“Passengers, Rearranged” Is Everything Passengers Should Have Been

Yesterday, as I was in your computer, complaining once again about everything I hated about the movie Passengers, YouTuber Nerdwriter1 was fixing all of the movie’s problems. A number of you responded to yesterday’s article with links to the newly dropped video, and I want to thank you, because those recommendations were all 100% spot-on.

The lazy storytelling, the random third act deus-ex-ship-malfunction, the disturbing affinity we’re supposed to feel for Jim–“Passengers, Rearranged” fixes all of it, simply by starting the movie with Aurora’s awakening. This makes her the central protagonist, rather than Jim, and it changes everything.

While I was watching the movie, I also had the thought that telling the story through Aurora’s eyes would make for a better film, but I didn’t realize just how different that movie would be. As Nerdwriter1 illustrates, it doesn’t just make Jim’s monstrously selfish choices more impactful, it turns a straightforward story into a creepy thriller and reveals layers of Chris Pratt’s performance that were apparently there all along, but had no meaning to them.

This video is everything I wanted Passengers to be, and while it’s disappointing that the movie only exists in this short, hypothetical form, it’s a great lesson in storytelling. Because as Nerdwriter1 says in the video, “you can learn just as much from films that don’t work as you can from those that do.”

Watch the whole video if you can, but if you’re short on time–9 minutes being nearly an eternity in internet time–the “new” movie starts at the 3:27 mark.

(featured image: screengrab)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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