Morten Tyldum likes to do things differently, and the Norwegian director has certainly done so with his first big Hollywood fantasy, “Passengers.”
Starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, the long-in-development project comes from an original screenplay by Jon Spaihts (“Doctor Strange,” “Prometheus”) that made the Black List — a kind of unofficial rundown of the best unproduced scripts floating around town — for quite a while.
The stars are, well, passengers on a far future space cruise ship that’s taking over 5,000 humans to colonize a faraway, Earth-like planet. It’s been done once before, quite successfully according to the corporation that controls the endeavor. However, since the journey takes 120 years and everyone on the ship is in suspended animation for all but the final four months of that trip, you kind of have to take the bosses at their word about that.
Anyway, around 30 years out, something goes wrong and Pratt’s mechanical engineer, Jim Preston, wakes up. Alone. With no way to refreeze himself and survive the journey. Which is kind of OK for a while, as he can indulge in the ship’s many luxury amenities without having to wait in line or anything.
That gets old after about a year or so, though. But there’s something Jim’s been thinking about all that time. Something that would be really wrong to do. But jeez, 89 more years in space. Alone.
What, if anything, does this story have in common with the insanely inventive Scandinavian thriller “Headhunters” (2011) that brought Tyldum to international attention? Or, for that matter, do either of those films intersect thematically in the least with Tyldum’s English feature debut, the mostly World War II-set, Alan Turing biopic “The Imitation Game” (2014)?
“First of all, I want my movies to be different,” says the 49-year-old filmmaker, looking the tall Nordic part with long blond hair and a more gingery beard. “But they’re all very character-driven. If there’s one thing that’s in all three films, it’s that the characters have to make some big choices that are going to change them. It’s not something outside that affects them primarily, even if it’s there like the spaceship is being bombarded by meteors or World War II is happening.
“What is actually happening in all of my movies is that characters have to make big choices, whether it is about love or forgiveness or doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing. That’s interesting.”
It certainly all is in “Passengers,” and somewhat alarming, too. For while this is a big-budget spectacle — vast, ingeniously designed ship interiors were built on soundstages in Atlanta, not constructed in computers after the actors did their parts in front of empty green screens — seasoned with crowd-pleasing humor and live-or-die action, it is at core an intimate two-hander built around an appalling act of betrayal.
It’s like a great love story that smacks of a sadder one about a woman who just can’t leave her abuser. Credit Spaihts and Tyldum for tackling the issue head-on through a substantial portion of this slick, escapist entertainment, though.
“There was huge work on that,” the director says of balancing motives, morality and righteous anger in the movie. “I’d like people to really discuss, after seeing the film, what would you have done? There’s a key line in the film: ‘A drowning man will always drag somebody down with him.’ I think that’s a little bit what it is. But can you excuse it?
“In many ways, it’s taking things that can happen in a marriage to the extreme,” Tyldum adds about the scenario. “The lie, the betrayal, all of that to the extreme, then starting over. That was so important, and I think Chris did such a good job. He’s an actor that you can really relate to, that you really identify with, and you can put yourself in that situation. I think a lot of people will say that ‘I would have done the same thing.’ ”
Although some other plot complications kick in for the third act, the last half of “Passengers” is indelibly informed by the elephant on the ship’s grand concourse. Delicate gauging of emotional and ethical temperature had to be applied to each sequence and performance.
“Every time that we were acting the scenes out after the lie came out, the way you react is just bigger and more brittle,” the director points out. “There was so much balancing. I was very worried about how people would relate and if they’d understand Chris’ character. But I’ve been happy that, at every screening we’ve had, the audience reports indicate that they all get it. It’s flawed and it’s wrong and nobody will say that it was the right thing to do. Everybody will agree that it’s wrong, but also that it was very human to do it.”
Born and raised in Bergen on Norway’s Atlantic coast, Tyldum developed his own sense of professional right and wrong from early in his career. Basically, his credo has been do what you want to do since his first feature, “Buddy” (2003), a modern media satire cum love story. It served him well when he crossed the North Sea and, then, half the globe. He also found it useful not to prejudge what America’s film industry was like.
“You hear a lot of bad things about Hollywood in Europe,” he notes. “You’re going to come over here and you’re going to sell your soul and they’re going to backstab you and whatever, which did not happen. I actually found Hollywood to be a place full of people who love movies and artists who want to make great films.
“My whole attitude has always been that I’m doing it for me,” Tyldum adds. “I’m trying to tell stories that I like and disappear into sort of a bubble of doing things because I would like to see them. I think that’s why my movies are perceived as so different. I was deeply fascinated with Alan Turing’s story, so I wanted to do ‘Imitation Game’ because it gave me something. ‘Passengers’” story really touched me and I wanted to explore it — and I wanted to build that spaceship! People ask me how do you make it in Hollywood, and I say by not being calculating or doing things that you think other people want you to say or do … by not trying to achieve any goals beside making movies that you enjoy yourself.”
