The way the plot unfolded, it was a good thing in the end that Aurora was awakened. After all, Jim would have needed someone's help to vent the reactor, and there wouldn't have been time to awaken anyone. Plus, of course, Aurora could have gone back into hibernation in the end but chose not to.

Jim acted in a way any human would have in his situation. He needed another person around. Maybe he could have chosen a crew (if he could get to one), or read through the passenger details and awakened another engineer.

@catmydogs said:

The way the plot unfolded, it was a good thing in the end that Aurora was awakened. After all, Jim would have needed someone's help to vent the reactor, and there wouldn't have been time to awaken anyone. Plus, of course, Aurora could have gone back into hibernation in the end but chose not to.

Jim acted in a way any human would have in his situation. He needed another person around. Maybe he could have chosen a crew (if he could get to one), or read through the passenger details and awakened another engineer.

That's exactly my point. Even if there proves to be nothing whatever wrong with the ship, Jim still had to wake another passenger. My argument is that it was the ethically correct choice, because the alternatives are madness, suicide, or possibly mass murder of the entire ship. I'm faulting the screenplay for not going in that direction because the characters had plenty of time to ponder that issue. Really, Aurora's continued rage at Jim made her appear not strong, but shallow.

I agree, too, that ethically speaking he ought to have wakened a crew member--it's their responsibility after all--had one been available. But of course they weren't.

& of course, having the ship go wrong & need drastic intervention killed two birds with one stone--allowed Aurora the pretext to reconcile with Jim & made the film more exciting.

let me get this straight, Jim was in the right to wake Aurora up because otherwise he would have been a threat to all other passengers?

I don't see how that is a moral decision, unless he knew that he would turn into a sociopath or that he was very likely to...

@Renovatio said:

let me get this straight, Jim was in the right to wake Aurora up because otherwise he would have been a threat to all other passengers?

I don't see how that is a moral decision, unless he knew that he would turn into a sociopath or that he was very likely to...

Yes. Not necessarily Aurora. But someone.

(That's why I thought when she tells him she had a round trip ticket that was a major "uh oh" for him regarding his choice of whom to wake)

Jim wasn't a sociopath nor likely to become one. But what happens to someone under circumstances like that? Imagine it were you, awake on the ship, no chance of ever arriving at the destination. Suppose, too, there's nothing else wrong with the ship & you can't, or won't wake another passenger. What would you be like after twenty, or thirty years? Would you still be sane? Even marginally rational?

Sure, Arthur's presence ameliorated some of the isolation, but he wasn't designed to last decades.

Perhaps in this context suicide seems like the moral choice, but it's really only the most convenient one, especially for the company & for the other passengers. If Jim kills himself, however, then the company never faces the consequences of their own negligence in not having some sort of back up plan should a passenger awaken as Jim did. They walk away, scot-free, continuing to reap vast fortunes.

& finally, it isn't necessary to suppose malign intent to consider someone like Jim a potential danger to the ship. An engineer, bored stiff, with all the time in the world on his hands ... how hard would it be to imagine the damage he could do, even if no intentionally?

I think it's fair to say that Jim gave it "the old college try." I mean, I know he didn't go years and years, but a year at least. That said, I think it's hard to make a clear moral case on either side of what must be done. I also think that it is interesting that so many judge Jim based on his choice, and for many those judgments come with lots of gender-based assumptions. An interesting thought experiment is to ask how would you have felt if the roles were reversed and Aurora was mistakenly awakened then chose to wake Jim? My guess is that for many this scenario would be judged far more favorably.

For me the film is morally ambivalent not just in Jim's decision, but later on with Aurora's. They throw in the bits about the ship failing to ease the burden of "mistake/selfish/whatever" but really, even without that was it so unreasonable for one human to need others?

I would like to see a movie where the roles are reversed... that would be interesting...

I don't think it would make a difference in terms of the morality of waking someone up...

She is deciding his fate for him, an irreversible decision. One could argue, that Aurora waking up Jim would be a bonus to Jim as she is so much out of his league, but that doesn't make the decision any less wrong from a morality point of view. She's still committing him to a life on a ship alone with her instead of the life he had chosen.

The interesting part about the film is knowing that he (or in the alternate case She) made an immoral choice in waking her up and seeing how it affects their relationship... It's the dilemma between acting in one's own interest at the expense of deciding the fate of others, do you still do it knowing that it is wrong? And now that you've done the wrong thing, do you ever tell the truth about it or do you keep it secret?

I think the hollywood ending where everything is resolved favourably is a way to let people off the hook, emotionally, so they don't contemplate the morality of the decisions and it becomes easy commercial entertainment... A more open ended, ambiguous ending would have been infinitely more thought provoking and interesting... as you wouldn't be able to side-step the moral issue just because things worked out in the end...

I agree that a scenario in which perhaps a female engineer is awakened & then decides to wake a man who's more of an intellectual would have been interesting. Given the same denouement & decision on his part to remain awake with her would avoid the predictable complaint about how in film women are always subordinating their needs to that of a man. It would have permitted more of an emphasis on the story & dilemma.

I wonder how you feel about Aurora having had a year with Jim, yet never once suspecting that he had woken her intentionally. I found that difficult to swallow.

I never understood why this movie was treated as negative because of what Jim does. It presents an ethical and moral question of what one would do in the same situation and frankly I thought it was a conflict that lasts most of the movie long, at least until the ending kinda cops out on giving it the conclusion it deserves.

