Quick thoughts - Jupiter Ascending is a better movie than they say
I just rewatched Jupiter Ascending and I really think it’s a lot better and deeper than they say. Even fans tend to call it a fun “trashy” movie, but like … I think it’s superficial superficiality is part of the artistic point. The larger world is consistently presented as exquisitely opulent yet shallow and hollow … only skin deep. It contrasts with Jones’s boisterous family full of love and vitality. The film doesn’t come out and explicitly say it, but the people on Earth are alive, while those who would feed upon us are empty vampires.
The three royals exemplify hollowness. The eldest viscerally displays nothing but pain throughout … when he finally reveals that his mother said she hated her life, and that she begged him to kill her, everything in his body language screams that he feels exactly the same. The middle sibling literally says, “feel my skin”, showing how utterly shallow her only pleasure is … she has taken the path of denial, figuratively closing her eyes. The youngest displays the most superficiality of all; his only pleasure in life seems to be playing games of lies and deception. None of them have anything remotely close to fulfillment. None of them have any love or feel any love. They just coast forward through time, having nothing to look forward to other than more time.
This is contrasted with Jupiter’s family, which is constantly full of color, passion, and noise … all with love pervading throughout. The coldness of the world beyond is such a contrast. With such a contrast, of course Jupiter would chose to go back home rather than live with the horrible vampires.
But also … it’s not just the vampires. The entire society is like that. The extended bureaucracy sequence demonstrates … well, okay. They have awesome technology which heals wounds in a flash. They could do the same with bureaucratic paperwork, but they don’t. That’s not an accident, it’s a choice they made. They chose to make life more miserable. They chose to make their own society sap the spirit out of themselves.
So yeah, Jupiter has every reason to return to her life on Earth. Except of course the villain has kidnapped her family.
And here’s where Jupiter Ascending takes it to the next level. This story has been building up to a climax where Jupiter has to save her family - the family she loves and which is worth so much more than the awful royal family. But she has an epiphany - it’s not just her own family. It’s every family on Earth. Jupiter realizes that this is the true treasure of Earth, and it’s more important than just her own.
Near the start of the movie, we see the royals virtually meeting in the aftermath of a planetary harvest. We see from the architecture a world full of people with hopes and aspirations. The eldest sibling dismisses the loss, claiming that most of them were miserable and it was a mercy. At this point in the movie, we don’t know how much of a self serving lie this is. The truth is that it’s their own universe which is completely miserable and sapped of spirit and life. Their own universe is so utterly miserable that the only thing people strive for is more time.
The movie doesn’t explicitly state it, but the planets harvested must be ones which are kept in the dark about the larger universe. Why? Why the secrecy? Is it that peoples tempted by immortality become so obsessed with that one thing that they completely drain themselves of actual vitality and meaningful life? Is it that vitality which is what produces a “robust” harvest?
That’s the big tragedy, then. The royals only see this vitality as a resource to be consumed. They don’t see that this vitality itself is the true treasure. Jupiter Jones, in her epiphany, sees this truth that none of the vampires can see. The vampires have spent the whole movie telling her that Earth is just a small part in a bigger picture. Jupiter realizes that it’s really the other way around - it’s the rest of the universe which has made itself small. That universe is vast in size but skin-deep shallow. Earth may be small in size but it’s deep in life.
This is, I feel, really awesome story telling, and great movie-making. Translating this visceral feeling of opulence to screen … that takes skill and budget. Imbuing it with the right sort of superficiality … it’s brilliant. And I don’t think people really notice or appreciate this. I think a lot of people got the allegorical criticism of capitalism and wealth inequality, but I think it’s more than that.
