Passengers (Spoilers)

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Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by FaxModem1 »

So, this film came out a couple weeks ago, and while it is being referenced in the Sleeper Ship thread in SLAM, I thought it deserves its own thread.

Centuries from now, the sleeper ship Avalon is on a 120 year voyage to Homestead in to drop off 5,000 colonists. The entire ship's crew and passengers are asleep, waiting to be woken up 4 months before they arrive, where they'll receive training on how to be a colonist.

Thanks to a meteor storm, Jim's pod malfunctions and he has 90 years left on his trip. With a less than helpful computer customer service, and no one but a robot bartender to talk to, Jim tries to endure the trip.





Eventually, after a year of being alone, and on the edge of suicide, he finds comfort in the social profile of another passenger. He then debates on whether to wake her up, and doom her to his situation.
Spoiler
After a month of waiting, he does wake her, and they begin a romance. Arthur, the Android bartender, eventually spills the beans to her. This of course ruins the relationship.

But, due to further malfunctions from the meteor storm, the ship starts falling apart. The two, with the help of Lawrence Fishburne as the Deck Chief woken up by another malfunctioning pod, scramble to repair the ship before it explodes due to the computer drive that regulates all systems needing replacement parts and not properly regulating the fusion drive.
I rather enjoyed the film. It's not often that you see a space sci-fi romance film. Though, the third act could have been an entirely different film altogether

What did everyone else think?
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Re: Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by Q99 »

I haven't seen it, but my reaction to your review:
Spoiler
"After a month of waiting, he does wake her, and they begin a romance. Arthur, the Android bartender, eventually spills the beans to her. This of course ruins the relationship."

This kind of stuff is, of course, both standard romance fair, and skeezy.

So, I like the idea of 'colony ship, malfunction wakes people up,' but, I gotta turn it down, since that's a major minus on the romance side and it'd probably be hard to skip over that and stick to the action.

I would like to see more SF romance, just less on the deception-based side.
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Re: Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by Cykeisme »

It's actually a cheesy love story, with the science fiction parts designed to contrive the specific situations required to advance aforementioned story.

That said, surprisingly I found it was watchable for me.
Surprising in the sense that, If I was to explain the plot to a past version of me who had not yet seen the movie, I would have been absolutely certain I would hate it (and have refused to bother watching it).


On a different note, since the engines were constantly running (external shots show what I assume to be a Hollywood depiction of an ion drive constantly flaring), I expect that the ship was constantly accelerating. Since they had artificial gravity, I think I can reasonably assume that they had Star Wars-style "intertial dampeners" or "acceleration compensation", insulating the contents of the ship from experiencing apparent rearward acceleration.
It's also stated that they're traveling at 0.5c after 30 years of acceleration.
So if we were to look at this from a suspension-of-disbelief point of view, how would we reconcile the ship's constant acceleration with the EVA
spacewalks, where the ship appeared to be non-accelerating?

A few more questions spring to mind as I type this, that I will present in horrible stream-of-thought fashion:
Considering they have sci-fi artificial gravity, why does the ship have rotating assemblies?
And, more relevant to the events in the movie, what sort of mechanisms were in place to make the ship "meteor proof" when they're traveling at 0.5c?
Was the gravitational slingshot around the red giant a realistic depiction of traveling at 0.5c?
How come we don't see any blue shifting/red shifting of the starfield? Or, for that matter, the red giant?

Ah, and one more thing.
The spacesuit vented exhaust from the fusion reactor contents.. what kind of materials would we need to keep a wearer alive from exposure to our best estimates of the plasma temperature?
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Re: Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by trekky0623 »

I was interested in this movie, but from the trailer and your review, I'm now kinda meh about it.

