Would you leave your life as you know it right now for the unknown? If you could leave your family, friends, career, home, and town you live in? Some might say, "Hell yeah", while others are just too comfortable in their life right now. As I watched the movie Passengers for the first time, all of these thoughts crept into my brain and it gave me a lot to think about. All of the passengers aboard the space ship were going to a whole new planet, starting completely over, and by the time they got there, everyone they once knew would be dead.

The movies starts off slow, with a man waking up from a deep sleep. As he wakes up, he is welcomed by a robot. Who would be better to wake up to when you’re profoundly confused than an artificial human being? The man (Jim Preston) comes to find out there was a malfunction on the ship and he is the only person awake. And not just awake, but is awake ninety years too soon.

After living alone for a year and watching video recordings of one female passenger on the plane (Aurora Lane), Jim is faced with a huge ethical question which I’m sure all ethic fanatics would love to sit down and contemplate. Does he wake her up and spend his ninety years aboard the ship with someone he really likes? Or does he let her keep sleeping and wake up with the rest of the crew, able to live her life on the new planet which they all were planning on?

Jim decides to wake Aurora up. What would any person do you didn’t want to go insane? The movie really makes you think about how we rely on the people we surround ourselves with and even just strangers who we never talk to.

Jim and Aurora get along, until she finds out (by a robot, nonetheless), that he woke her up intentionally. With this hanging over their heads still, Jim and Aurora are faced to deal with the actual demise of the ship, because it is malfunctioning and is likely to be destroyed way before it was originally destined to land. Aurora and Jim save the ship, leading it to go on smoothly and simultaneously saving all of the other passengers.

Then another life-changing question is brought about. Jim figures out how to reset a machine that would allow only one of them to go back to sleep and live their life out on the new planet. He offers it to Aurora. Aurora can have the life she has dreamed of. She can write about her adventures on this new planet, and would even have a twist because she woke up on the ship, saved everyone, met the love of her life, and then went back to sleep.

This question is consuming. What would you do in a similar circumstance? Leave someone who you deeply care for to be alone for the remainder of their life without you? Or go on with your own life, experience an entirely new planet and way of life.

This movie brings up a lot of questions which are almost impossible to answer. Think about everyone who is in your life today, even if it is just a professor or a random classmate who you talk to about the homework. Would you, could you, give up all other social interactions with one person? Think of all of the different aspects to your life that you go through on a daily basis. Would you give that up for a chance at an entirely new kind of existence?