Posted on Thursday, November 3rd, 2016 by Jack Giroux

1. Jon Spaihts Books
2. Passengers Jon Spaihts Grand Concourse

In Passengers, Jon Spaihts has attempted to write the ultimate intergalactic inconvenient breakdown story. Peppered with a fair amount of cheesy popcorn blockbuster moments and roll-your-eyes space dilemmas, Passengers shot for the moon but landed just barely within reach of the stars. Who would not jump at the chance to start over? The Jennifer Lawrence/Chris Pratt romantic adventure “Passengers” may not be and kickstarted a studio career for its author, Jon Spaihts. Ahead of the release of Passengers, we got to chat to the man who came up with the idea, developed the film, and penned the script.

Seven years ago the team behind TRON: Legacy, director Joseph Kosinski and producer Sean Bailey, started working on a remake of The Black Hole. The screenwriter behindPassengers, Jon Spaihts, was later hired for a rewrite on the sci-fi project. It’s been a while since we’ve heard any news about Disney’s reimagining of Gary Nelson‘s 1979 film, but Spaihts recently informed us of the project’s current status.

Below, get the latest update on Black Hole remake.

The Black Hole is about the crew of a space exploration vessel coming into contact with crazed scientist Dr. Hans Reinhardt, who’s the sole human aboard a ship he plans on flying right into a black hole. Robots are the crew of Reinhardt’s ship, but the USS Palomino’s team (led by Robert Forster) discover a dark secret about these bots and Reinhardt’s past.

When we interviewed Spaihts for Marvel’s Doctor Strange, which he co-wrote, the screenwriter told us The Black Hole is maybe too dark for the colorful world of Disney right now:

Black Hole was an amazing experience. That was one of those movies I was stuck on until I cracked the beginning, and suddenly it just started to flow. I loved that script. It sits uneasily in Disney’s world as a dark epic, and Disney is in a very colorful place. They already have multiple big space epics going, so I don’t know how or whether it’ll find its way to light of day, but I sure wrote a heck of a movie and was thrilled to do it. It was very faithful to the original but clever in all the ways in that first film was silly, I hope.

The Black Hole has a decent amount of silliness, but the production design, John Barry‘s epic score, the ending, V.I.N.CENT. (Roddy McDowall) and B.O.B. (Slim Pickens), and one death scene, in particular, remain delightful. For the most part, The Black Hole holds up. But it’s a story that could easily get reworked into a remake with a distinctly different vision, such as a “dark epic” — which isn’t how most people would describe the original Disney film, although it does have some dark ideas. When Spaihts first signed on for the rewrite, the new take on The Black Hole was described as “philosophical and somewhat dark in tone” by The Hollywood Reporter. Maybe this vision of The Black Hole is too dark for Disney at the moment, but we’ll see if that changes in the years to come.

You can watch the original trailer for The Black Hole below:

And here is director Edgar Wright talking about the movie, one of his childhood favorite films, in the Trailers of Hell episode below:

Jon Spaihts Books

Posted on Friday, December 23rd, 2016 by Peter Sciretta

It’s taken almost a decade for Passengers to hit the big screen. Now that the film is out in theaters, I thought we could discuss how the ending of the film failed its premise, and how the original Passengers ending from the screenplay was different from the final film.

The History of Jon Spaihts’ Passengers

In 2007, Passengers ranked highly on the Black List, a listing of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. For years the project struggled to the big screen, at one point lining up Keanu Reeves and Emily Blunt to star in a $35 million version of the story. Sony Pictures eventually won the project at auction and set director Morten Tyldum to helm a $110 million version of the project starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, and it’s in theaters now (though it’s not getting great reviews).

The premise for the film is that two passengers are awakened 90 years early on a spacecraft transporting thousands of people to a distant colony planet. But the marketing presents a different version of the film than is seen in theaters. Sony has cleverly hidden the ethical quandary at the core of this movie from the trailers: The malfunction on the spaceliner has not woken up two passengers, but one. The rest of this article contains spoilers; you have been warned.

Passengers: A Problematic Premise

Chris Pratt‘s character Jim Peterson was woken up 90 years too early. With no way to correct this error, he finds himself alone on the ship with nothing to do. Facing the prospect of dying alone, Jim finds himself considering suicide. That is until he develops a stalker-like crush on fellow passenger named Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence) and decides to do the morally-bankrupt thing of waking her up and essentially dooming her to share his same fate, but together. He, of course, does not tell her that he was responsible for her pod’s “malfunction,” and the two hit it off and it’s only a matter of time before she learns for herself.

The decision at the front of this story is icky at best, and Spaihts has addressed the criticism of his hero’s highly unethical actions in an interview with io9:

It’s not as if it’s an accidental oversight of the film, where we, through some cultural blindness, have failed to see the appalling nature of our hero’s actions. It is the subject of the film. And I think that making a movie that leaves people room to argue about what they would have done, what they could have forgiven, what they can understand or fail to understand, I think that’s great. I think that’s good storytelling. What I don’t believe the movie does is endorse or exonerate anyone. The movie looks, evenhandedly, at the dilemma everybody was in. I think putting good people in impossible circumstances makes for fascinating storytelling.

I think the terrible icky ethical decision that Jim makes early in this film and the consequences of his actions is the most interesting piece of this story. Not only that, but it’s a scenario that is uniquely sci-fi and likely couldn’t be explored in any other form.

A Better Ending

I believe they should have found a way to explore this troubled relationship and this really fucked up situation to its full conclusion instead of taking this story to a disastrous action-filled climax. The third act of this film is a complete mess and sidesteps the real problem introduced in this story.

Indiewire critic David Ehrlich has suggested a better Passengers ending which “would have been better served if Pratt died in Act Three and Lawrence then realized herself that she needs to wake someone up too to avoid a lifetime alone.” I think that the story could have benefited from this more tragic conclusion that challenges our supporting character with the same ethical dilemma. Perhaps it would have been better to end the film in classic Twilight Zone-like fashion without revealing Aurora’s ultimate decision, presenting the question on the audience in a more direct way.

Another option would have been to have the story evolve into the horror genre, and present a situation where the protagonist has developed into the antagonist. A situation where the stalker and the stalkee have to live together alone amongst a huge aboding starship. Jim is unable to accept that Aurora is uninterested in him, creeped out by his horrible actions and unwilling to ever accept his apology.

We thought Jim was a good guy who makes a horrible icky decision while presented with a dire situation, but maybe we come to realize that he wasn’t such a good of a guy after all? Jim gets more aggressive in his approaches, and it becomes really fucking scary. Aurora realizes that if she doesn’t stop Jim, it won’t end well for her.

Passengers Jon Spaihts Grand Concourse

The Theatrical Version of The Passengers Ending

In the theatrical version of the film, Jim heroicly sacrifices himself to open the airlock on the outside of the ship to stop the Spaceliner from being destroyed. But in the process, Jim has been pushed out into space and his tether to the ship breaks. Aurora rushes to save him but is not able to reach him in time. She can, however, reach his broken tether and is able to pull his body back to the ship. She discovers she is too late: With a fractured space suit, Jim has died.

Aurora is not willing to accept this outcome and drags Jim to a medical scanner in the crew quarters to resuscitate him. This doesn’t work, and then it does. Jim is saved at the last possible second. She is so happy he is alive and is no longer mad at him. Later, Jim discovers that the medical scanner can put one person back to sleep for the rest of the ship’s journey, but Aurora decides she would rather remain awake aboard the ship with Jim living the rest of their lives together.

Hit the next page to find out what the Passengers ending was like in the original script.

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