Question: At the beginning of the movie, was Jim purposely woken up to fix the Avalon's damage or was it because his pod malfunctioned?
tsahi
20th Apr 2017
Passengers (2016)
Answer: Jim, who was a passenger and not a crew member, was not intentionally awakened to repair the damage to the Avalon. It was a malfunction, but because Jim happened to possess useful mechanical engineering skills (he "fixes" things), the ship's damaged computer system may have detected this information from his passenger profile and then mistakenly routed a signal to his pod, opening it.
Gus examined Jim's pod, and determined it had a malfunctioned clock circuit. The computer didn't wake him intentionally in any way.
Answer: He wasn't woken up deliberately because he didn't have a crew wrist pass to give access to all areas, which you'd need to fix the ship.