All aboard the Starship Avalon lie in a deep slumber as they make their way from Earth to Homestead II, a newly colonized planet 120 years away from their home. All except for Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), a mechanical engineer who woke up 90 years before he was supposed to and now has no way to go back to sleep. If only he could find a lovely young woman to keep him company… which is precisely what happens when he comes across a passenger, a New York writer named Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence), who he awakens to join him. The premise of Passengers has the promise of romance, thrills and drama that would’ve warranted an old fashioned movie poster exclaiming “it has it all!,” and as directed by the genre-hopping Morten Tyldum it certainly lives up to the promise of eclecticism.
After the success of the WWII-set The Imitation Game, which saw him receive his first Oscar nomination for Best Director, Tyldum wanted to work on a big sci-fi project, and got his hands on John Spaihts‘ by-then famous screenplay about romance on a futuristic cruise ship. By pairing two of the biggest movie stars in the world, Passengers seeks to find its place among the classic screen romances that often define entire generations. We haven’t had one of those since Titanic (although The Notebook fans would say otherwise), but those who go into the film expecting a traditional boy-meets-girl story will be challenged by a romance that lives in a moral grey zone. I spoke to Tyldum about the elements that attracted him to the screenplay, working with Lawrence and Pratt, and how he directed one of the most terrifying sequences I’ve ever seen.
The Film Stage: What about the screenplay made you realize you had to direct the film?
Morten Tyldum: The fact that it’s both so intimate and it has such an epic background. I’d been looking for a sci-fi project for a long time — I’m a big fan of the genre — and this was something that felt original. I love movies where you take a character, put them in difficult situations, and have them make difficult choices. I like to explore that and also to make movies that are difficult to put in a box. This isn’t an action movie, but it has action; it has romance but it’s not a romance; it has funny moments but it’s not a comedy. That was very important to me. It also gave me the opportunity to create this spaceship, every filmmaker dreams of creating an iconic spaceship.
Did you feel any pressure to try and come up with a version of outer space no one had done before?
There’s always a lot of pressure when you’re making a movie. That was a great challenge though, everyone knows how the Millennium Falcon looks like for instance. I liked the challenge of making something with scientific facts that was also very unique. We had to create each part of the spaceship. I loved the design part of it, and now you can associate the spaceship to these great cruise ships that brought people from Europe to the new world. I think we looked both backwards as forwards, we looked at art nouveau, art deco, as well as modern design.
Coming off The Imitation Game, which demanded so much historical accuracy, was it liberating to work on something like this?
You have to create the rules and the laws of this world. Why did this spaceship create such a luxurious spaceship when people would be asleep for such a long time? It’s a business model, a way of thinking, we had to think about how this company thought. It was liberating and fun, but also it was a challenge to create all this. We created documents about what you would need to go on this journey, we did research that’s not even in the movie but things that we as filmmakers needed to know.
That moment with Jennifer’s character trapped in a water bubble will give me nightmares forever.
Thank you! We needed to do something impressive that’s never been on film before. The idea of drowning in zero gravity was something I’d never seen, it was really hard to shoot. If you’re underwater you move very fast, so we had to tie Jennifer down to shoot this.
That sounds like a nightmare.
It probably was — she had to struggle to get out. Everything is floating and moving, so she was tied in the water tank.
You seem to have fixation on our relationship to technology, The Imitation Game is basically about the first computers, Headhunters dealt with nanotechnology, and Passengers is about space travel. Are you interested in chronicling a history of sorts about technology on film?
I’ve always been fascinated with how technology is combined with how we see the world. What does it mean to be human, a machine, alive? If we think a machine can be human is it human? Those were questions Alan Turing had too. In sci-fi we think about what happens when we take out time, what happens when we remove society? That was the fun part of doing sci-fi, we get to play around a lot. The movie is very character-driven. It’s about redemption and love, but it’s fun to think about all those other things as well.
Thomas Newman’s score made me think of WALL-E, was this film on your mind at all when you made this one?
WALL-E is a great movie with a great message and I love Tom’s music in it. There are similarities thematically but I don’t think it was inspired by it. I love how machines are given personalities in WALL-E, but there were other movies that inspired me for Passengers, films Marlon Brando did when he was young for instance, which inspired Jim, films about lost masculinity, about working with your hands, what a person like this does in a world where we throw everything away and don’t repair anything. Jim is not needed in his planet anymore, he’s obsolete.
Jim Preston, like Alan Turing ] seems to be an outsider who dreams of social interaction even if he doesn’t know the best ways to do it. What keeps attracting you to stories about people who are outcasts?
There’s something very relatable to characters who are trying to fit in — we all feel like we don’t belong. It’s interesting to put these characters in worlds where they don’t fit in, Alan had to make big choices in the middle of WWII, Jim has to make big decisions in this spaceship that’s falling apart. He makes decisions that go against his morality, things he knows are wrong.
Jim made me think of Jimmy Stewart’s character in Vertigo who does very creepy things in the name of romance. How did you try to achieve a balance between allowing him to make creepy choices and also be a romantic hero?
I’m so glad that you brought up Vertigo because I can see the similarities. I think you identify with Jim because of Chris’ performance. When you have characters who make questionable moral choices you need to identify with them. I think I would’ve done what Jim does and I think most people would. It’s interesting to be part of that journey. As soon as you understand him it doesn’t become creepy. I still want people to feel discomfort. I want people to talk when they leave the movie.
Can you comment on developing the chemistry between Chris and Jennifer?
The biggest fear for any director is your actors won’t have chemistry, but as soon as I met them I knew there would be magic when I put them together. We had a table read where they met and they clicked. It’s a very intense movie, every scene has a big emotion: love, fear, hatred, survival. It was an intense shoot, they were great on the set, they were very funny to be around, I’m not funny but they are. They made the crew laugh, they were amazing, and they also pushed each other, and you can feel their connection in the movie. Someone said to me when they’re apart in the movie you want them to be together, and that’s what I wanted.
Passengers is now in wide release.