Chris Pratt’s Notorious Sci-Fi Flop Is Streaming For Free
Chris Pratt's sci-fi flop, Passengers, is streaming right now on Freevee.
Since he’s both continuing to dazzle as Star-Lord and even voicing Super Mario, it’s fair to say that Chris Pratt is having a moment. But while some fans have expressed their displeasure at Pratt’s Mario voice (we all know it pales to the work of Charles Martinet), this backlash is nothing compared to what Pratt faced for his infamous sci-fi flop Passengers. However, if you want to check out this stinker of a film that also stars Jennifer Lawrence, it is now streaming for free on the Freevee platform.
The plot of Passengers starts out as your normal sci-fi stuff: Chris Pratt is one of 5,000 colonists in hibernation aboard the sleeper ship Avalon, and the hibernation is meant to keep everyone fresh for their 120-year journey to the planet Homestead II. However, an accidental asteroid collision ends up waking Pratt’s character up only 30 years into the journey. Instead of waking up and exploring a brand-new planet, he is left as the only human wandering the ship, and his only company is a barman played by Michael Sheen.
Apparently, Sheen’s company isn’t enough for Chris Pratt’s character, and he begins contemplating suicide until he falls in love with a woman in stasis who is played by Jennifer Lawrence. He wakes her up and they begin a relationship that goes south when she realizes that it was her partner rather than a malfunction that woke her from stasis. The two eventually patch their relationship up even as they patch up a malfunctioning starship that threatens the lives of everyone onboard, but audiences were less than impressed with this happy, romantic ending for Pratt’s selfish character.
The movie ended up being a critical flop despite decent box office numbers, and many audiences reacted with revulsion at the idea that we are supposed to root for Christ Pratt’s character. He may have been lonely, but he effectively chose to ruin someone else’s life because he fell in love with a pretty face. And even though Pratt and Lawrence have solid chemistry together, the very premise of the movie seemed to doom it from the start.
Speaking of having a doomed start, it took about a decade to bring Passengers to life, with the movie being stuck in development hell for a very long time. At different points, the movie would have starred different actors, with the filmmakers really wanting Keanu Reeves and Emily Blunt instead of Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. Ultimately, it seems like the studio made the right call because both the chemistry and sheer star power of Pratt and Lawrence are the only things this movie has going for it.
For fans of either Chris Pratt or Jennifer Lawrence, though, this film is an interesting time capsule glimpse at their respective careers. Riding hot off the success of The Hunger Games, Lawrence was ultimately paid more for the film than Pratt ($20 million to his $12 million), who had only broken into blockbuster movies with the first Guardians of the Galaxy film two years before. In the time since Passengers came out, Lawrence has mostly focused on smaller and more artistic movies, but Pratt has continued to focus on blockbuster movies such as the Jurassic World films, and that experience should help him when he stars alongside yet another CGI dinosaur in The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