The premise is similar to "The Days Between", a short story in Coyote by Allen Steele, that features a crew member of a sleeper ship waking up from hibernation. I enjoyed that story.
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Re: Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by Khaat »

I recall a short story where the sleeper never actually comes out of hypersleep, but his mind is active, so the ship's computer simulates everything he may/would encounter at the destination planet. Spoiler
By the time he gets there, he's quite mad, and thinks the whole thing is just another simulation....
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Re: Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by SpottedKitty »

Cykeisme wrote:And, more relevant to the events in the movie, what sort of mechanisms were in place to make the ship "meteor proof" when they're traveling at 0.5c?
It would have to be pretty robust, at that speed a grain of dust would hit like a dinosaur-killer.
Cykeisme wrote:Was the gravitational slingshot around the red giant a realistic depiction of traveling at 0.5c?
How much of an actual swing was there? Red giants can be (but aren't always) quite heavy, but incredibly diffuse — even if they were skimming the surface the ship would be going too fast to be pulled much off course.
Cykeisme wrote:How come we don't see any blue shifting/red shifting of the starfield? Or, for that matter, the red giant?
If you do the maths, 0.5c isn't really enough to produce a lot of visible red/blue shifting; it's fast, but not fast enough. The really weird visuals don't begin to appear until you get over 0.8 or 0.9c.
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Re: Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by Adam Reynolds »

I wasn't much of a fan. If the tickets hadn't been free*, I would have been annoyed that I spent money to watch this in theaters. There were two major problems I was left with. The first was that of storytelling, in which the reveal that Jennifer Lawrence's character went through should have come in the third act. This is in addition to that plot twist being problematic as was mentioned. It would have probably been better if they were both thawed at the same time and it played out as it otherwise did. The dilemma was somewhat interesting, but the way it played out was not.

The second problem that struck me is just how stupid that system was. It should have allowed for a crew member to be thawed the second it detected a problem that could not be automatically fixed. What engineer devised this system? The above dilemma would have almost been more interesting if it were two crew members, in which the first had to debate whether to thaw a second crew member, though it would have instead been more about whether they could have made the repairs alone.
Spoiler
I also love that a black character was thawed just to die. Real classy.
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Re: Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by Q99 »

Adam Reynolds wrote:I wasn't much of a fan. If the tickets hadn't been free*, I would have been annoyed that I spent money to watch this in theaters. There were two major problems I was left with. The first was that of storytelling, in which the reveal that Jennifer Lawrence's character went through should have come in the third act. This is in addition to that plot twist being problematic as was mentioned. It would have probably been better if they were both thawed at the same time and it played out as it otherwise did. The dilemma was somewhat interesting, but the way it played out was not.
Or there was a second malfunction that woke her (tie it into later upcoming problems, or just have it a glitch that it'll wake someone every X until they stop it, which they do), or have her informed more up-front...
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Re: Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by Khaat »

Cykeisme wrote:On a different note, since the engines were constantly running (external shots show what I assume to be a Hollywood depiction of an ion drive constantly flaring), I expect that the ship was constantly accelerating. Since they had artificial gravity, I think I can reasonably assume that they had Star Wars-style "intertial dampeners" or "acceleration compensation", insulating the contents of the ship from experiencing apparent rearward acceleration.
It's also stated that they're traveling at 0.5c after 30 years of acceleration.
So if we were to look at this from a suspension-of-disbelief point of view, how would we reconcile the ship's constant acceleration with the EVA spacewalks, where the ship appeared to be non-accelerating?
A velocity of .5c after 30 years of acceleration works out to be... 0.51945 f/s/s (unless I screwed up the math somewhere - entirely possible), so a spacewalk would be pretty chill: the ship would take quite a while to move away from you (presuming the suit doesn't have "auto-adjustment thrusters" or something keeping you relative to the thing.)

.5c = 93,141.1985 miles per second
= 491,785,528.08 feet per second

30 years = 10,957.5 days
= 262,980 hours
= 15,778,800 minutes
= 946,728,000 seconds

a = dv/dt
= .51945... f/s/s (just over 6 inches per second per second)

And what love story doesn't eventually involve 6 inches per second per second? :wink:
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Re: Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by FedRebel »

Khaat wrote:I recall a short story where the sleeper never actually comes out of hypersleep, but his mind is active, so the ship's computer simulates everything he may/would encounter at the destination planet. Spoiler
By the time he gets there, he's quite mad, and thinks the whole thing is just another simulation....

I was kind of expecting that as a plot twist, surprised it never went that way. Figured it'd turn out to be a pair bonding simulation while the colonists are in hypersleep.

