One of the quotes I’ve read about this movie that I think describes it best is from Wired and it says. “Jupiter Ascending is pretty stupid, but you should still go see it.” I wholeheartedly agree. It is pretty stupid; that or it tries to be too clever for it’s own good and in the process it becomes muddled to the point of absurdity. You should still go see it though, especially if you enjoy sci-fi visuals and new worlds to explore. The Wachowski’s are great with visuals, but outside The Matrix have been lacking in the story department. That said I’ve enjoyed all the films they’ve been involved with, including The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions, V for Vendetta, Speed Racer, and Cloud Atlas. No matter what films they’ve made or will make since The Matrix they will be revolutionaries in Hollywood cinema. They brought the Hong Kong style wire-fu to mainstream western cinema and it’s never going away. There is plenty of that on display in Jupiter Ascending and it is used to incredible effect, it just will never have the punch that it did back in 1999 anymore. This is one of the busiest movies I’ve ever seen. There are just too many ideas, both good and bad, that nothing gets a chance to really shine through. Still there is an incredible lack of original space opera style science fiction, so pretty much any opportunity I get to see it I’ll be going.
By far my favorite part of the film happens in the first third of the two hour seven minute running time. The Wachowski’s are Chicago people and the city features prominently in one of the more beautifully alien invasion city destruction scenes out there. This is done considerably better than how Michael Bay lensed similar scenes in Transformers: The Dark of the Moon and can be largely credited to the work of cinematographer John Toll who’s meticulous and marvelous blue hour cinematography over the city. Channing Tatum handles the duties well of the brute and soldier in the story. I wont even go into his characters back story because it’s too convoluted and silly to even write about, suffice to say he’s a half wolf fallen angel. Mila Kunis plays a Princess Diaries type character and does equally fine. Those two are the centerpieces of the film, though Eddie Redmayne (who is as bad here as he is good in The Theory of Everything) and Sean Bean (who surprisingly does not die) are the main side characters. There are probably dozens of other side characters who start off having what would be an interesting sub plot only to be quickly forgotten about. Fellow director Terry Gilliam has a small role as a bureaucratic cog on a central planet of this universe that recalls his films Brazil and The Zero Theorem. The acting is never a problem here. They do well enough against their green screen backdrops and take the project seriously. It’s just the story is so stifling that things can never get going.
The best parts of the movie are the designs of the ships, the worlds that are created and visited, the inventive weaponry, and unique architecture. This is all spectacle that can trace it’s heritage back to that of D.W. Griffith through to George Lucas and the modern blockbuster. The baroque look of everything on alien worlds and the streamlined ships are a marvel to behold. The myriad of alien races recall the great practical effects work done in The Fifth Elementbut now recreated here in CGI. However what keeps this movie from entering the Pantheon of great space opera’s is the script being completely bogged down in complicated and frankly uninteresting galactic politics. Extraterrestrial politics can be handled well, like in the many adaptations of Dune, or they can hold a franchise back like in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. If you can accept that the story will be incomprehensible or that if you do comprehend it that you won’t be invested in it, but instead just want to appreciate what can be done with modern CGI and want to delve into the mind of creative world builders and designers then you will like this film. Ultimately, even as I tried to do that, I was stopped by the story that would at times pull me in only to leave me puzzled as to the narrative choices.
Despite knowing this all going in I still was anticipating this film and enjoyed the experience as much as I could for what it was. Other films have tried this formula to mild success, like The Chronicles of Riddick, which seems to be the closest analog for Jupiter Ascending. The ideas while silly at times are at least original and I was craving some sci-fi. This was the first proper 2015 release I’ve seen because all the others seemed really bad and at least this was in a genre that I will always love. Next week comes Kingsmen: The Secret Service which has an equally silly premise but embraces that as a send up of the spy genre and recalling the late 70’s Bond films. So I’ll be looking forward to that as well. Still though if you’re looking for an early 2015 moviegoing experience and don’t want to wait until next week you can do a lot worse than Jupiter Ascending, just make sure your expectations are tempered going in and focus in on individual things to enjoy rather than the whole. This is definitely a film where individual elements can be extremely fun and inspire a sense of wonderment, but as a whole can seem convoluted and unduly complicated. That’s not to say this is a film to enjoy while laughing at, far from it, it’s just a technical spectacle the is candy for the eyes. And sometimes you just want to feed your eyeballs sugar.
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