"SC-S33/W4-Rewrite a movie ending (Passengers (2016))

It is a terrifying, mentally unnerving narrative that warranted a fittingly horrific ending. However, the movie reneges of its potent premise in its actual conclusion, offering a ridiculous, impossible space walk where Jim gets to survive, Aurora forgives him instantly for stealing her life, and they somehow save the ship, settling with a cheap, in space-mall, romance. Jim is completely absolved from an egregious violation of Aurora’s bodily autonomy and life.

Below is my take, allowing for an appropriate delve into the psychological torment, tragedy, and thematics the movie could have been:

The climax would start exactly the same – the nuclear reactor on the ship is failing; and its final destination is only a short while away. Jim finally understands, knowing he’ll need to hold the vents open to the failing core in order to disperse the heat to save the 5000 sleeping lives in cryo-bays on the ship. No silly, all-powerful “space walk fixing-all” scene; Jim knows this is a one way trip into an inevitable, icy death.

As the nuclear core burns with more intensity- Jim would speak one final time over the intercom to Aurora. Not to ask for absolution-just to tell her he loved her, that he was so sorry he took her life away, and to please, please live her life to the fullest. He finally gives into the vents; holding the release door open until the radiation disperses from the reactor; with his last reserves he locks the vents into the ‘open’ position, his tether snaps, and he's flung away into the abyss of outer space with a distant scream of Aurora’s name, staring out the ship’s porthole.

The silence that immediately follows would be deafening.

The camera would then switch to a montage of the ship – but starting at an identical point in composition as the original movies. Aurora’s trajectory now instead. We see her drifting through the grand, imposing, and empty halls of the Avalon, now solely a cold, sterile palace.

Hours turn into days, and days turn into weeks, and the crushing enormity of ultimate isolation is beginning to eat away at Aurora’s mind.

She would attempt to write, to exercise… to do anything… she would attempt to fill the gaping void within her but the loneliness is a physical disease that eats through bone and marrow.

The final scene opens in the intensely cold, bluish hue of the cryogenic bays. Aurora walks slowly down the double-line rows of sleeping passengers-some of whom she would likely know by the time they wake up in 89 years. Her eyes, however, are hollow, utterly vacant with no spark of the fire that burned within her before.

She’d stop at a specific cryo-pod containing a handsome man asleep within.

The camera would close in on Aurora’s face. Terror would fill her eyes, followed by the dawning realization of insanity that must have consumed Jim and led him to waking her in the first place. Her arm begins to snake out toward the cryo-pod’s manual activation switch, its muscles trembling with dread, and her hand hovers milliseconds away before it closes in around the trigger.

Fade to black. Credit roll.

Why it works so well

In my opinion, this ending creates a fitting and true conclusion to Passengers. For the following reasons;

1. Incredible emotion and thematic integrity over a cheap rom-com.
Unlike the sweet and saccharine conclusion the movie gives us in the end, this ending leaves the viewer aghast, thinking… feeling… in fact, something. It sacrifices cliché and romance for genuine, terrifying mental horror, mirroring the dread its characters are feeling, and challenging its audience; "Would I act like Jim? Would I be willing to betray everything to combat the fear of being truly alone?"

2. Themactic completeness
Whilst providing a fittingly cathartic - albeit dark - feeling of closure this ending instead offers a sense of tragic, inevitable, cycle of isolation. Jim has committed an abominable deed, and will likely be absolved by this final suicide in his pursuit of redemption- the curse of the Avalon will be passed on to Aurora from Jim’s sacrifice for everyone but himself. What began as an obvious rom-com in the early half quickly devolves into an honest study on the horrors of human connection, and what the complete lack of it would do, ending with a truly heartbreaking conclusion.

3. Retains protagonist’s agency.

Aurora quickly forgives Jim, and miraculously overcomes the theft of her life and thriving in her second one- this felt a slap in the face. I maintain that Aurora would never need to forgive him.

Her realization that she, too, is also vulnerable to succumbing to madness through isolation and desperation, and potentially committing the same unthinkable act as him, validates the panic and terror she’s experiencing without having to forgive him for the suffering he has put her through.

The movie is not patronizing its audience; it respects them enough to not hold their hand and reassure them, it trusts them to engage and talk about what they've just witnessed, and to have thought provoking discussions over the film's powerful concluding message, "What would I do?".

This conclusion would have catapulted "Passengers" into a genuinely outstanding cinematic achievement worth debating over for years, and forever etch itself in the memory of its audience.

I invite @peacemike @okereblessing and @bossj23