It's back to normal service this week as I'm now back from holiday and very much (not at all) back in the swing of things, and I've had a busy and slightly stressful day today so I'm treating myself, I've got my slippers on and everything, to a movie I've wanted to watch for a little while now but have never found the time for: Jupiter Ascending, a movie that I think I can safely say polarised opinion, when it came out in 2015. Directed by the reputable Wachowskis, and coveted to be the next Sci-Fi epic in the vein of Dune, Star Wars, The Matrix e.t.c and with a frankly eye watering budget of *checks notes* $176,000,000... wow... the movie was critically eviscerated upon release and largely considered a flop. So why was that? Well, at 2 hours 7 minutes, let's get comfortable, deploy the snacks, and find out:
Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) cleans toilets for a living and it literally on the cusp of selling her... erm... eggs... for money when she is almost killed by a gang of little grey aliens, only to be rescued in heroic fashion of Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), a half human, well mostly human, some uh... wolf person. Not really bothering to explain much of anything, Caine at least does explain that the little grey people are trying to kill her and will try again, leading to Jupiter agreeing to go with him on his ship, presumably somewhere safe, but before they can make their escape they are attacked and a big space-dogfight takes place with the little grey men resulting in Caine's ship being destroyed. After surviving that, Caine explains there is a civil war within the most powerful family in the universe: the Abrasax family, and for reasons not yet known; Balen Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne) wants Jupiter dead, but Titus Abrasax (Douglas Booth), Balen's brother, wishes to keep Jupiter alive and recruited Caine for the task. Caine takes Jupiter to meet Stinger Apini (Sean Bean) who is part bee like Caine is part... dog?... at a honey farm, who kneels before Jupiter and calls her "your majesty" after Jupiter unwittingly learns she can control a swarm of honeybees. Stinger explains that the birthplace of Humanity wasn't Earth but in fact a distant planet billions of light years away called Aurous and that Humans were introduced to the planet following the extinction of the Dinosaurs. The Abrasax family seeded the planet with the goal of the amassing a fertile population that would evidently outgrow the planet, and would then be "ripe for harvest" however before the story can continue the trio are attacked and Jupiter is abducted by mercenaries working for Kalique Abrasax (Tuppence Middleton), Sister of Brothers Titus and Balen. Kalique explains that Jupiter is a genetic reincarnation of the families mother and that the Earth belongs to Balen. She also suggests that the family owns planets for the purpose of harvesting it's inhabitants for genes so that they may use them for their own life prolonging measures. Kalique then proceeds to hand Jupiter to the intergalactic police agency; Aegis to handle Jupiter's transition to power where onboard Stinger and Caine are in residence. The Aegis take Jupiter to the planet Ores, where Jupiter receives her official mark and becomes an 'entitled' but then is immediately captured by Stinger and forces loyal to Titus and transported onboard to Titus's ship. Titus explains to Jupiter that Earth is a farm for humans, who's cells and genes are used to produce Regenix that keeps the entitled young, with planets just like it throughout the universe, and that his mother in her final days had a sudden attack of conscience and wanted to bring an end to farming before she was murdered. Titus explains that he wants to continue his mothers work but is scared he will meet the same fate and does not want his inheritance to fall into the hands of his Abrasax siblings. He needs an heir to carry on his work after his death and he wants to make Jupiter his heir, asking her to marry him. Jupiter doesn't give an answer immediately, but Titus later reveals to Caine that he plans to take Earth for his own by marrying Jupiter and then murdering her, flushing Caine out of an airlock into the void of space after doing so, but Caine is able to survive by catching a deployable spacesuit on his way out and is rescued by... I think the Aegis? I'm struggling to keep up at this point... Caine goes to see Stinger who is in Aegis custody and advises that he needs his help to rescue Jupiter. Meanwhile Jupiter agrees to marry Titus when she finally believes his story and believes that doing so will pardon and save Caine, but just before she is on the cusp of marrying Titus, Caine rescues her and reveals Titus plan. We don't see Titus, or Kalique again for that matter, after this... Caine takes Jupiter back with him to the Aegis and they return to Earth to discover Balen and his forces have abducted Jupiter's family. Jupiter agrees to a meeting with Balen at the refining facility who proposes Jupiter abdicates her title so that Earth would become back under his title. Jupiter initially agrees, thinking it will save her family but before signing it has second thoughts after she learns that Balen will harvest the Earth immediately anyway, but the pair are then interrupted by Caine launching a rescue: his entrance destabilizing the refining facility and causing a chain reaction. As the refinery falls apart Balen and Jupiter fight with Balen revealing that he killed his mother after they argued, but Jupiter resists the urge to kill him herself after overpowering him and watches as he falls to his death. Jupiter then quickly follows as the refinery falls apart but is rescued by Caine as she falls and the pair are just able to escape with the Aegis as the rest of the facility explodes. Jupiter then returns to Earth presumably remaining there as it's Guardian.
