Picture the scene: You’re on board an interstellar transport ship known as the Starship Avalon when suddenly, a technical malfunction forces you out of cryogenic sleep a full 90 years ahead of schedule. How do you pass the time? Well, one way to starve off boredom is to take a trip down to the ship’s lavish swimming pool, but as today’s nail-biting first clip for Passengers attests, the Avalon’s technical mishaps aren’t isolated to its sleeping quarters.
Hailing from Entertainment Weekly, you’ll be able to find said clip embedded below, alongside an all-new TV spot for the film that continues to tease the real reason behind Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) and Aurora Dunn’s (Jennifer Lawrence) untimely awakening. It certainly wasn’t an accident, and with each new Passengers promo that debuts, you get the sense that Morten Tyldum’s high-profile sci-fi is housing a very peculiar plot twist. Let’s just hope it isn’t spoiled before December 21.
Also on board the Avalon are Laurence Fishburne, Andy Garcia and Michael Sheen as an android host. Once things begin to take a turn for the worse, it’s the latter that displays some truly unsettling behaviour. Could we be looking at the living reincarnation of Ash from Alien? Or is Sheen’s artificial bartender more amicable than some of cinema’s most troubling bots?
Passengers is due to dock in theaters on December 21. Can it reach the dizzying heights of The Martian and Interstellar? Time will tell. For now, you can check in on Jim and Aurora’s interstellar journey via today’s pair of promos, below.