Voyagers (film)

Voyagers is a 2021 thriller science fiction film written, co-produced and directed by Neil Burger. It stars Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp, Fionn Whitehead, Colin Farrell, Chanté Adams, Isaac Hempstead Wright, Viveik Kalra, Archie Renaux, Archie Madekwe, and Quintessa Swindell, and follows a group of apprentice astronauts sent on a multi-generational mission in the year 2063 to colonize a habitable exoplanet amidst runaway climate change and declining habitability on Earth, who descend into paranoia and social conflict after discovering that their personalities and emotions were being artificially suppressed. The film was theatrically released on April 9, 2021, by Lionsgate and was a box office bomb, grossing US$4.2 million against a $29 million production budget.

Plot
In 2063, astrophysicists on a climate-change-ravaged Earth find a habitable planet. A scouting mission is sent, although the roughly 86-year flight means that the launch crew astronauts' grandchildren will be the ones who reach the planet. To help the crew cope with spending their remaining lives mostly in flight, the original 30 eggs & sperm cells are bred through IVF and grew into infants and later, young children were kept in isolation from the rest of the world. To extend their time in flight, they are launched on the Humanitas spaceship as youth, led by senior program commander Richard, to guide them through the journey's early stage. The plan is for IVF to be performed when the crew turns 24, to be repeated on those offspring when they turn 24.

During the tenth year of the flight, Christopher and Zac discover a chemical is added to the boys' and girls' food that suppresses the sex drive and pleasure response, keeping them docile and manageable. The pair stops taking the chemical, and their surging hormones drive them to become competitive, careless, and anxious to engage in sexual relations, particularly with crewmate Sela who has trained as chief medical officer.

During a repair effort outside the Humanitas to address a failed Earth communication system, chief officer Richard is killed and a fire damages more ship systems. Christopher is voted the new chief officer, which upsets Zac, who then tells the others to stop ingesting the chemical. The mission descends into madness as many of the men and women revert to their most primal state.

Zac tells the others an alien killed Richard, and he will protect them, letting them eat all the (closely conserved) food they want. He convinces all but five to follow him rather than Christopher. Christopher and Sela, who have become a couple, find and repair a video disk that reveals Zac killed Richard and precipitated the further systems damage by turning on the electricity to the communications array while Richard was working on it. They show the others, but Zac convinces many that an alien is inhabiting one of them, and his followers murder anyone Zac targets.

Christopher inadvertently leads Zac to a weapons cache for their grandchildren to use on the planet. Christopher, Sela, and Phoebe are the only holdouts. Phoebe is killed as the pack searches for Christopher and Sela. The pair ejects Zac into space, and peace returns to the Humanitas. Sela is voted chief officer. The crew permanently forgoes the suppression chemical and learn to manage their emotions. They fall in love and have children naturally rather than via the planned IVF.

Decades later, Humanitas and its multi-generational crew arrive at the planet, which appears from orbit to be as Earth-like as hoped.

Production
The project was announced in January 2019, with Neil Burger serving as the writer and director of the film.

In April 2019, Colin Farrell, Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp, and Fionn Whitehead were cast as the film's main characters with filming due to begin in Romania in June. That June, Viveik Kalra, Quintessa Swindell, Archie Madekwe, and Archie Renaux joined the cast as supporting characters, with Lionsgate being chosen as the film's distributor.

Principal photography was to begin in Romania on 17 June 2019.

Theatrical
Voyagers was originally scheduled to be released on November 25, 2020, but its schedule was significantly delayed due to the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, which negatively impacted the production of a substantial number of films. It was subsequently rescheduled to be released on April 9, 2021.

Home media
Voyagers was released on DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray on June 15, 2021 by Lionsgate Home Entertainment.

Box office
In United States and Canada, Voyagers was released in 1,972 theatres, earning $500,000 on its first day and $1.4 million over its opening weekend, finishing fifth at the box office. The film dropped by over 43.5%, to $779,317, in its second weekend, finishing sixth.

Critical response
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 26% of 141 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "It has a game cast and a premise ripe with potential, but Voyagers drifts in familiar orbit instead of fully exploring its intriguing themes." Metacritic assigned a weighted average score of 44 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported that 53% of its audience members gave it a positive score, with 27% stating that they would certainly recommend it.