Phew! That was a long one! But I'm glad I made the commitment because broadly speaking I enjoyed this film. It is not without it's faults and truth be told I found it a bit of a struggle to keep up with things, but it has been a long ol' day for me today and I am a bit tired so maybe that was just me... but I think I just about managed to follow everything and just about managed to understand everything and on the whole this was a pretty decent movie after all!
Mila Kunis does a really good job as Jupiter, I've seen her in a handful of things and I feel she's really under appreciated as an Actress, she's a good lead here and I think she works well within the role she's assigned. There are moments when she is very naïve in her role though but I think that's more a limitation of the script and less of her as a performer. Regrettably this film might have damaged her reputation as lead, given it's negative reception but I don't think that's a reflection on her at all, she does perfectly fine with what she has to work with and on the whole I thought she was pretty good.
Channing Tatum though, for me, felt a little bit mis-cast. I feel like they needed to go for a hunky male lead that would draw in the female audience, and it's not that I don't like Channing Tatum or anything - he is great in The Hateful Eight and 22 Jump Street, but I feel like he didn't quite fit this role, not that he was bad in it because he wasn't and he did a pretty decent job albeit slightly wooden in spots but I felt a bit like it should have gone to someone else who was maybe a bit more of an exaggerated Actor than Channing Tatum is.
Eddie Redmayne however, was perfect casting, and despite not really getting an abundance of screen time he does a fantastic job as the lead villain. He is dangerous, threatening, intimidating and genuinely a little bit scary. How on earth he has not got cast in similar roles in future movies I do not understand, maybe again a victim of this movies poor reception. But he was really great here and worked really well with everything he had to work with and then some.
I also felt this movie moved far too fast and the pacing was absolutely way off. Too much was going on and then quickly brushed under the carpet before moving on to the next set-piece. This was just shy of 2 hours discounting the credits at the end and they crammed alot into that 2 hours. Although not really the trend at the time, and more of a thing now with Disney+ and Netflix, this would have worked much better as a TV series and would have given time for the characters to be developed further, storylines to have been played out longer with more reward and overall would have helped the movie to been more coherent and really flesh out the adventure far greater than the confides of a 2 hour movie.
Outside of these criticisms, everything else was pretty much at an above average standard. The cinematography didn't do much to ease the confusion in places though, and in particular the action set pieces are filmed from multiple different angles with multiple viewpoint switches, and bits where it goes upside down, round in a circle e.t.c it got a bit too much and just made it difficult really to follow what was going on. By set piece number 3 or 4 I was mostly just zoning out because I'd given up on what was actually going on. So long as followed the story I was happy! Otherwise aside from that the cinematography was a mostly an above average production, and despite issues with the pacing the script and narrative was acceptable enough if not just a little bit cheesy in places. The set design, CGI, costume, make up e.t.c everything else was more than acceptable, and really built the immersion of the film, the individual alien characters all had their own quirky appearances and it's clear time and effort was put in to make it all believable, but with a budget as big as this movies was, I'd expect nothing less!
This was a long 'un and I can understand now why there was a negative reception. I feel like they were going for a proper space epic - on par with the Dune movie from the 80's and with a brain melting budget to back it but in doing so they really damaged the product. As aforementioned this would have worked much better as a TV series, but failing that maybe splitting the films in half to give more time to flesh out events and build characters in either proposed section would have improved things. The pacing was so off and it got difficult to keep on top of who was who, who was working for who, who what's motivations were and where the hell everything was going on, but I managed to almost follow everything and enjoyed the movie as a result but it's a difficult and challenging watch jampacked with disorientating set pieces, and hurried plot development. With more tweaking, maybe more extension to the total run time by reformatting Jupiter Ascending could have been, and had real potential to be, a landmark in Science Fiction cinema, but instead formatted into a sub 2 hour movie with some hasty editing it struggled to fully portray a finished developed narrative that was comfortable to follow and understandable to the viewer. Enjoyable though none the less, and I'm going with a 3 out of 5.
