Christian Schoon: author, reader, critter-wrangler

The groggy, suspiciously attractive Passengers of this SFX extravaganza take us on a sort-of-world-ship, half-light-speed journey to a nearby star system with a habitable planet. Stasis for the travelers is the key, but things go pear-shaped when two of the ticket-holders wake up  prematurely. Like 90 years too early. Complications and void-luv ensue. But we’re all encouraged to note that the film takes its physics seriously. For the most part… Like tears. They don’t just float off from your face in zero-g. Liquid surface tension keeps ’em stuck on your skin, and this principle is adhered to in the film (see what I did there?) Then there’s “tether physics.” The infamous scene in Gravity got this badly wrong and took some serious verbal abuse for it from SF geekdom and actual physics-knowing types worldwide.  In Passengers, two floaters pulling on a shared line act the way they’re ‘sposed to, and that means we’ll all feel better about Newtonian law being strictly obeyed. At least where space-crying and tugging are concerned. But all science aside, the ship itself is gorgeous. The technical term is swoopy, I believe. Very swoopy.  Can’t vouch for the quality of the human performances. It IS an off-world kinda movie we have here, however, and it pays attention to the more pedestrian science-y bits. (Which is more than we could say for Gravity or Interstellar). So, there’s that. Here’s the arty at space.com that goes into more deets on it all:   http://www.space.com/35104-passengers-scifi-movie-nails-space-physics.html