Movie Review: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Jupiter Jones’ (Mila Kunis) life is awful. Almost tragic.
She lost her father before she was born, spends her days cleaning toilets for the well-to-do of Chicago with her Mother and Aunt and her nights surrounded by her mostly awful relatives. Jupiter hopes for a better life to come along, which it apparently will seeing as she’s played by Mila Kunis, and the Wachowski’s perhaps unwise decision to intercut her daily routine with scenes of Eddie Redmayne’s Balem Abrasax discussing someone in a vaguely threatening terminology with his siblings Titus (Douglas Booth) and Kalique (Tuppence) in a sci-fi setting, while a cadre of off-world bounty hunters slowly close in on Jupiter.
Thankfully, after this slow start, the film picks up considerably when, after an attempt to make some cash from a fertility clinic goes awry, Jupiter finally captures the attention of those bounty hunters. Amongst them, Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), the only one who doesn’t seem to want to shoot her on sight, and his fancy flying boots. With Caine’s protection (he is uncannily competent), Jupiter needs to find her way in a new world of star-spanning houses where people can own entire planets, where humans have their DNA “spliced” with other species for various upgrades, where genetic engineering is looked upon in an almost spiritual manner and where barely anyone can be trusted and almost everyone has their price.
Jupiter Ascending in Jupiter Ascending
The Wachowski’s have created an interesting enough world for Jupiter and the audience to explore, peppering almost every conversation and scene with snatches of back story, from hints at Caine’s past in the mysterious “Legion”, which is never fully explained, to the “Aegis” corp of “space cops” and their role in managing peace between the various powerful families, their members. The somewhat comedic exploration of the insane bureaucracy required to manage wealth across over millennia and across light years, an exploration which builds to an insanely apt cameo that seems to have been the whole purpose of this section from the get go (DM me on twitter if you can’t figure out who I’m talking about after seeing the movie). I might have even seen It even looks like the circular space station from 2001:A Space Odyssey in the background of one densely packed shot.
Space is the place…
All this, however, is merely used as window dressing for an action adventure/space opera, even if the stellar gentry vying for position over planetary industries brings to mind Frank Herbert’s Dune. Jupiter Ascending doesn’t even attempt to reach anywhere near the dizzying heights of Dune and settles instead for being a weird “spliced” half breed itself, blending the trappings of Dune with the design ethos of Flash Gordon while sticking to a Star Wars based action template.
Pretty star-ships abound in Jupiter Ascending
Visually, the design of the film can be quite striking, with its star ships consisting of shoals of independent metal sections, constantly swarming about each other and reconfiguring shape, held together by nothing but forcefields, one of which sport chandeliers in the loading bays. Caine’s handy “skyjacker” flight boots also facilitate multiple aerial battles and while many action shots of Tatum gracefully roller-blading though the air against CGI backdrops are well handled, like the narrative, the action scenes do get off to a rocky start. Many of the early earth-bound scenes suffer from odd bouts of slow motion, focusing on a pose or moment that doesn’t look all that impressive, almost as if someone accidently leaned on the “bullet-time” button at the wrong moment. This may be down to the difficulties in making a physical actor look “cool” while simultaneously flinging them through the air on wires, but once the action transitions to space, and more CGI, the action greatly improves. All CGI characters fighting in an all CGI environment is more fluid, but still feel “off”. Those expecting any action set pieces on the scale of any of the ones in the Matrix trilogy will be sorely disappointed.
Those fancy flying boots of Tatum’s also come very close to becoming a get-out-of-jail-free card as he uses them to escape danger after danger, something the film-makers must have realised when they explicitly add scenes where, try as he might, he can’t use his magic flying boots to get out of a jail.
“These boots were made for flyin'”
The story told through all of this is one of discovery. For Jupiter, learning about her apparent history and supposed destiny, of family both Earth and space–bound, and of the technological and moral underpinnings of this society who see genetics as a type of spirituality, and yet view most “people” as not worthy of their time. A love plot also runs though the film, but it’s mostly underdeveloped.
Kunis and Tatum provide fun, likeable leads, with Kunis providing much of the humour. Although the film does rely a little too much on Kunis’ Jupiter being captured or falling into some other peril in order for Tatum to rescue her, her character does at least come into her own and at the end only needs a lift from him rather than a rescue.
“Channing, please…tell me, do I survive this movie ?”
The rest of the cast provide solid performances. Sean Bean providing his typical old friend/support role with only the members of the Abraxas family coming off as slightly arch. Eddie Redmayne, currently receiving great praise for his role as Stephen Hawking in the Theory of Everything, rasps his way through the film as a most obvious villain, unexpectedly emphasising in rage at the oddest of moments, but his siblings have their own acting quirks as well.
If you expect a “Sci-Fi Masterpiece from the Makers of the Matrix” or for the “Wachowski’s to do for space opera what they did for action films”, then you will come away sorely disappointed. If, however, like me you go in expecting a fun space opera romp with hints of Dune and Flash Gordon, then you are sure to find something to enjoy.