How one script change could have saved Passengers film

I am not here to bash Passengers as I actually really liked it. Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence were both great, the premise and moral quandary were intriguing, and the effects and direction were well done.

It just felt a bit like some element of tension was missing.

I guess, it was because once you hear the main idea, you can pretty much work out how everything is going to pan out. But that hasn’t stopped every romantic film or book and it shouldn’t really have affected Passengers. Except it did a bit. When I watched it, I enjoyed the whole thing and then it ended and I promptly forgot about it and moved on.

The simple change to the Passengers script would have changed it all and why I care about that

As well as writing non-fiction for my day job, I also write fiction. (Check out my books!) Granted 99.9% of my income comes from journalism, but that 0.1% is probably the most fun.

Consequently, I read a lot about scriptwriting and novel writing and came across the video below.

Essentially, Passengers would be better if there was a change in perspective. If the film was from Jennifer Lawrence’s point of view, there would have been a lot more underlying tension as you the viewer find out, along with her, what the bollocks is going on. Chris Pratt would be a more mysterious character and there would be an underlying mistrust.

The video below explains this well and they have edited it to show you how cool this simple switch would have been.

One thing people don’t always realise when they enjoy a story or book or film is that often there is a core idea and then there is a lot of agonising about who would be the best protagonist and where would be the best place to start. The standard advice is to start as far into the story as possible. Jennifer Lawrence’s story would have been more interesting with Chris Pratt’s tale told in flashback.

I think this kind of thing is fascinating. You can read more about it here. I don’t think Passengers was broken in any way but it could have been improved. I still thoroughly enjoyed it nevertheless.

This came from the ‘Tao of Screenwriting’ page on Quora. Here you go: