Synopsis:
The Starship Avalon is on a 120-year voyage transporting over 5000 colonists to Homestead II when a malfunction wakes up a passenger, mechanical engineer Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), 90-years early. Lonely, he wakes up beautiful writer Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) for company.
Film Review:
When you’re travelling through space for 120 years supposedly but you suddenly wake up 90 years early. All alone and nowhere to go. What would you do? Somehow this tells me that the film was meant to be a really absorbing sci-fi movie. Sadly, nothing about this film was absorbing.
Things do definitely get grim when you’re all alone, like a space castaway kind of thing. At the beginning Jim, who is played by Chris Pratt was still able to entertain and distract himself by playing around with gadgets cause he is apparently an ‘engineer’. This doesn’t seem to reflect at all in his character though. Having an android bar tender to keep him company, he became alcoholic and had suicidal thoughts after a year of isolation. And during his lowest moment, he then saw his love interest, Aurora who is played by Jennifer Lawrence while she was asleep in her pod. Aurora, a journalist, who left her friends and family to become the author of a novel about space travel. However, it seemed that there’s a lack of purpose for the characters to be driven enough to leave Earth. It doesn’t make any sense. In the later part of Jim’s desperation to have someone in his lonely life he then woke Aurora up. The love story did not lasted long and eventually she finds out. But there’s a twist.
However the film was meant to be it seems that nothing made sense at all. There was too many subplot holes and under developed characters. As well as the couple’s chemistry was non existent too. It felt corny and contrived the entire time. Being aware of the running time right at the first few minutes of film start suggested that it wasn’t going to be pleasant at all. It all seemed superficial focusing only on the shallow traits of humanity. There’s that creepy plot twist to it too that forces us audience to justify Jim’s inhumane act of manipulation and betrayal.
Despite the great production and spot on CGI, this film was far from the great space travel movies like, Gravity, Interstellar or Space Odyssey. The director Mortem Tydlum was probably aiming for a gripping film that would have been better as a horror movie and not a romantic one. It kind of objectified Aurora as a person but the confusing part was Jim was portrayed as the victim of love and despair. He played the part as being the weak one despite him being the manipulator. And that in the end he was still the nice guy who saved the day and not the creepy “engineer”.
The film aimed for something intriguing but very unsuccessful.
The movie is to be released in NZ on January 1, 2017.