voyagers (2021)

Voyagers (2021)

PG-13 | Adventure, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

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‘Voyagers’ Review: In Space, Everyone Can Hear You Scream

Emotional anarchy derails a space mission in this insipid sci-fi drama.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

Essentially a zero-gravity “Lord of the Flies,” Neil Burger’s “Voyagers” nevertheless plays like a CW sci-fi pilot for those who find “The 100” too unsanitary. Set aboard a sterile spaceship hurtling toward a distant planet — though any claustrophobic, closed-off environment would have served just as well — this dull dig into human nature owes more to the aesthetics of Calvin Klein than the terrors of outer space.

The year is 2063, Earth is heating up, and a couple of dozen children have been trained to colonize a new world. Bred for intelligence and compliance, these docile pioneers, watched over by a sad-eyed surrogate father named Richard (Colin Farrell), begin an 86-year journey. Almost all will be dead before they reach their destination, so they have been designed to reproduce at timed intervals. Considering they’ve all grown into lissome, blandly attractive young adults, this should not be a problem.

We soon learn, though, that the crew’s universally robotic affect is not simply a deficit in the cast’s acting ability, but the result of a sedative designed to suppress emotion. Figuring this out, Christopher (Tye Sheridan, all pout and pique) and his friend Zac (Fionn Whitehead, in the film’s only vivid performance), stop taking the substance and discover that they’re both hot for the same woman (Lily-Rose Depp). In short order, the noncompliance spreads and the situation on board devolves predictably into an orgy of dancing, wrestling, copulating and running down long corridors. Worse is to follow.

A movie of cold light and hard surfaces, “Voyagers” owes its antiseptic glamour to the cinematographer Enrique Chediak, whose talents far outclass Burger’s underdeveloped script. Mysteries abound, including why Richard (who has been sidelined by an incident I won’t spoil) chose to accompany the voyagers, and why he wears a permanently pained expression.

“I wouldn’t miss a thing,” he tells superiors before he leaves Earth, hinting at a tragic past that’s never explained. Neither is the alien that might be messing around outside the ship — or, as the increasingly maniacal Zac suggests, inside one or more of the crew.

In replicating a society torn apart by lies and fear and gaslighting, “Voyagers” might feel, for some, a bit too close to home for comfort. And as the chaos and violence escalated and rival factions formed, I amused myself by pondering who might be running the ship. I concluded it was the alien.

Voyagers Rated PG-13 for picturesque coupling and ugly behavior. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.

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Cast & Crew

Tye Sheridan

Christopher

Lily-Rose Depp

Fionn Whitehead

Colin Farrell

Chanté Adams

Formulaic, soapy teen space drama has lust, sex, violence.

• Average 4.9
• Reviews 144

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Voyagers Reviews

Voyagers ends where it should have begun, taking one too many detours to tell the compelling story of the first generation of lab-bred humans on a scouting mission to space.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 26, 2023

What starts as an interesting and intriguing concept unfortunately turns into an uncomfortable, bland and lacklustre sci-fi movie that is a chore to get through.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 6, 2023

Voyagers holds a well-known, successful sci-fi formula and takes it through the most uninteresting, unsurprising, frustratingly generic development path. It’s tough to find a positive aspect in such a hollow movie.

Full Review | Original Score: D- | Jul 24, 2023

The problem is that the film is mostly made of misdirections as it gestures towards interesting elements, both narratively and visually, that are far too short lived for their own good.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 17, 2022

You can’t help but think a deeper and slightly darker version of this movie would give some of its themes even more bite.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 17, 2022

The script fails to create a captivating plot and fills its landscape with shallow characters that are nowhere near compelling.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jun 8, 2022

The film, above and beyond anything else, is a terrible blend of uncomfortable morals and annoying immaturity that makes it clear that this project should be sent into space away from anyone who might think it is worth the time of day.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2022

Although many of Burger's visual techniques look neat enough, his screenplay proves unconvincing and overstated.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 12, 2022

Think of Voyagers as High Life for himbos.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Nov 3, 2021

Its microcosmic allegory is thin, and the execution is unconvincing.

Full Review | Oct 13, 2021

Colin Farrell brings some weight to the proceedings but even he can't distract from the predictable teens-gone-wild-in-space plot.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 12, 2021

Ultimately, Voyagers might appeal to a very specific YA crowd, but even they might poke their holes through this one.

