Passengers was supposed to be the biggest Christmas hit save for Rogue One. But advance word on the space drama starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt is not good.
The pair star as hibernating passengers on board Avalon, a commercial space liner journeying to a planet called Homestead II, located 120 years away from earth. Pratt’s character Jim’s pod malfunctions 30 years into the journey and he wakes up Lawrence’s character Aurora from cryogenic sleep, duping her that she too has been the victim of a pod malfunction.
Social media movie social justice warriors are taking strong exception to the plot of the film revolving around a man disrupting a woman’s life, accusing the movie of being sexist and perpetuating male fantasies and featuring misogynistic snatches of dialogue such as when Lawrence’s character Aurora asks Pratt’s character Jim, “What do we do now?”
Furthermore, Pratt has been falling out with the PC police of late, having been accused of sexism for his role in Jurassic World, something people aren’t forgetting.
So is Chris Pratt typecast to play sexist characters or….
— Ashley Joyce-Nyack (@theashleyjn) December 19, 2016
@Shion963 It’s creepy and sexist. It would have been easy to make it better by calling out Pratt’s character’s shit.
— SANTA: 76🎄❄️☃️ (@rekicakes) December 19, 2016
oh good another movie where chris pratt is a creepy sexist weirdo, smashballs for his career surely https://t.co/nHBMpZ14Ds
— Jingle Bell Punk (@pixelpynk) December 15, 2016
Whaaaat the Jlaw Pratt movie is sexist garbage, no way.
— 🌼M. Flores🌼 (@devoted_pupa) December 18, 2016
@NussbaumAbigail 2. Still Pratt has a record for doing particularly grating sexist trash between this and Jurassic World.
— Elsworth Amasa (@wfrolik) December 20, 2016
I just saw Passengers, and it was so utterly stupid (and sexist) that it made me angry while I was watching it. Please see Arrival instead
— Jo Wright (@kvetchup) December 20, 2016
re: magnificent seven: are we really just gonna see film after film with chris pratt playing ‘lovable misogynist’
— mel(anie). ❄️ (@likewatercress) April 20, 2016
Passengers is some incredibly sexist bullshit. My review’s coming.
— Kristy Puchko (@KristyPuchko) December 15, 2016
It’s not just random people on the internet expressing displeasure. Movie critics aren’t happy.
The Guardian wrote of Pratt’s character: “He is still the perv who practically frotteured himself against a woman’s sleep pod before stealing her life to be his chosen playmate.”
Metro film critic Matt Prigge called out Passengers for being “one sick male fantasy — essentially a tale of rape in which the victim learns to love her rapist…in space, no one can hear you recommend Hollywood execs read basic feminist literature.”
Glenn Kenny, critic for RogerEbert.com slammed the film as “spectacularly sexist” while Film School Rejects lashes out at “Passengers’ deep contempt for its female protagonist, and by extension, women everywhere.”
Passengers has had a stormy journey of late. Pratt recently received flak for joking to Lawrence on BBC Radio 1’s Playground Insults segment, “During our sex scene I felt your dick rubbing into me” for which he was accused of transphobia, while Lawrence recently apologized for revealing she scratched her backside on rocks while filming in Hawaii.
Michael Sheen, who co-stars in the film as a robotic barman, has also had to clarify he’s not going into politics full-time to take on Donald Trump following remarks he made in a promotional interview.
Pratt meantime, appropriately, seems to have constructed his own universe when it comes to the reaction to his latest movie:
Thanks for all the kind words. We worked our butts off. Glad people are enjoying the movie. https://t.co/xYC8vQBiGv
— chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) December 20, 2016