‘THE movie is about two people who were supposed to be on the trip of a lifetime—the 120-year journey to a new planet—when they get woken up 90 years too early,” says Chris Pratt of Passengers, the new film he and Academy Award-winner Jennifer Lawrence headline. “But it turns out there’s a reason they woke up early. They have to solve the mystery of the malfunction, and fix a ship that is quickly failing, if they are going to survive and save the lives of the passengers on the greatest mass migration in human history.”
The Guardians of the Galaxy hero cum Jurassic World alpha male talks more about Passengers.
The script for Passengers had been creating quite a buzz. What was your reaction when you first read it?
When I read the script I couldn’t believe I would be given an opportunity to be in this movie. Sometimes you read a script and it just grabs hold of you and doesn’t let go. I was never going to let anyone else play Jim. It was mine. The minute I read it, I wanted it. And I’m so fortunate that it came together the way it did because the script had been floating around for a while and there had been several incarnations. It just never got off the ground.
Why did it grab you in that way?
It’s an epic in that it really has everything in one movie. It’s adventure, romance, it’s a thriller and it’s emotionally resonant. There are great moments of humor and spectacle all wrapped up in one movie. Once we were able to attach Jennifer, it opened up to be the big movie that it was always meant to be and needs to be in order to be executed properly. I loved the script. I think it’s really good. Usually, there’s at least a few things that stand out that you want to have a conversation about but with this, my only note was “I’ll do it—but don’t change anything.”
Could you tell us about your character in Passengers?
I play a character called Jim Preston who is a Rate-2 mechanical engineer. This story takes place in the near-to-distant future and Jim is a bit of a throwback to the way men used to be. He’s not rich, he’s blue collar, very much a working-class guy. He’s a passenger on The Avalon, which is a starship that travels to faraway colony planets and populates these planets—not that there’s anything wrong with the Earth other than it’s overcrowded. It’s still the cradle of civilization but in the time the movie takes place we’re able to colonize planets.
Jim wakes up too early from sleep, however. Could you tell us about that?
There about 5,000 passengers on The Avalon traveling to this new planet called Homestead Two and they travel in what are called “hibernation pods”, which are essentially exactly what they sound like—a cocoon inside of which each of these passengers is kept in a state of suspended animation where they don’t age, they don’t grow and they don’t get sick. His pod malfunctions and he wakes up 90 years too early.
How does he react?
He has a brief stint where he decides he’s just going to go crazy and have fun. Why not? Also, he’s not a ‘Gold Class’ passenger, so he’s limited to the worst food, the worst meals, the worst soap. He has the smallest room and forced to live like a second-class citizen on the ship. So it adds injury to insult and creates a lot of comic beats in what is otherwise pretty harrowing circumstances in the first act.
Tell us about Arthur, the android, played by Michael Sheen.
Jim develops a real friendship with Arthur, the android bartender, and it gives him something to interact with, as close to humanity as possible. Michael is a terrific actor and a really great guy. We’ve had a lot of fun working together and, yeah, you get to see my character attempt to have a friendship with somebody who is not human and it should be great fun to watch. It was a tricky dynamic, I think, to figure out how human Arthur should be because we are far into the future—at least far enough to have created a fusion drive and travel at the speed of light, and to be able to have suspended animation. These technologies are available so you have to assume that we’ve made some pretty great leaps in artificial intelligence.
But although Jim desperately wants Arthur to be human, he’s obviously not, and that plays a pivotal part in the story?
I think Michael, with the help of Morten (Tyldum, the director), did a great job of determining just how human he would make this android character—just enough so that often Jim would forget that Arthur isn’t human, which also drives the story forward because Jim goes to Arthur for advice when he’s deciding whether he should do something or not. And Arthur gives him advice—which is not the best advice. It’s not the advice that a human would give you but Jim clings to it.
Tell us about Aurora, who’s played by Jennifer Lawrence, and how we meet her?
She essentially saves his life, in a way, because he finds something on which to focus his attention. He starts to fall in love with her through the glass (of her pod). Not only her physical beauty, but also who she is as a writer and as a person, her voice, her laugh. He is able to pull up videos to see her and he really falls in love with her. So she gives him a reason to live.
How was it working with Jennifer?
She’s great, really great. She’s a phenomenon. She can turn it on like that (clicks fingers). Some actors like to do mental and vocal warm-ups and acting drills and stuff, and Jen is like an opera singer who can just open her mouth and make a sound you didn’t know existed. That’s what I feel she does with acting, and it’s really incredible to watch. I really feel like I’ve made a lifelong friend, and it’s been one of the highlights of making this incredible movie.
If you had the chance to leave everything and everyone behind to travel to another planet, the way that Jim does, would you do it?
Me? No. Maybe when I was younger I would have. But I’m a family man now I’ve got a wife (the actress Anna Faris) and a son (Jack Pratt) and people who depend on me.
What about if they went with you?
You know, I’ve got a pretty good thing going on here on Earth. I don’t think I’m going to land on a planet, colonize it and make it big as an actor, you know what I mean? (Laughs)
***Now playing across the Philippines, Passengers is distributed by Columbia Pictures.