Okay. I watched Jupiter acending. First of all, it took me 4 hours bc the video kept buffering and Adrian and I got sidetracked and started talking about nuclear warfare and Japanese imperialism. Second, it's not even that bad it's a bit silly but overall very interesting, and it doesn't deserve the slander it got.
Ah yes, the first big movie of 2015 (no, we are not talking about 50 Shades of Grey), and it's something that was supposed to be a summer blockbuster in 2014, before ceding August territory to Guardians of the Galaxy (good call). That decision makes some sense, but an early February release date is always a cause for concern, and the Wachowski's have had mixed results over the years, so I was on bated breath with this one.
I stated my excitement for the return of the space adventure genre, campy and ridiculous as it can be, when Guardians came out, and this operatic venture seemed like it was going to be in the same vein. The question was whether or not it would be good.
It's a hot mess.
It's beautiful.
It's an awkwardly-written, weirdly-acted, thoroughly bizarre piece of dreck that's complex, fun, absurd, stupid, and both empowering and demeaning from a feminist angle (it may also offend some people who are really into bees. Or maybe they love it. Who the hell even knows?)
Where something like Lucy was so horrible that I loved it and Jersey Boys was so awful I wanted to scream bloody murder and go ax-crazy on everyone behind the production, I don't know quite what to make of Jupiter Ascending.
It's possible that it might not be good or bad. It might just, against all odds, be both.
Or maybe it's just bad, with a lot of untapped worldbuilding potential and the like that makes it really appealing for fanfiction. That could be it too.
The movie begins with the parents of our protagonist, Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis). Her wide-eyed astronomer father was killed during a home invasion when the thieves went after his prized telescope (no, the telescope is not a space artifact or other MacGuffin), thus explaining her odd name and self-pronounced tendency to expect the worst from people. Her mother then immigrated from Russia to America (pasty British guy + pale Irish woman (playing pale Russian woman)=Mila Kunis? ...okay). Fast forward, and Jupiter lives a mundane life, cleaning houses with her Mother and considering selling her eggs for extra cash to buy a telescope like her Father's. But when she gets to the clinic to go through with the procedure, everything changes.
It turns out, through the strange quirks of genetics and Space Capitalism, she's the heir to a title of royalty and some very valuable property--namely, the Earth itself. Of course, other members of the powerful Abrasax family have their own designs for the Earth, and three siblings each want her captured or killed for their own ends.
(I've heard criticism saying that this plot is difficult to follow, and while my summary isn't doing it justice, it's really not. It might be awkward to follow which sibling hired which set of aliens and mercenaries at first glance, but it all becomes clear quite quickly once you remember that there are three separate parties with their own needs for how events should unfold).
Jupiter barely escapes death thanks to Caine (Channing Tatum), a werewolf-like mercenary who's taken on her rescue and safe assumption of her inheritance in a bid to recover his lost honor and be reinstated to his former post (okay, some of these things seriously don't lend themselves well to summary).
From there, it's a madcap sprint from safe haven to safe haven, discovering and/or dismantling each Abrasax sibling's schemes in turn and gaining a greater and greater understanding of how high the stakes are for Jupiter and the Earth at every step.
Again, despite the hash I made of that summary, the plot's not difficult to understand when you're in the theater, and it's even easier once you realize that it doesn't really matter.
This isn't a movie about dynamic space-society politics and machinations, or even about competing operatic or Shakespearean villainy and the corruption of immortality. It's about girl meets boy. No, not boy meets girl, but girl meets boy, and the distinction is very important. This is a movie where the love story isn't about winning the supporting character's hand by virtue of heroism, it's about the heroine saying "Hey, we should kiss," and wearing him down until he lets go of enough of his heroic baggage to do the deed. It's a movie where Kunis's costume changes are sexy, but in an "I want to wear that crazy, gorgeous outfit" way, without the obvious posturing of sidelong glances, underwear dropping coquettishly, and obligatory ogling. It's a movie where the action scenes aren't about what a badass the main male character is on his flying roller skates--yes, flying roller skates--(and good thing too, since he shoots about as well as a storm trooper), but about seeing Channing Tatum's muscles flex and contort. This is a movie where Kunis's heroism is never about glory, it's about escape and doing the right thing.
In other words, it's a movie that, in a world where practically everything is steeped in the male gaze, actually manages to be from the female gaze. And that's pretty damn cool.
It doesn't necessarily make it good though.
Jupiter Ascending is a weird movie, and it's at times difficult to tell if its decisions are weird in a way that's considered and interesting, or just deeply stupid. The Abrasax infighting and the meditations on how, at a certain stage of development, the only truly valuable commodity is time? Complex and interesting. The depictions of bureaucracy necessary to claim Jupiter's birthright, and the shots of broader, more varied alien society? Fun and interesting. Sean Bean's statement that bees can sense royalty, which allows Jupiter to use what I must in good conscience refer to as bee-kinesis (for a couple scenes, after which it is no longer relevant)? Stupid. So, so stupid.
Depending on where you land on some of the broader structural concerns, the movie's penchant for melodrama can really help it or hurt it. It turns to camp of the highest order, especially when Eddie Redmayne is onscreen, since he plays Balem, the eldest Abrasax sibling, as though he has permanent laryngitis...except when he screeches like a harpy. Beyond that, there's a lot of expository dialogue, and some bits that have to be seen to be believed, like Jupiter discovering and expressing her feelings for Caine by repeating the sentence "I love dogs" multiple times (see, because he's basically part dog and--WHAT THE ASS IS THIS MOVIE?)
Finally, the feminist issue is pretty tough to call too. On the one hand, there's the badass, empowering aspect of the female gaze that I was talking about earlier. This is a movie that's genuinely centered on a very firmly human, female protagonist, and that's something to be celebrated in and of itself. On the other hand, there's the fact that most of the action of the movie consists of Caine rescuing Jupiter from increasingly dire situations, rather than her getting out of them herself. It's some really excessive damseling, even if you take into account that she's an everywoman in a sprawling scifi world. And even that could be overlooked if it weren't for her statement in the opening voiceover that she can't trust anyone...after which she proceeds to blindly trust everyone she meets. From Caine to the younger Abrasax's to her sleezeball cousin who's somehow going to take the lion's share of the money from Jupiter selling her eggs, the only one who she doesn't trust implicitly is Balem, who's been trying to kill her since minute one, lives on a floating black and red doom fortress, and is so bombastically evil that it might as well be his name.
(Yeah, pretty much).
It's...frustrating to say the least, even before certain aspects of the movie's conclusion come into play, which probably bug me most of all, but that I won't spoil.
So, is Jupiter Ascending fun, wild camp, or is it a hot pile of garbage (or both)?
I know what I'd say if I had to choose, but honestly, I'd rather not say it explicitly. Because whatever I'd say, it wouldn't do the movie justice, for good or ill. The only thing that'll do that is seeing it, and whatever the verdict, I want you to see it. Even if you hate it, it at least tries (oh my god does it try), and that's worth something. However flawed the execution, the object is different from anything you'll see for a damn long time.
The Wachowskis While Cloud Atlas didn’t go over well with audiences for a lot of reasons, The Wachowskis are still moving right along with their next feature which Warner Bros. has given a date for today. Jupiter Ascending is now set for a July 25th, 2014 release date as one of the big...
Check out the full article by Chris Beveridge at http://www.fandompost.com/2013/03/15/jupiter-ascending-gets-theatrical-release-date/
