Psychology Behind Passengers’ Negative Reviews (opinion)
ONE LAST THING ABOUT PASSENGERS I SWEAR I’M SO SORRY. I dragged my family to watch Passengers tonight (merry Christmas to those who celebrate) and on the way home we had a discussion that lead to a breakthrough (as I like to call it). That breakthrough was me explaining the negative reception towards Passengers with psychological theories. This is just stemmed from my constant blabbering about Passengers, but can probably be applied to other movies and situations as well.
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)
The first theory is the fundamental attribution error. So I learned this sometime last year in my psychology class and it’s actually pretty interesting. Essentially it’s when people attribute an individual’s behaviour to internal characteristics like someone’s personality, as opposed to the external situation the individual is placed in.
In terms of Passengers, people have been reacting negatively to the fact that Jim wakes Aurora up, calling it “creepy” and “gross”. Now, this can be seen as an example of FAE. People (critics especially it seems) are attributing Jim’s behaviour (waking Aurora up) to his personality, thus branding him as a creepy stalking. However, in my opinion, attributing his actions to his personality is the wrong move. We know that Jim has been placed in extreme circumstances, where he has been alone for a year on a steel spaceship. As I had mentioned and explained in my previous reviews (spoiler FREE, spoiler FILLED), it is human to want human companionship in this specific situation.
I honestly believe that the reason people are saying that the twist is so horrendous that they can’t bare to watch the film is because they believe that Jim is just a terrible human being for waking up Aurora and essentially murdering her. I am certainly not saying that what he did wasn’t wrong, because believe me, on every moral and ethical level, it is wrong. But, I don’t necessarily think it makes him a bad person, just because I am taking into count and attributing his final decision to wake Aurora up to the extreme situation he is being placed it. Point is, I understand his behaviour, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I accept it.
Self-serving bias is ANOTHER theory I learned in my psychology class (didn’t think I’d really ever apply it to something I love as much as movies). This theory is based on the idea that people will do whatever it takes to maintain their self-esteem and view themselves as good people. In my opinion, the negative reception towards Passengers could be partially due to this theory. Nowadays, there are two types of movies: ones that are so out of this world and sweep you away and ones that break down and reflect human society. Passengers is a little bit of both, but at its core, its the latter.
Jim waking Aurora up reflects the fact that we as human beings are selfish. We tend to do things to benefit ourselves more than others. Jim wakes Aurora up to alleviate his loneliness and perpetual suffering, therefore making him seem selfish (this connects to the previous theory mentioned above). Now, viewers of the film see this behaviour and think: “So the creators of this film are telling me that this movie is about human behaviour. Jim wakes Aurora up, making him selfish. So the filmmakers are telling me I’m selfish? No way.”. Here my friends is a prime example of SSB.
Since viewers understand that the actions of the characters in this movie are meant to reflect us as humans, what they are seeing is that humans are selfish, therefore meaning that they are selfish. This is where SSB kicks in. Being selfish is seen as a negative characteristic and since SSB causes people to do what it takes to maintain their self-image as a good person, they will instantly reject this to do so. Essentially what I believe is that viewers do not want to believe that if they were placed in the same situation that Jim was in, they would be the better person and NOT wake another person up, sentencing them to death. This makes them feel like they are good people therefore maintaining their self-image and self-esteem.
To wrap up, I’d just like to remind everyone that this is my personal opinion from a very psychological point of view. This doesn’t mean that every single person who has had a negative reaction to the film’s “twist” thinks this way, it’s meerely a possibility. I really enjoyed this film, but it’s certainly not perfect and has many flaws. Those flaws are a strong contributing factor to the negative reception this film has gotten, once again reitterating that my psychological rant is not me generalizing the cause of the negative reception towards this movie. These theories are widely applicable and can be applied to a myriad of other films and situations (like I mentioned before), just none that my sleepy brain can think of at this exact moment.
I actually never thought I’d apply psychology to something that I love as much as films, so this has been really interesting and I’m certainly hoping I’ll be able to do more with it in the future.
