, 10 or 20 years.
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