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Anybody see Passengers? Was that ending gimmick stupid or what? (Spoilers, obviously) Cannoli Send a noteboard - 29/12/2016 08:38:32 PM

I get WHY they did it, they wanted to tell a love story, and for Aurora's choice to stay with Jim to have meaning, it needed to be a legitimate choice, so she needed to have an alternative option, otherwise, the resumption of their relationship could not be anything more significant than resignation to her circumstance. But the mechanism was idiotic. If they wanted to force that choice, they could have made the things Jim did to her pod reversible, so that only she could go back in, but since his was a legit malfunction, it could not be undone. Using the autodoc only suggests massive stupidity and shortsightedness in the planning of the ship.

What was the plan if the passengers and crew actually needed to use the hibernation function of the autodoc? How was anyone else supposed to be treated while the coma patient was in the autodoc?

The story previously implied that there were extensive spare parts and replacements for everything that might go wrong over a 90 year voyage, so couldn't there be sufficient parts to build a second autodoc for Jim to sleep in? There would need to be spare parts for everything, if they only have ONE autodoc to service an entire crew & cargo of thousands of people.

Also, most obviously, what was the plan if ANYTHING went wrong such as, well, what actually happened? Why were there spare parts for every bit of the reactor, if they had no plan for someone to USE them? Or where the spare parts in case the ship happened to malfunction during the .3% of its journey when it actually had conscious humans running around? As it is, the Avalon only reached its destination, because two of its malfunctions canceled each other out. I had assumed from seeing the trailers that some sort of sentient computer or emergency program deliberately woke up Jim & Aurora to handle whatever problem was hinted at, but by everything said in the film, the pod failure that woke him up was completely unplanned and unforeseen. If it had been a contingency, Gus would certainly have mentioned it, given that he has clearance for absolutely everything on the ship, including medical procedures he would not, in the normal course of things, be remotely qualified to authorize. You also have to wonder why the most high functioning robot on the ship is the bartender. Why aren't there maintenance robots better than the marginally advanced roombas, who only clean up messes? If they can program a robot to engage in a simulation of activities as complex as carrying on conversations with random people, including making decisions about when instructions previously given no longer apply, why can't they make robots with instructions on how to fix a reactor problem, or to diagnose such a problem and wake crew members to deal with it? I mean, the bartender has to be sentient and self-aware, or else someone programed him for so many contingencies, that he can thank a customer for repairing him, or answer questions about why he polishes glasses when no one has used them. But something to keep the whole ship from blowing up is out of the question?

Also, why couldn't Jim & Aurora split time in the autodoc, a few years under, a few years together...I can't be bothered to do the math, but it seems like that way there might be an outside chance of at least being around as old folks when the ship arrives... Each spending a third of the next 90 years under, means they would each have aged about sixty years. Sixty years from now, Chris Pratt will be 97 and Jennifer Lawrence 86. That's not IMPOSSIBLE, especially with stem-cell therapy that is one of the treatments offered by the autodoc.

The term for this stuff is generally "fridge logic" as in, the kind of thing that seems okay when watching it, but by the time you get up to go to the fridge, your brain is going "Hey, wait a minute." This time, it was occurring to me as I was watching the film. You can't go from a scene where they have effectively just repaired a series of major malfunctions back to good-as-new conditions using "spares for everything" and NOT wonder why there is no spare autodoc or second medical facility. I was sort of primed before that scene by the mental observation that tethers on spaceships are always exactly the right length to be just slightly short of the distance to reach a free-falling person. I honestly think it would be a bigger shock to me if at some point in the next space movie I see, the tether is long enough, with some slack to spare, that doesn't snag or entangle or otherwise inconvenience the characters. It's fricking space. There are plenty of ways to endanger people besides "not enough rope".

And of course, there is the question of their EV activities relative to a space ship moving at half the speed of light...

Cannoli
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
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Anybody see Passengers? Was that ending gimmick stupid or what? (Spoilers, obviously) - 29/12/2016 08:38:32 PM 1184 Views
Not yet. Planning to. - 02/01/2017 11:50:31 AM 599 Views
This it what happens when they mix sappy romance with scfi - 06/01/2017 01:22:51 PM 578 Views

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