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Watch the just-released trailer for Jennifer Lawrence's new movie 'Passengers', which comes to cinemas in December, and you'd be forgiven for thinking it's just another sci-fi disaster movie, albeit one with a romantic edge: think 'Interstellar' with snogging.
Lawrence and Chris Pratt play travellers on an epic interplanetary mission who've chosen to go into cryogenic freezing for 120 years and wake up on a new planet. But something goes wrong en route, and they're woken up 90 years early. Will amour blossom between these two lost-in-space lovers? Will engine failures, asteroids and power blackouts threaten their lives? Will they win out against all the odds and live happily ever after? And will Michael Sheen's robot barkeep provide comic relief along the way? The trailer would have you believe that's four big yeses.
But is that really what 'Passengers' is about? Would J-Law – whose nose for a good project has been pretty much infallible so far – really sign on to be eye-candy love interest for Pratt's square-jawed hero? Would director Morten Tyldum, whose previous films 'Headhunters' and 'The Imitation Game' haven't exactly been fun-filled romps, be so eager to direct it? And, most intriguingly of all, would the script have spent almost a decade on the Black List, Hollywood's annual countdown of the most brilliant unmade screenplays, if it wasn't a little more complicated than that?
With that in mind – plus a few early plot rumours that we won't spoil here – we suspect that 'Passengers' may turn out to be an altogether darker, more character-driven film than the happy-clappy, spaceship-go-boom trailer suggests. Or we could be completely wrong. We'll know when 'Passengers' is released just in time for Christmas.
'Passengers' opens in UK cinemas on Friday December 23. Keep an eye on Time Out Film for all the latest movie news and reviews.