Fans Are Calling Out Movies That Should Have Been About Another Character, And Yeah, I've Got One

There’s something uniquely frustrating about sitting through a movie that doesn’t quite work and realizing it was so close to being great. Sometimes it’s not the story itself that’s the issue, but how it’s told. That’s exactly what fans have been calling out over on social media, highlighting movies that might have been better, or even great, if they’d followed a different character. And yeah, I’ve got one that could have been one of the best horror movies of the modern era, but instead landed as a lukewarm sci-fi romance.

Over on Reddit, fans have been pointing to some of the most obvious examples of bad movies with great plots or of good scenes in otherwise bad movies. People are still hung up on how Godzilla (2014) sidelined Bryan Cranston’s character after setting him up as the emotional core. Others argue Transformers would’ve been way more interesting if it followed Megan Fox’s character instead of Shia LaBeouf’s, which, honestly, I completely agree with. And then there’s Passengers, where a lot of viewers think the entire story should have been flipped. For me, that’s the one that got away. It had all the pieces to be a modern classic, and I’m still a little bitter about what it could have been.

Passengers Chose The Wrong Perspective

On paper, Passengers is a fascinating premise. Two people wake up decades too early on a spaceship, alone together, trying to figure out how to survive. But the version that made it to theaters is told almost entirely from Chris Pratt’s character’s point of view. We meet him first and spend nearly 30 minutes sympathizing with him. We understand his loneliness and watch him make the decision that sets the entire story in motion.

And that’s kind of the problem. Because if you take a step back, what he does is pretty disturbing. He wakes up another person, played by Jennifer Lawrence, knowing she will never get back to her life. The movie knows this is a big deal, and even treats it as a twist, but there is no tension because we already know he made this decision, and we’ve become sympathetic to his choices based on how the film is structured.

I'm certainly not the first to suggest that the movie should have opened with Jennifer Lawrence's character, Aurora Lane. Even her name, Aurora, feels significant, hinting at her role in the story. It evokes Disney’s book-to-screen adaptation of the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, a character defined by her awakening, making her a natural focal point of the narrative. In contrast, Chris Pratt's character, Jim, is simply "Jim." I mean, Jim is far from lead character energy when you have Aurora right there.

How The POV Change Could Have Worked

Imagine if Aurora wakes up alone, confused, and trying to figure out what went wrong. Eventually, she meets Chris Pratt’s character, who appears to be in the exact same situation, another passenger who woke up 90 years too early. There’s comfort in that shared experience. Soon, they start to develop chemistry and even fall for each other.

But then something starts to feel off. And when the truth finally comes out, that she wasn’t woken up by accident, but because of him, it’s a gut punch. Not just for her, but for the audience too. That version of Passengers isn’t a romance with a messy ethical wrinkle, but a psychological horror story, something closer to Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone. And it could have been something really special.

What makes it even more frustrating is that all the pieces for that movie are already there. Very little would need to change structurally, aside from perspective and, honestly, the ending. Because let’s be honest, the film lets Pratt’s character off far too easily, pushing toward a tidy, feel-good resolution that doesn’t really feel earned.

Imagine a darker alternative in which Jim doesn’t get that ending; instead, he dies, and Aurora is left alone, facing the same impossible choice he once made. Does she live out her life in isolation, or does she do the unthinkable to someone else?

That’s the kind of ending that sticks with you. As it is, Passengers is still an interesting watch, and you can watch it with a Hulu subscription. But it always feels like it’s just one perspective shift away from being something far more memorable.

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