Corrected entry: Gus got upset when he saw that Jim had planted a tree, and there was no indication that the Avalon was designed or equipped to adequately handle live trees, flowers, vines, shrubs, and grass on board, but Jim apparently planted a large roomful of these things. When the first tree was planted, the Avalon would not reach Homestead II for about 90 years. The roving robot vacuums would have had to be removed from this area to enable grass to grow, and there's no explanation for how the plants could be watered (and without causing damage to the floor) or where all the fallen leaves went. Tree roots can push objects in their path, potentially causing structural damage to the Avalon. Avalon may have been very advanced, but failures had occurred without the added "cargo." Without being specifically designed to allow such growth on board, surely problems not anticipated would occur over the decades in space, risking all the passengers... even the ship.
lionhead
14th Jan 2021
Passengers (2016)
18th Jul 2020
Passengers (2016)
Plot hole: Gus wakes up and doesn't realise initially that he's seriously ill, although he knows he's not right. When Jim woke he was given a full body scan to check his health minutes after waking, so surely Gus must have had the same scan? When all his medical problems would have been identified. So he'd have known he was very ill minutes after waking.
Suggested correction: Minutes after waking there was nothing wrong with his body yet, his body started to deteriorate rapidly afterwards.
How do you know nothing was wrong with him minutes after waking up?
Because he got a full body scan like you said and nothing came up. The first sign of symptoms he shows is after they enter the bridge (or command center) and he dismisses it as something common. Before that he shows no sign of any medical problems.
That's the mistake here - he should have had a body scan on wake-up. So did he develop multiple medical issues in the pod because his pod function was affected by the central computer being damaged by the asteroid strike? Which would fit as his pod woke him up early, a built in safety feature perhaps so people don't die in their pods? Maybe his pod wasn't working right for 2 years, so slowly damaging his body? So the wake-up body scan should have detected his multiple issues! He couldn't go from healthy to over 600 disorders in a day.
I'm not sure the pods are sensing anything, they're essentially freezers, but without freezing you. The finger connections are not sensing anything from a person in the pod as there's nothing to sense, as people are dormant. It only senses vital signs when people are woken up. So Gus blaming his pod for his medical issues is inaccurate surely? A movie mistake?
The malfunctioning pod caused his medical issues. It keeps them in cryogenic stasis. We don't know exactly how they work of course but it is more than just sensing. Basically the people inside the pods are kept dead, but the pod manages to halt any deterioration of the cells. Imagine that going wrong and the pod isn't able to keep the cells in check. Just like when exposed to high levels of radiation the cells have been damaged but there won't be any signs immediately. Only after a few hours the cells will start to break down.
He developed several severe medical issues after being woken up too early in a pod that was malfunctioning. This is fictional, future technology and we have no idea how it works, but I think its safe to assume that the pod has to keep the entire body in check during cryosleep, and if the pod malfunctions it could cause all kinds of problems, both directly and later on. If it works on a molecular level than no issue can be detected for quite a while before problems start to show, much like with radiation poisoning when cells suddenly and rapidly start dying whilst hours or even days before you feel fine.
Seems far more likely the different faults described affected the routine. Pratt's unit failure was treated as a normal wake-up, where Fishburne described a multitude of failures resulting in an emergency opening. The procedures for Pratt likely aren't triggered this way.
Suggested correction: When Jim wakes up, the inner part of his pod detaches and transports him to some sort of scanner where he is given a physical exam. So the procedure requires a pod that is working correctly. Gus later explains that only the clock chip failed in Jim's pod. In Gus's pod, however, there were "a bunch of system failures that all happened at the same time. The whole damn thing went haywire," which is why he's dying. So it's likely that Gus wasn't given a physical exam at all when he woke up.
4th Apr 2019
Passengers (2016)
Corrected entry: Aurora said she was on a return voyage, but we learn the ship is incapable of putting passengers into hypersleep, as this can only be done with advanced equipment on Earth. How was she supposed to get back?
Correction: Jim talks about the facility and prep they went though before going into the pod. The Homestead II could easily have the same equipment. The equipment is not on the ship since there should be no reason for anyone to be put back into hypersleep.
Correction: There would be facilities at the destination point that would perform the procedure to put people back into hyper-sleep. The ship's crew, once awakened towards the end of the journey, would then have to be put back to sleep for the return journey to Earth. Jim and Aurora could not simply hop back into the pods and be put to sleep, which is what Jim was referring to.
Correction: They could have a ship that has prepped pods to put people back into hyper sleep for the return trip. Not this ship obviously as nobody was supposed to go back straight away, but the second ship to arrive. Once a pod has been used though, it can't be used again.
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Correction: This is all based on speculations. They had plenty of time to develop a good ecosystem for the plants before they died, finding a way to manipulate the ship and robots to help watering and keep the area clean. Possibly even direct and cut roots.
lionhead