Passengers is the new Titanic, but way worse

SPOILERS for Passengers (and Titanic) below

Passengers is a creepy, disturbing movie that’s different from James Cameron’s massively popular 1997 film Titanic in a lot of ways. But here’s the big one: Titanic features two decent characters who are consensually in love. Passengers features one decent character who is ripped from suspended animation (effectively dooming her to die of old age on a spaceship) by one terrible character who wants to have sex with her. Another difference between the two movies is that Passengers doesn’t have a Celine Dion song. Instead, there’s an Imagine Dragons song. It’s not great.

In some ways, though, Passengers is a lot like Titanic. For example, Passengers takes place on a spaceship that’s supposed to be an indestructible feat of engineering, but that turns out to be extremely vulnerable to holes. It’s a travel disaster movie that derides the hubris of human beings, and sets up a class difference between its leads to emphasize how men in power devalue the lives of poor people. It is sad. There is sex. A lady does voiceover.

But most importantly, the ending of Passengers is the same as Titanic, but worse.

In the last act of Passengers, Chris Pratt’s character, Jim, realizes that the robot doctor thing in the ship’s infirmary doubles as a hibernation pod, and he suggests that Jennifer Lawrence’s character, Aurora, should get in it. Even though he’s the one who intentionally took her out of suspended animation, putting her back to sleep is supposed to be a selfless move. He’s consigning himself to be alone in space until his death and putting her back on track to reaching the new colony and continuing her career as a successful author. But she rejects the option, because she “loves him” (read: she has hyper-advanced Stockholm syndrome). We don’t see them die together many years later, but we’re generally aware that it happens, as we see confused people stumble out of their hibernation pods 88 years in the future, and Aurora and Jim aren’t there.

Do you remember the 1997 film Titanic? At the end, Rose (Kate Winslet) is floating atop the icy seas on a large wooden door. Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) tries for about two seconds to get on the door with her, before deciding there’s no room and allowing himself to freeze to death in the water. There is obviously room on the door. Everyone who’s ever seen Titanic is like: “There’s room.” Neither one of them has to die. What a terrible ending to an okay film!