Summary

• Passengers ending faced controversy over moral implications of Jim's actions towards Aurora, lacking examination of consent and accountability.
• Critics viewed Passengers as a wish-fulfillment fantasy with disappointing execution, morphing into horror with unsatisfying resolution.
• Jennifer Lawrence expressed regret over the movie, acknowledging valid criticisms about lack of character development and moral dilemma resolution.

Despite two bankable stars in the leads and a big sci-fi budget, the Passengers ending chose a controversial way to resolve its big twist. Passengers revolves around mechanical engineer Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) and journalist Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), two passengers aboard a spaceship traveling to a distant planet who're awakened from their hibernation pods 90 years too early. On the empty ship, knowing they will be dead long before the rest of the crew wakes up, the two characters make a new life and fall in love. However, there is a darker twist to the story.

The twist, which the film's trailers didn't reveal, is that Jim actually awakens Aurora after his own pod malfunctions and he's unable to bear the idea of living out the rest of his life in isolation, save for the ship's android barman Arthur (Michael Sheen). While there are scenes of Chris Pratt's Jim and Jennifer Lawrence's Aurora having great chemistry and having fun together, there is the truth about what he did that will eventually come out. When it does, the way Passengers' ending dealt with it raised a lot of controversy among audiences.

Keanu Reeves and Rachel McAdams were initially set to star in Passengers.

What Happens In The Ending Of Passengers

Aurora Learns The Truth And Makes A Decision

With the threat of Jim's terrible secret being revealed lingering over the entire movie, it finally happens in the questionable third act when Arthur casually reveals to Aurora what Jim did. Although she's naturally angry with Jim and attempts to avoid contact with him as they share the ship, Aurora has to put those feelings aside when the entire ship is put in danger. The two learn the ship is suffering from multiple system failures as a result of an asteroid collision (the same one that led to Jim's pod malfunctioning in the first place) and they have to repair the vessel before it's too late.

Jim makes a heroic and dangerous attempt to save the ship, succeeding and nearly dying in the process but Aurora manages to rescue him. With the catastrophe avoided, Jim reveals that he has found a way to put Aurora back into hibernation for the remainder of the journey but it would mean he has to remain awake and alone. However, rather than bidding farewell to Jim forever, Aurora chooses to stay with him and the pair live out the remainder of their lives on the ship together.

Why Was The Passengers Ending So Controversial

The Movie Raised Questions About Consent And Accountability

Passengers was largely viewed as a movie with a good idea and disappointing execution, with critics describing the ending as a highly problematic wish-fulfillment fantasy at best (one where a woman stays in love with a man, despite learning their relationship was based on a terrible, self-serving lie) and, at worst, one that morphs the film into an unintentional horror movie. The issue for most critics was not the choice to have Jim wake Aurora when his isolation becomes too much to bear; it was Passengers' failure to examine the moral implications of his action and the questions it raises about consent.

People have similarly taken the movie to task for not fully developing Aurora as a character and diving deeper into her complicated feelings towards Jim after she learns the truth. Instead, Passengers morphs into a disaster thriller in its third act and pushes its relationship storyline to the back-burner, before resolving it in an unsatisfying way that betrays the moral dilemma of the story by making Aurora simply forgive Jim.

What The Passengers Filmmakers And Cast Said About The Controversy

Jennifer Lawrence Has Expressed Regret About The Movie

Just as with the reaction of the audience themselves to Passengers' ending, the people who made the movie have shared different observations about the controversy that followed. Producer Neal Moritz later dismissed these criticisms of Passengers' ending, claiming:

"One guy said [we were justifying date rape] and a lot of media picked up on that and it became the mantra that the film carried."

On the other hand, Jennifer Lawrence responded to the backlash against the Passengers ending and expressed that she thought some of the criticism was valid:

"I’m not embarrassed by [Passengers] by any means. There was just stuff that I wished I’d looked into deeper before jumping on.”

In spite of the critical response, the film still managed to gross a little over $300 million at the box office (via Box Office Mojo). At the same time, the consensus on Passengers hasn't improved over the years and the movie. There are many who felt the movie would have been more successful had it embraced that Jim was the villain of the story and told the story from Aurora's perspective. Instead, it remains a complicated and flawed film that attempts to tell a grand sci-fi romance story while saddled with a very disturbing premise.