Jennifer Lawrence Defends ‘Passengers,’ But Admits It Could Have Been Better
Remember last year’s Passengers? The Titanic-in-space sci-fi romance that ended up derailing into a creepy stalker-y mess within its first 20 minutes? Well, Jennifer Lawrence, fortunately, Gets It, although she won’t say that the film wasn’t a success.
In her fascinating Vogue interview, the topic of the critically-maligned Passengers naturally came up, and Lawrence was candid about the film’s issues, which were glaring to everyone but her. “I’m disappointed in myself that I didn’t spot it,” she said. “I thought the script was beautiful — it was this tainted, complicated love story.”
For those of you who need a refresher (spoilers) Passengers begins with Chris Pratt’s character waking up when his cryo-pod malfunctions, dooming him to 90 years alone on a ship full of sleeping people traveling to a faraway planet. He falls in love with Lawrence’s character and decides to wake her up so that he has a companion for the long, dark time ahead, neglecting to mention to her that it was he who woke her up in the first place. In the interview, Lawrence also says that the script could have done with a rewrite that had it begin with her character waking up, instead of giving the twist away right at the beginning.
It’s the kind of contrived romance plot that would have made a fantastic psychological thriller — imagine a film that actually addresses the horror of this kind of betrayal instead of wrapping the whole thing up in a sappy, frustrating ending.
Lawrence won’t call it a failure, though, and she’s not wrong. While the critics generally hated it, Passengers made over $300 million worldwide and got a couple Oscar nominations too. “It definitely wasn’t a failure,” she said. “I’m not embarrassed by it by any means. There was just stuff that I wished I’d looked into deeper before jumping on.”