Jupiter Ascending
Presented by: Warner Bros Pictures
Directors/Writers: Andy and Lana Wachowski
2015
Prominent Cast: Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Eddie Redmayne
Genre: Action, Science Fiction
Reviewed by Leah
This is not a rage-review. Nor is it a positive one. The post you are about to read pertains nothing more than a review of a movie that was trying to do too many things at once, and failed at every turn. Proceed with that knowledge fully ingrained.
Summary/Commentary:
Jupiter Jones is a nobody. She cleans houses for a living while living with a loud, raucous family that wakes up at four in the morning every day. (No thank you, not bloody likely!) This is a girl with daddy issues and a 'I hate my life' complex. (Can't blame her, she scrubs toilets for a living and wakes up at 4AM to do it.)
Desperate to come up with a lot of money in a short amount of time, Jupiter agrees to her idiot cousin's 'brilliant' idea of selling her eggs under a pseudonym. (You know, those things used to create human life; often stored in ovaries? Yeah, those eggs.) It is during this procedure that she learns not everything in the universe is as she thought. Namely: alien creatures ordered to ID her before euthanizing her.
Enter Channing Tatum (because I can't be bothered to remember what his character's name is, we're not using it). The lycan-gene-spliced man on … flying jet boots. (Really? You actually thought this was a cool concept?) As per usual in this sort of situation, he saves the girl in the hopes of taking her to the man who hired him. (Mercenary turns hero, how classic. Side note: how about a mercenary who loves their job and just acts like a mercenary?)
This is where we get some backstory--shortly followed by some Sean Bean. About the three Abrasax heirs that own planets, some 'harvesting' process that everyone remains a little vague on, and about the extraordinary ability of bees to identify royalty. (Or Abrasax royalty, at any rate.)
As it turns out, Jupiter Nobody Jones is the reincarnation of the murdered Abrasax queen, and therefore owns the entire planet of Earth. This creates what we'll just call political tension within the Abrasax dynasty. Especially with Balem Abrasax, who is the current title-holder of Earth. As you can imagine, with a planet so rich in resources (Ha! Not the kind you're thinking of.) there is a very lethal approach to how everyone handles Jupiter. Good thing Channing Tatum is always there to save the day…
Review:
Okay, I am clearly not in the right mood to do this. (Hence the commentary throughout my usually very 'professional' summaries.) So I'm going to just leave this as the joke it is, and show you the notes I compiled in this very post about everything I wanted to talk about. After perusing said list, I'm not sure there's actually much I need to elaborate on here. But you be the judge:
Notes:
* Insta-love that had no basis
* Guy literally swooping in and saving girl all the fucking time
* Naive as fuck girl
* Unbelievable characters
* Lots of potential, failed execution
* Bad casting (really just Channing Tatum … maybe Mila Kunis)
* Confusing plot
* Unending action sequences; got to the point of redundancy
* Damsel in fucking distress bullshittery
* Awful dialogue
Granted, this is all the 'bad' things I could think about for the movie. So let's look at a few good things, shall we?
* Badass villains (Eddie Redmayne is absolutely convincing as an evil SOB, despite the awful lack of fleshing out of his character.)
* Awesome graphics. (It's space. If there weren't good graphics to cover most of the rest of this mediocrity, no one would have bothered making this movie.)
Okay, that's a lot shorter than I even intended it. (No, Channing Tatum being shirtless for a few scenes does not even make the cut.)
Moving on… There are a few things that I actually do want to elaborate on, as I feel like this could actually have been a decent movie. If some things were done differently.
Number one: trying to do too much, and failing at all of it. What I mean by this is: this movie had an identity crisis from hell. It wanted to be an action movie. As a result, they drew out fight scenes so long I actually spaced out because all of my available fucks to give had run dry--we already know how it's going to turn out. Then it wanted to be an adventure movie, with Jupiter Jones having to travel to other worlds and reclaim her birthright … blah, blah, blah. Their failure in this regard was to give us irritating scenes that didn't even need to be in there, and add encounters with other characters that we don't even see the rest of the movie. Of course this movie also tried to be a sci-fi as well. How did they accomplish this? Space + advanced technology + putting the entire planet in danger = sci-fi movie. Well okay then… And, of course, we can't forget the bloody fucking romance aspect. Which, by the way, had the most ridiculous fucking dialogue of the entire damn plot. It came out of nowhere and perpetuated into this ridiculous culmination of him always saving her and her falling in love with him. Over the span of only a couple of days, mind you. Not to mention he even told her that he only kept saving her life because he was a mercenary looking to cash in on her safe delivery. *Shaking my head.* Again: tried to do so much. And failed.
Not really going into much more because I feel a lot of that is pretty self-explanatory. So onto…
Character Portrayals:
Mila Kunis … I guess for the script she actually played the part of Jupiter Jones to perfection. As a young woman with a boisterous family and lousy job … it was very believable. When it got further along as the action progressed, however, she fell into the familiar DID trope. Which, again, was all due to the writing and not her acting. (For everyone who wants to point out her character's minimal chances of saving/helping herself, I will forever point out the fact that she pussed out and shot Balem in the leg. While her life and family were in danger. Uh-huh. Not a standard Mary-Sue … how?) As for the romance, it was 100% not believable. There was no chemistry with her co-star and really no need for the romance at all. So this felt incredibly forced as far as her performance went.
Eddie Redmayne was absolutely fantastic as Balem Abrasax. Though his character was also written as nothing more than a caricature of a space-villain, he brought his absolute beastliness to the table and was the only person it was a pleasure watching for the duration of the movie. I would have liked for his character to have more of a motive for his actions, but since greed is such a huge motivator, he was never an unrealistic character. He is a businessman who knows how to get shit done … and will not tolerate failure. Magnificent performance.
Channing Tatum … oi vey. Wrong movie, dude. Way wrong role. Though I don't think his character could have been salvaged by anyone (again: romance ruined this movie) he just was not right for this part. There was a severe lack of emotion for someone supposedly torn apart by a guilty conscience and a loneliness that mentally destroys others like him. Not to mention that bullshit romance that didn't feel genuine in the slightest. If CT's goal was in portraying his character as an emotionless soldier, that's about all he did right. Of course, the writers didn't give him a lot to work with as far as development. With all of the awful dialogue and just boring script, they really were banking on the action shots to win the audience over. (See above to know just how that failed.)
Final Thoughts:
Mediocre. Some good acting. Redundant action scenes. Some bad acting. Cool graphics. Failure at sustaining a stable plot arc. Truth be told, I think I was more disappointed in this rather than outright disliking it. It had so much potential … and then it had its identity crisis and it all went to shit. Oh well, I never have to see it again.
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