Instead they just left a mess for the crew to cleanup
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Re: Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by FedRebel »

Adam Reynolds wrote:
The second problem that struck me is just how stupid that system was. It should have allowed for a crew member to be thawed the second it detected a problem that could not be automatically fixed.
The crew should be rotated through hibernation, given that the Autodock has the capability to induce hypersleep their pods should have similar function), seem practical that a few crewmen would take 'shifts' of a year or so to keep the ship maintained, etc. Considering evrything was 'dark' until Jim woke up...shouldn't there be century of dust (the ship seemed to be pressurized the whole time)

At the absolute minimum, Reactor computer Bricks. Emergency wake up protocols should have kicked in
What engineer devised this system? The above dilemma would have almost been more interesting if it were two crew members, in which the first had to debate whether to thaw a second crew member, though it would have instead been more about whether they could have made the repairs alone.
The diagnostic system should of been more helpful. The Deck Chief couldn't figure out the damn Reactor Computer Bricked. The ship obviously 'knew' hence giving Reacotr control processes to other processers..until Windows 2120 BSODed on each sub processor one at a time.
You would think that every display on the bridge would be plastered with " WARNING: REACTOR COMPUTER FAILURE! UNABLE TO REBOOT SYSTEM!"

As far as Jim being thawed, the Deck Chief explained it was a random glitch when the ship was reallocating reactor processes.

Aurora was awoken by Jim being a serial stalker

And the Deck Chief's pod had a nasty compound malfunction

Overall the Avalon is the result of 'Corporate Koolaid', Everything is inhouse Homestead Inc. "Hypersleep pods never malfunction", etc. On top of that, there's the 'corporate' predilection to do things on the cheap. The knowledge disconnect with the AI for example, Arthur, etc. when first approached... "Oh we're 4 months from the colony"...then Jim challenges..."Oh we have another 89 years to go". Not having manned maintenance protocols and at least Auto Doc's for the crew so they can be awoken to respond to hazards and resume hibernation when resolved. Auto Doc's have to be expensive, just one for 5,000 passengers + crew?

...then there's the whole part were the AI doesn't intuitively explain how it's addressing a damn critical system failure...and prioritizes reaching destination on schedule over life support, etc.
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Re: Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by NecronLord »

SpottedKitty wrote:
Cykeisme wrote:And, more relevant to the events in the movie, what sort of mechanisms were in place to make the ship "meteor proof" when they're traveling at 0.5c?
It would have to be pretty robust, at that speed a grain of dust would hit like a dinosaur-killer.
It had a star-trek style shield powered by a fusion reactor.
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Re: Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by Cykeisme »

The stupidity of the ship's designed response to errors is mind-numbing, yeah.
No human crew being woken in the event of malfunction, and complete lack of a separate, reliable diagnostics that don't also completely fail when the main system does. To begin with, the automated handling of a single CPU going down eventually crippling the entire ship is pants-on-head-stupid.

I think the part where the protagonist "ruins her life" by waking her up (because he was on the verge of mental breakdown and suicide) was key to the plot.
At the end, when he chose to sacrifice himself by holding open the plasma vent hatch, it put her on the other side of the situation, and she decided that his decision to wake her was acceptable (or at least understandable).
If it wasn't a Hollywood movie he should have been vaporized right there and then.

NecronLord wrote:
SpottedKitty wrote:
Cykeisme wrote:And, more relevant to the events in the movie, what sort of mechanisms were in place to make the ship "meteor proof" when they're traveling at 0.5c?
It would have to be pretty robust, at that speed a grain of dust would hit like a dinosaur-killer.
It had a star-trek style shield powered by a fusion reactor.
Ah crap, they have sci-fi "force field" shields? Missed this somehow.

And thanks for the acceleration calcs, Khaat. In a bout of inexcusable anti-intellectual laziness, I just assumed the acceleration would be significant.
Plus that last goddamn line slew me.
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Re: Passengers (Spoilers)

Post by Eternal_Freedom »

I crunched a few numbers at work today (I was bored) and came up with an accceleration that's close enough to Khaat's as to not matter (0.14 ms^-2 for the curious) and a distance covered (with a few less than good assumptions, like assuming they started at relative rest) of just under 8 light years. Which makes it a bit problematic when they have their flyby of (IIRC) Antares...which is 550 ly from Earth.
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