This movie has really deep ethical issues at its core. It hinges on the whether or not Chris Pratt’s character is right in waking up and finding a companion. I’m just kind of curious about how difficult it was to get those moments right. You want to have your main character sympathetic, but he still has to do this horrible, unethical thing.
The ethical conundrum is the beating heart of the movie. It’s the thing that makes it interesting to me, because otherwise it’s just an exercise in space flight and fun on an intellectual level. But to make it deeply compelling as a story, the ethical crisis at the heart of the film, the choice the protagonist makes and everything that unfolds from there, that is fascinating to me. We did feel like we needed to handle it with kid gloves because our hero Jim does an essentially indefensible thing.
Certainly.
The only prayer we had of having him remain a relatable character was that he had to, in all other respects, be a deeply admirable human being. He had to try really hard to make it into zone. He has to try really hard to resist temptation. He has to act with complete integrity toward Aurora when he needs her and not push himself on her, or seduce her, or behave inappropriately. He has to be utterly respectful and a boy scout with her. It is a subtle thing, but something that is very important to me that he never lies to her. He omits one critical piece of information, but the second it comes up he comes clean and he never lies to her about anything else.
Still, I think there will be some for whom he’s irredeemable. He crosses an ethical line, and I think that there will be some who just will refuse to accept the second half of the film. There are potentially essays or reviews that will condemn the character and by extension the film. You’re making an intriguing, chancy movie so you have prepared for this sort of commentary I would imagine.
Oh absolutely. I think some of that is inevitable. There’s just sort of natural standard distribution of human opinion and reaction to anything. What we’re doing is edgy enough that on end of that distribution is definitely going to end up in hostile territory.
There have been some hot takes based on synopsis of the film for people who haven’t seen it or even read it sometimes just saying, “My god that’s depraved. How horrible. That over there is the worst of everything.” I think those people will be surprised when they actually sit down and watch the movie because this intolerable ethical state of affairs is not some super excited or depraved oversight of the film, it is the subject of the film. It is a movie about a good person doing an indefensible thing and everything that comes with that.
*Spoilers end*
This decision that he makes, which is early in the film, is nowhere in the marketing and nowhere in the trailers. Some will just think it’s a romantic romp in space. When you get to the movie— I was certainly shocked So that’s the decision that the production team has made to hide its secrets?
Yeah. I’m very grateful for it honestly, because I think with a movie … we’ve got the two hottest stars on the planet right now in a love story together, and it pulls a lot of attention. It’s very hard to keep your secrets under those circumstances. Some people said, “It tells us everything in the trailer. It ruins the movie,” without having seen the film. I think that’s actually fantastic as a result when they feel like they’ve seen everything yet and what they don’t know is that the core drama of the film is not even alluded to in the trailer. And that way I think it’s kind of a masterful sleight of hand.
One of your characters from “Prometheus,” David (Michael Fassbender) appears again or an iteration of him does. How do you feel about him living on in a Ridley Scott ‘Alien’ movie that you’re going to get to see in the theaters?
I love that. That’s amazing. I’ve had nothing to do with that movie, except to whatever extent my story and sequel conversations with Ridley are in the soup somewhere. The idea that David the Android or some incarnation of David is still a lingering player in the alien universe— that’s thrilling.
I wanted to ask about “Doctor Strange” which you wrote on. Presumably, something that’s a hit is going to have a sequel. Are you part of that conversation hopefully?
I think Marvel would certainly be very receptive. Everything in Hollywood is a function of schedules, so it would be a matter of that thing coming around at a time when I can make some availability and everybody else’s timetables work out. I imagine they would be receptive to collaborating again, and I would certainly be delighted to get back for the workshop.
If Scott Derrickson and Marvel said to you, “Listen Jon, schedules don’t work, but give us one thing that you definitely want in ‘Doctor Strange 2’ and we’ll make sure it’s in there.” What’s the thing you tell them?
Oh, that’s fantastic. I don’t know that there would be just be one answer, but it would be about looking at a kind of magic, a dimension of magic. In different comic lines we’ve explored different threads. There’s a magic in dreams. There’s chaos magic. There’s elemental magic. There’s so many ways to talk about sorcery. I’d want to look at one of those. But it’s really about matchmaking a school of magic with a villain, an antagonist, and there’s a few amazing ones that I’d love to see him meet. That’s what it would be about.
Not Shuma-Gorath, the giant pink eyeball, right?
[Laughs] Well, not the giant pink eyeball with the tentacles, but the notion of a Lovecraftian elder god whose dark shadow on the Earth leads to a kind of zombie apocalypse beginning to spread and behind it is this monster from another dimension, well that’s pretty good stuff.
“Passengers” is now playing.