Full Review | Oct 9, 2021

"Lord of the Flies meets Sex Education in space" sounds like an unmissable yarn, yet nothing at any point in this criminally undernourished sci-fi lives up to the potential of its premise.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 8, 2021

All in all, a serviceable YA sci-fi story.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 7, 2021

A low-grade thriller that plays out like a zero-gravity Hollyoaks.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 7, 2021

The film relies too much on sci fi clichés and the plot holes become difficult to ignore. While the acting is good, the characterisation is lazy and dull. Moreover, the production design is wanting.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 6, 2021

Outside of the Lord of the Flies parallels, Voyagers is a familiar and rather derivative Young Adult thriller.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 5, 2021

Burger guides a world that looks and moves slickly, with clean production design suiting the sleek looks of crew members who could pass as fashion models.

Full Review | Jul 16, 2021

You can imagine a teacher showing this in school and then leading a class discussion about ethics until the bell rings for lunch.

Full Review | Jul 14, 2021

Neil Burger has updated and adapted 'Lord of the Flies' to teenagers in outer space but the characters are hopelessly superficial, chasing one another down long, antiseptic corridors.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jul 13, 2021

The Ending Of Voyagers Explained

Voyagers , the latest science fiction film starring Tye Sheridan and Lily-Rose Depp is, in a way, a sort of Lord of the Flies set on a starship far from the reaches of Earth and human civilization. While the children in Lord of the Flies wind up trapped on an island by accident, the young people onboard this starship (which is more of an ark) are there by design. In both cases, the adolescent ensemble has to reckon with the chaos of a world without adult rules.

On its face, Voyagers has a familiar sci-fi premise: The Earth's time is running out. Richard ( Colin Farrell ), a scientist with a plan, takes a crew of young people who have never interacted with the rest of the world into space, where they will live and eventually breed the next generation of humans. The hope is that their children will eventually arrive on a new world for humanity to populate. So, a pretty standard execution of the generation ship trope.

The stars of Voyagers will never see that new world. They are the intermediary generation between the humans of Earth and their children, who will hopefully be the ones to kickstart human civilization all over again someplace new. The end of Voyagers and its meaning are tied to the chaos of what happens aboard that lonely vessel in the blackness of space. Here's the ending of  Voyagers explained.  Major spoilers ahead.

Voyagers ending isn't about the future, it's about right now

Richard's big plan once everyone's on the ship is to trick the kids into self-medicating with something called "The Blue," which is essentially a cocktail of anti-androgens and other meds designed to keep everybody sexless and docile. But the kids find out about the drug, and they stop taking it. Without The Blue, the kids become volatile, which results in Richard's death, leaving the kids to fend for themselves.

These kids may not have experienced much of Earth, but they're still human, so they do exactly what humans do — they vie for power through violence and manipulation. They even create a pretend evil alien designed to explain away Richard's death. More crewmembers die and, for a while there, it seems like the entire mission will end with no survivors.

The movie actually ends with a détente, however. Two male leaders, Christopher (Tye Sheridan) and Zac (Fionn Whitehead), who have been struggling for control of the mission, accept the compromise that Sela (Lily-Rose Depp) the medic will take charge. Christopher and Zac step down and cease hostilities, but they agree that everyone will stop taking The Blue.

The movie ends showing that these people do age, and do indeed procreate. Their progeny do make it to a new world. The resolution is a major contrast with the rest of the chaotic and violent third act. It begs a metaphorical reading of the movie's plot: Earth is our vessel, and like the crew of the fictional starship, we are often manipulated by one another into doing self-harm. We have these periods of volatility, during which we wonder if the human species will make it to see another day, but even when our interests seem diametrically opposed, it's the process of reconciliation that guarantees our future.

Voyagers looks to this future, but it reminds us of our past, too. It reminds us that there has always been chaos caused by humanity, which carries the risk of extinction. We've survived wars, we've endured genocides, and we've navigated the creation of planet-destroying weapons. All of these wounds are self-inflicted, and yet we are still here. What Voyagers is daring us to believe with its ending is that we will not only keep surviving, but that we'll thrive for so long that we'll reach out into the farthest parts of the galaxy to inhabit new worlds. It's an optimistic movie in the end.

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