Jupiter Ascending is a 2015 sci fi film directed by the Wachowskis and starring Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum and Eddie Redmayne.
The story of Jupiter Ascending is so hard to follow I actually literally checked the display a few times to make sure I hadn’t accidentally skipped a chapter. Even the exposition-heavy voiceover fails to make the plot any less incomprehensible. And I use the term ‘plot’ pretty loosely. It was directed by the Wachowski brothers, who are now (through the miracle of modern medicine) the Wachowski brother and sister. But this film is kind of what I imagine the Matrix might have been if someone like Michael Bay had directed it. A toxic overdose of style that masks any trace of substance that might have tried to waft on through. Obscene amounts of money spent on CGI effects with a ludicrous story shoehorned in between action scenes. And that action tries valiantly to mask plot holes so massive you could jump through them without touching the sides.
Take the first action sequence with the main actors, Mila Kunis, playing the heroine, Jupiter Jones (a character name that would make Stan Lee smirk with amusement) and Channing Tatum. He’s the loyal hero (his name, Caine Wise, sounds like a brand of dog food). Anyway he’s tasked with protecting her from the bad guys. They are outnumbered and outgunned, so naturally you’d think they’d opt for low-key (think Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor), but what does he do? He activates his gravity-defying rocket boots, scoops her up into his arms like Superman, and launches out of a high-rise building high above Chicago. Naturally this alerts every bad guy within a six mile radius so we get some ridiculous action scene with people jetting around skyscrapers and ping pinging lasers at each other. Why not just walk downstairs and hail a cab?
Another scene that is miraculous in its stupidity is when the bad guys try to kill Caine by jettisoning him into space. Only they launch him out into space with a whole bunch of inflatable oxygen suits. What the holy fuck? That's like trying to drown a guy by dropping him into the ocean with a scuba tank.
Of course Channing Tatum spends half the film with his shirt off. I suppose when a producer pays to have an actor spend four months in the gym before filming they expect some return on investment from the ‘squealing teenage girl’ demographic. I don’t mind me a bit of hunky man flesh, but only when it’s attached to a halfway decent actor. Take Jason Statham. He could spend every movie wearing nothing but a rhinestone-encrusted jock strap and it’d be fine, because he’s fun to watch. Channing Tatum has all the charisma of a damp sponge. Plus there’s his make-up. He looks like Mr Tumnus from The Chronicles of Narnia on steroids:
Another nonsensical plot point is when Titus (Douglas Booth) asks Jupiter to marry him (I'd explain why, but my brain might implode). When she gets cold feet he tells her not to think of it as a marriage in human terms, but rather like a mutually-beneficial ‘contract’. Fair enough. So then why give her a giant fucking engagement ring? If you want her to think of it as a contract, oh I don’t know, maybe just get her to sign a piece of paper?
While we're talking about the plot, the big reveal halfway through is that humankind is being ‘harvested’ to create some sort of anti-ageing wonder drug for the ruling classes of the universe. Unlike a similar reveal in The Matrix, which came as a shocking and disturbing twist, the reveal here has no weight whatsoever. It’s all a bit ‘so…what else has been happening?’
If it’s not the plot that’s annoying, the dialogue is not much better. It consists of gems like this exchange between Channing Tumnus and Jupiter:
Caine: "I'm more dog than man."
Jupiter: "I like dogs."
Just about the only thing in the film that’s not annoying is the villain, Balem Abrasax (okay so the name sucks) played by Eddie Redmayne. Redmayne mostly whispers his lines in a sort of snake-like way for most of the movie, and that’s entertaining in its own right, but he then occasionally launches into this weird, breathless screaming. This sounds annoying but trust me, his bonkers performance pole-vaults so far over the top that it actually manages to transcend the shittiness and becomes its own gleeful diversion. It’s far and away the best performance (which admittedly isn’t a difficult feat) because he’s the only one that seems to realise he’s in a preposterous film. He actually seems to be having fun with it, whereas everyone else has a bad case of Serious Face.
Regular readers of this blog will know how much I hate lazy exposition, but bizarrely in the case of Jupiter Ascending I actually didn’t mind because without it I had no fucking idea what the hell was happening. I was actually relieved by the predictableness (yeah yeah I know that’s not a word) of the characters pausing after every action scene to explain what just happened. They spend half the film explaining who certain characters are, where and what the place is, and how certain things in this universe work etc (like princess-smelling bees?? Jerry Maguire-kid didn’t include that one when he taught me that bees and dogs can smell fear).
Don’t get me wrong though, even with half the script devoted entirely to exposition the film is still unbelievably baffling. With a better film I’d suggest that this could be alleviated by making it longer, but in this case, I’m more than happy to leave shit unexplained. I don’t think I could take a director’s cut, I’d probably end up hanging myself.
The Wachowskis have a lot of talent, but if the result of them being given a massive budget and free reign results in crap like this I’d prefer they have their ideas vetted more. That said, the ideas themselves are quite brilliant, they just fall short in the execution. For instance the film is blatantly anti-capitalist but this theme is conveyed so ham-fistedly (villains incessantly yabbering on about the virtues of capitalism) it comes off as almost farcical. The movie also takes the very Philip K Dick-esque idea of ‘time as a precious resource’ but then gives that idea all the depth of a wading pool. It’s a watered-down mimosa to Bladerunner’s shot of rye with a beer chaser.
All the shittiness aside, I actually liked the film's conclusion, even though it was amazing that I was actually still paying attention at this point. The idea offered up is that, flying in the face of all the characters’ repeated assertions throughout the film, there is indeed something more precious than time. If you can’t guess what that is, I guess you'll just have to endure the film.
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