As I was watching Passengers unfold, I couldn’t help but think about marketing. It became quite clear that in creating trailers, the mission is to sell a movie to audiences. But it doesn’t have to be the movie you are about to see. In this case, they sold a film that was a romance thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt as two strangers stuck on a spaceship, where they fall in love and solve a mystery. Despite actually having great interest in the marketing department’s version of the film, it is not a romance film. Not entirely, at least. It is far more complex and interesting than that. ! Passengers is a film about loneliness. More accurately, it is about the mental side effects of loneliness. After the starship experiences a few glitches, Pratt’s Jim finds himself awake, destined by a mishap to live a solitary life on a planet-bound cruise ship that has only traveled a third of its 120 yearlong journey to a colonized planet called Homestead II. His sole companion is not Jennifer Lawrence, but a mechanical bartender played by Michael Sheen. The name of the love interest played by Ms. Lawrence, Aurora Lane, clues us in to her character’s role in the film. Aurora is also the name of the famous fairy tale character and Disney princess more popularly known as Sleeping Beauty, and one of the best aspects of the film is that she isn’t introduced until about a half hour in, which doesn’t diminish Lawrence’s role in the film — quite the contrary actually — but amplifies Pratt’s, as we are given the time to truly understand what his character feels and wonder what it would be like to be in his shoes. You can sense the loneliness the character feels and his desire for human companionship, particularly in a scene where he rests his head on an empty space suit. While roaming the ship alone, Jim comes across Aurora’s pod and develops a somewhat uncomfortable obsession. But is it uncomfortable? Putting ourselves in his position, would we do what he does? Would we consider waking up a person, dooming them to the same fate? It sounds horrible and most of us would say “No!” right now, but what would we really do in that situation? For me, this internal debate was...