PASSENGERS, HAVE YOU NOTICED THE HOMAGE TO STANLEY KUBRICK’S THE SHINING?
We do not think we exaggerate in asserting that every living filmmaker owes a debt, large or small depending on the case, to Stanley Kubrick: the author of A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey is quoted continuously in every feature film genre, as demonstrated for example by Morten Tyldum’s Passengers.
Perhaps not everyone has paid attention to it, but in the film with Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, there is in fact a macroscopic homage to one of Stanley Kubrick’s main masterpieces, namely The Shining: try taking a look at the setting of the bar in Passengers and you will immediately realize the thing.
The analogies with the bar of the Overlook Hotel are in fact many: in both cases, the barman wears a tuxedo, has singularly refined manners and strikes up a strange friendship with the male protagonist of the film, seems completely disinterested in money and, above all, is unable to leave his job.
Not only that: the lighting is practically identical to that used by Kubrick, and the table area of the bar in Passengers clearly recalls the floor of the hotel corridors in The Shining.