I'm trying to go for an engaging, funny youtube channel so, if you have the time, take a look. Hope you enjoy what you see. Thanks in advance. A review of the movie here- https://youtu.be/LE_aVVuNqnE

I agree. Hell, I would have woken up the hottest four or five women and that's it.

@Andykkk said:

@catmydogs said:

The way the plot unfolded, it was a good thing in the end that Aurora was awakened. After all, Jim would have needed someone's help to vent the reactor, and there wouldn't have been time to awaken anyone. Plus, of course, Aurora could have gone back into hibernation in the end but chose not to.

Jim acted in a way any human would have in his situation. He needed another person around. Maybe he could have chosen a crew (if he could get to one), or read through the passenger details and awakened another engineer.

That's exactly my point. Even if there proves to be nothing whatever wrong with the ship, Jim still had to wake another passenger. My argument is that it was the ethically correct choice, because the alternatives are madness, suicide, or possibly mass murder of the entire ship. I'm faulting the screenplay for not going in that direction because the characters had plenty of time to ponder that issue. Really, Aurora's continued rage at Jim made her appear not strong, but shallow.

I agree, too, that ethically speaking he ought to have wakened a crew member--it's their responsibility after all--had one been available. But of course they weren't.

& of course, having the ship go wrong & need drastic intervention killed two birds with one stone--allowed Aurora the pretext to reconcile with Jim & made the film more exciting.

Was there any logic behind the crew even being in a separate, securely-isolated area to start with? According to The Company, Nothing Could Go Wrong, so there was no reason for it. Only Because Plot/Because Drama, as with so much more of the movie.

@Andykkk said:

@Renovatio said:

let me get this straight, Jim was in the right to wake Aurora up because otherwise he would have been a threat to all other passengers?

I don't see how that is a moral decision, unless he knew that he would turn into a sociopath or that he was very likely to...

Yes. Not necessarily Aurora. But someone.

(That's why I thought when she tells him she had a round trip ticket that was a major "uh oh" for him regarding his choice of whom to wake)

Jim wasn't a sociopath nor likely to become one. But what happens to someone under circumstances like that? Imagine it were you, awake on the ship, no chance of ever arriving at the destination. Suppose, too, there's nothing else wrong with the ship & you can't, or won't wake another passenger. What would you be like after twenty, or thirty years? Would you still be sane? Even marginally rational?

Sure, Arthur's presence ameliorated some of the isolation, but he wasn't designed to last decades.

Perhaps in this context suicide seems like the moral choice, but it's really only the most convenient one, especially for the company & for the other passengers. If Jim kills himself, however, then the company never faces the consequences of their own negligence in not having some sort of back up plan should a passenger awaken as Jim did. They walk away, scot-free, continuing to reap vast fortunes.

& finally, it isn't necessary to suppose malign intent to consider someone like Jim a potential danger to the ship. An engineer, bored stiff, with all the time in the world on his hands ... how hard would it be to imagine the damage he could do, even if no intentionally?

If Jim hadn't wakened someone else, there would have been no one to help him deal with the damaged reactor, and the whole ship would have been destroyed, along with everyone on it.

The "round-trip ticket" thing I didn't buy for a second. That was just more Because Plot/Because Drama. Even if the ship hadn't been damaged during the voyage out and had been able to go back to Earth, how do they refuel it? etc., etc. Plus we're told that the ship didn't have the capability of putting anyone INTO hibernation. And to start any new colony on any new planet is probably going to involve cannibalizing much if not all of the ship they came in, both for raw materials and for power systems...

The plot is so weak, that I'm unable to think over the moral situation. Everything just ends fine, they love each other and live decades together, and the ship'd have been destroyed and everybody be killed if 2 ppl weren't available.

A travel with passengers needing hibernation wouldn't be done if it wasn't possible to restart the hibernation inside the ship. If some pod malfunctioned, part of the crew would be awaken by the system to support the passenger and not let him alone doing whatever he wanted for decades on the ship. At any failure situation, the crew would also be awaken. Nobody would be allowed to travel alone, ppl would travel in groups of friends and/or couples.

I can accept the sci-fi tech invented by the movie, I can even accept that at half light speed we could reach a star in a century. But I can't accept such trip would be done with passengers with no fail safe measures at all. It's impossible that somebody would wake up alone and be unable to get back into hibernation and be allowed to do anything on the ship including wake somebody else.

But, apart from that, to make the movie even worse, Aurora claims that waking her up is considered murder. She wasn't killed. At maximum it would be close - but not either - to imprisoning (as in kidnapping). She'd be forced to live alone with him. But she wasn't forced to take the trip and she wasn't gonna see her friends anymore, so she wasn't losing that much. If we consider the high risk of 2 trips, she should pretty much expect to die during it anyway.

Arguably, since they weren't on a "pleasure cruise" that they paid for themselves, with a supposed guarantee of safe return and the resulting possibility of lawsuits etc for failure, the Company did the minimum required.

Didn't they say that the pods in the crew area could put someone back into suspension? I don't remember now. But even if so, they wouldn't have been able to do that since presumably all of the crew units were occupied, except for the one guy whose pod also malfunctioned, and so they wouldn't have been able to use it for that.

The closest stars are between 4 and 12 light-years, so if they could get up to half of lightspeed it would take only 8 to 24 years to make the trips. Not counting time-dilation, however that might work in such a situation. (Seems like it would take them 8 to 24 years on the ship but more time would have passed on Earth?)

I think the problem with the trip was that, 30 years earlier when the ship left Earth, the space they were going to pass through seemed to be safe. But things can change, and did.