5 Movies That Could've Been Black Mirror Episodes
4. Passengers
Passengers came out in 2016 to a mixed audience reception and even worse critical reviews. On a spaceship traveling to a new planet for humanity, a man wakes up 90 years before they were supposed to land. Unable to deal with the loneliness, he wakes up Aurora, dooming her to the same fate as him.
The rest of the movie plays out as a romance more than anything else. It's problematic at its best, and kind of boring at its worst.
But as certain viewers pointed out, this movie goes from a forgettable love story to a Hitchcockian thriller with one simple change: limit the story to Aurora's perspective.
Imagine a movie about a woman who wakes up on a spaceship ninety years ahead of schedule, and the only other person alive is a mysterious guy who claims to also have no idea what's going on. This would make Jim come across in a completely different light, and the entire movie up to the reveal would be brimming with suspense, as the audience figures out what Jim did along with Aurora, rather than knowing it all along.
It's a potential twist in perspective that's reminiscent of USS Callister: Dalton first comes across as a sympathetic protagonist, but once the episode shifts into solely Nanette's point of view, Dalton is seen in an entirely new light. By limiting its perspective, Passengers could've told a fresh, emotionally gripping story among the ranks of Black Mirror's finest hours.