In science fiction, spaceships are often about more thantransportation. The Millennium Falcon is asintegral to the plotofStar Warsas the characters it shuttles from planet to planet. In Passengers, a new movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, the Avalon plays a similarlycentralrole. The film is setentirely aboard thestarship, which carries 5,000 hibernating passengers on a 120-year journey to a distant utopian planet called Homestead 2. Thirty years into the journey, two of those travelers, Lawrence and Pratt, accidentally wake up and are left to explore the massive spaceship on their own.
That means the Avalonis far more than an elaborate backdrop.This spacecraft needed to become the third character, says production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas.A lot of iconic sci-fi vessels, Dyas says, rely on the same basic design tropes; they’re either monolithic,likean Imperial Star Destroyer,or circular, like ships inClose Encountersand2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Avalonis a combination of the two.The ship’s three, arcing hulls attach to a long, central spine, which servesas a sort of main corridor. Also at the ship’s center are the crew’s living and working quarters—a “halo” that spins to generateartificial gravity. From the front, the ship lookslike a wheel with a hub and spokes. In profile, it looks like an insect. In fact, the inspiration was neither of those things.
The Avalon‘s sinuous shape came to Dyas a couple years ago, while he was preparing for a meeting with Passengersdirector Morten Tyldum. I started by drawing the donut, that familiar circle in space, he recalls. But then I thought, no, I cant do that, its been done to death. As Dyas was glancing out his window later that day, he noticed sycamore pods falling from a tree and spinning to the ground like little helicopters. These were the inspiration he needed. I thought, what would happen if we took the donut and connectedit to a series of elongated, pod-like shapes, so that it almost looked like one of those electricity-generating wind turbines? he says.
Dyas’ next sketch still had circular elements at its center, but it also had those huge, swooping hulls. The former looked relatively tame (the circle is a simple, very familiar NASA-type shape, Dyas says). But the latter looked almost alien.
Dyas says the incongruity reflects the way the ship was built. A spacecraft as big and elaborate as the Avalonwould be built not on land over a few years, but in space, over the course of decades.The cylindrical crew hub would comefirst. As construction extended outward, toward the hulls, the materials and shapes would become more sophisticated, as the ship’s technologies and materials grew more advanced. I was really just projecting into the future and predicting where we could go with some of these shapes, Dyas says.
The result is a spaceship that nods to cinematic history without blindly following in its footsteps.Part of my job is making sure I dont copy anybody else, he says. “I think a lot of people will love it. And I think a lot of people will want to chase me down with torches.” Nobody says a movie’s protagonist has to be likable.
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