Passengers: Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt Interview

Normally when a sci-fi film featuring a cast of the calibre of Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt hits Australian cinemas it is big news. Yet somehow, possibly due to the fact that it opens in Australia on that awkward 1^St January New Years slot, Passengers is right upon us. Well we here at Heavy decided that it was time to do something about that and we thought you would like to hear what Lawrence and Pratt have to say about this great new sci-fi.

Lawrence beings by saying that was attracted to this film because it really intrigued her. “I found the characters that are involved with this story really intriguing because it is such a huge decision to make,” explains Lawrence. “When you think about it if you take a 120 year long journey when you arrive everybody that you know will be dead so you have to start a whole new life on a planet that you have never been to. So of course there are going to be interesting characters that are involved when there is a decision like that.I thought the script was such an interesting concept that I hadn’t seen anything like it. I loved the world, I loved the two characters and I loved just the sheer idea of the whole thing. I thought it was so creative and interesting because when I closed the script I thought people with leave the cinema with a million different opinions and that’s what I really like about the film, that nobody is telling you how to feel that it is all ‘what would you do?’, it’s a real conversation starter.”

So that leads straight into the question of why her character, Aurora, decides to make that big decision. “Aurora is very driven,” says Lawrence after thinking for a few seconds. “She is also very curious and is the daughter of a very famous author which I think always keeps her wanting more and wanting her to have her name so I think all of these combine with her adventurous spirit and that sends her off.”

Lawrence also says that the predicament that the characters find themselves in also affects the way the film looks. “This film is visually interesting because really these two characters are trapped,” she says. “But it is the space that makes the visuals so large and they are so lost in this huge space that is so much bigger than them. SO I thought that was interesting with the dynamics of what the characters feels and what the characters are going through emotionally. All that versus this large, gaping space that they are stuck in.”

Of course most of the female audience out there are once again going to fall in love with Chris Pratt when they sit down to watch Passengers, so what does Jennifer Lawrence have to say about working with the talented star. “Chris Pratt is the hardest working person on a movie, including the crew and I mean including everybody. He is the hardest working person that I have ever met in my life and he has such an amazing attitude. Chris and I were also always thirsty to know what Morten (the film’s director, Morten Tyldum) was thinking and of course his opinion of our characters but we were all really dialled in together.”

Now of course Chris Pratt doesn’t need any introduction to most movie goers these days. Over the past few years he has made big budget films like Guardians Of The Galaxy and Jurassic World his own so what is his take on Passengers. “Well there are about five thousand passengers on the Avalon and they are travelling to this new planet called Homestead 2. They are travelling in what are called hibernation pods, and they are pretty much what they sound like, they are cocoons with the passengers inside where they are kept in suspended animation where they don’t age, they don’t grow, they don’t get sick, they just stop all metabolic function and may character’s pod malfunctions and he wakes up ninety years early. When i read the script I could not believe that I had been given the opportunity to be in this movie. Sometimes you read a script and it just grabs a hold of you and does not let go and I was never going to let anybody else do this movie. From the moment I read it i wanted it and that was how it was going to be and i was really so fortunate that it came together the way it did. I’m a huge fan of talent and when I see the sets that the people on this crew have built I can not help but be in awe. There are so many artists, literally hundreds and hundreds of people that have worked on this film and that’s not even counting the post-production people. I am always going to be awe of the magnitude of this type of film. ”

So does he believe that audience will also be left in awe? “This is the kind of movie that blows people away,” he says with a smile. “I think that is what we like in movies, movies are entertaining, movies can be scary, they are entertainment and that is okay but sometimes a movie will blow you away… and I think that is this movie.”

Anyone who has watched the trailer for Passengers has seen that Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt have to interact with actor Michael Sheen playing a robot called Arthur and Pratt says that brought an interesting dynamic to the film “Of course we had to try and work out this interesting dynamic of how human Arthur should be,” he explains. “We are really far into the future, at least far enough to have created fusion drive and travel at light speeds and have suspended animation and of course with that technology available you have to imagine that we have made  some big jumps in artificial intelligence so I think Michael did a really good job, with the help of Morten, in working out just how human he would make this android character. He did just enough to make my character forget sometimes that he wasn’t a human.”

When a film leaves people like Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt in awe you know that is going to be something special. So despite the lack of attention that has been given to Passengers so far now is the time to sit up and take notice because this may well be one of the sleep hits of this summer.