Passengers story does work. - Contains spoilers

All images from IMDB

Ok so even quite recently I've seen people talking about how Passengers doesn't work because Jim (Played by Chris Pratt) selfishly wakes up Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence) dooming her to a similar fate as him. The argument is around how Jim doesn't get her consent to do this. Leaving aside the obvious issue of trying to get consent from some-one in suspended animation before waking them from it the film does actually address this.

At the films conclusion Jim goes out to vent the ships reactor manually knowing the risk and nearly dies only surviving because Aurora rescued him. Jim's arc being showing that he is willing to selflessly risk his life to save Aurora and the rest of the crew. Conversely we get Aurora's arc where having hated Jim for waking her up and dooming her she faces a moment of being in the same position as Jim, awake on a ship alone as Jim has made the ultimate sacrifice. In that moment she feels the despair, the loneliness closing in and realises that's what Jim would have felt. In that moment however she realises that there is still a chance to save Jim and avoid that fate. This is added to by the fact Jim then points out he found out the medical pod thing can put one person back into the hibernation state, but only one. Aurora realising how she felt when she thought she'd be alone then actively makes the choice to stay awake and with Jim.

I guess it's something about the present cancel culture age that people either don't get or can't accept the idea of the story being about a redemption arc for Jim and an arc for Aurora of learning to be able to forgive Jim's mistake.

There's also a larger theme in Passengers of the idea of fate or destiny and another of putting aside differences to help everyone.

The fate / destiny theme is that without Jim and Aurora being awake the ship would have been destroyed. Hell if Jim hadn't woken Aurora up then she'd have died in the hibernation pod and Jim would likely have been unable to save the day. This is something those arguing about the film lacking consent don't seem to want to acknowledge or recognise that in reality mostly by accident Jims action likely saved Aurora's life and I doubt many people would refuse consent and instead choose death.

It seems kind of funny really to me that in such a divided time and the world has been divided for quite some time that people fail to recognise part of the film where Aurora lets go of her anger towards Jim and they work together to save the ship and crew. That anger, that animosity, that hatred is put into scale and scope when faced with a far larger issue that impacts more people. In an age where people claim "The personal is political" and at least one person posted pictures trying to mock their elderly relative on twitter just for clout, this is an age where people can't see beyond themselves to think of something more because to them any impurity or thing they see as fault must be removed before people can move on. The question is where will this end? 

It's not surprising to me really that so much of the themes and elements of the film seem to be getting lost. I mean we do have a seemingly huge media literacy problem with the present crop of pop culture reporters in media.

Wow that got serious for a minute there.