Fails to ascend expectations
Jupiter Ascending is a sci-fi space opera released in 2015 to low box office earnings of around $184 million dollars, and with a budget of something over $200 million, it was a loss for everyone involved. When you think of the Wachowskis, the first thing that will likely come to your mind are the famous Matrix movies, not a space opera that feels like a Young Adult novella. Unfortunately Jupiter Ascending attempts to take the formula used in The Matrix to appeal to a younger audience, which in the end completely falls apart.
The movie begins on Earth showing two Russian (at least i'm assuming they were both Russian, they never did explain who her dad was) professors at a college falling in love because Jupiter's dad is, umm... good at looking through his telescope? They then cut to them both happily married with a baby girl on the way, and the dad decides that they should name their kid Jupiter because it's the best planet, and little do they know that it's important to the plot. ALL THE SUDDEN RUSSIAN MOBSTERS STORM THE HOUSE, KILLING HIM AND STEAL THE TELESCOPE! Why? Well, we never get to find out, maybe they knew their kid was a chosen one, so they had to kill off at least one parent. The mom then illegally immigrates to America, not sure why, maybe so then they could make an illegal alien joke?
The movie then skips i'm guessing 16 years in the future because these kind of movies always star teenagers. It shows then the daily routine of our protagonist, Jupiter Jones (I know very creative). She and her family work for a cleaning service, cleaning up the homes of rich white people as our angsty teen keeps on saying, "I hate my life". Luckily that isn't her whole personality as it's revealed early on that she is saving up to buy the exact same telescope her dad had on eBay. First off, how did she know what it looked like, she was a fetus at the time. Second, did the Russian mobsters list that telescope on eBay and after all of these years no one else bought it yet? However, she can't afford it as cleaning the McMansions doesn't pay much, and she needs four-thousand dollars for it.
Something interesting finally happens though. As Jupiter is cleaning up stuff at the home of her client, Katherine Dunlevy, they are suddenly attacked by aliens, the small big-eyed Area-51 type. Instead of helping her, Jupiter instead hides in the closet and takes a picture. The aliens find her though and retreat, but not before erasing their memory of the event. Though they didn't even take her phone away to delete the image apparently because Jupiter still has the picture. Now you're probably wondering, "what the hell?", oh yeah I forgot to mention that before they show all of this, is a scene where Channing Tatum is sneaking around and sniffing documents at a local medical clinic, because he is a half-albino Spock-eared dog man, and can sniff the scent of our protagonist on the paper. Though the documents aren't signed under Jupiter's name, but rather Katherine, so Katherine Ascending? Pfft, you wish, no turns out to be one of those clinics where you can sell your eggs for money (do those places even exist in real life, because if so then I gotta go make bank) and Jupiter understandably wanted anonymity.
Anyway after the aliens leave, it skips to the day ahead in which Jupiter is waiting at the clinic to get her eggs donated so she can buy the telescope. Lo and behold however, IT'S A TRAP! Those aliens from before are there and now they want to kill her. Luckily for her Channing Tatum crashes in gliding around on his anti-gravity roller skates (never thought i'd have to type out that sentence, yet I feel blessed to do so) and beats them up or whatever and saves Jupiter. He takes her to a hiding place as he waits for a spaceship to take them to some place. They play the 'pronoun game' a lot. Jupiter takes this surprisingly well, albeit in a skeptical manner. After some sexual tension, their ship arrives... only to be blown up as we are forced into a five minute chase scene that feels like thirty minutes, it drags on that long.
When the chase scene finally ends we are introduced to Sean Bean's character, a human-bee hybrid. I suppose in this case you could call him... Sean Bee-n *Insert laugh track audio here*. Puns aside Sean's character doesn't do much in the film except give exposition, also Jupiter finds out she can control bees. According to Sean Bean, bees are able to recognize royalty, and bees never lie, so that makes her the Princess of Earth (Why did this movie get made?). Uh-oh, here comes the bounty hunters here to kidnap Jupiter. The trio of bounty hunters consist of this cool looking crow dude (I'm assuming he's a crow anyway because of the feathers), a regular guy with a robot eye, and a girl who looks straight out of Harajuku (which is a district in Tokyo, Japan known for their colorful residents and their wacky sense of style). After this scene, these characters are never seen again, at one of their last on screen moments included a part where once they left in a large spaceship, a crop circle was left behind, haha get it, aliens... yeah this movie is pretty bad.
Jupiter is taken to meet Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), one of the siblings of the Abrasax family, the most wealthy dynasty in space. She explains to Jupiter that she is actually the reincarnation of the Abrasax sibling's mother. Imagine that, one day you're worrying about prom, next you find out you're the princess of Earth and technically have three children. Jupiter of course is confused by it, but at the same time is pretty chill. Channing Tatum comes to the rescue however, though she isn't any danger. Him, Sean Bean and Jupiter now head off to the Space DMV, so she can officially claim her title to Earth. After a long bureaucracy montage, Jupiter reveals to Channing Tatum that even though they haven't known each other for long she really wants to bang, and they say men are like dogs *ba dum tish*. Before things get to awkward, turns out Sean Bean is a double crosser, who could've saw that coming *eye-roll*. Jupiter and her little dog too are taken to her son Titus (Douglas Booth) who had been introduced to the audience earlier in the film having a zero gravity space orgy (fully clothed for the youngsters in the theater of course).
Titus reveals to Jupiter that the immortality juice they have is Soylent Green, or Soylent Blue in this case as that is the color of it. He also reveals that Earth is a farm, and that the people of Earth are due for harvesting anytime soon. Titus then tells her of his plan to save the people of Earth, but he needs the rights to the planet before he can do anything. This leads to him tricking our gullible heroine into almost marrying him, so that he can kill her and take the ownership of Earth for himself for that sweet sweet space money, also he shot her dog out of a airlock, so that makes him extra bad. Luckily somehow Channing Tatum Magic Mikes himself out of the cold void of space and teams up with Sean Bean and the Space Police who aren't bad anymore I guess, and crashes the royal wedding before it becomes a red one. By the way, is no one going to address the creepy incesty vibes from this part? Jupiter, sweetie, HE IS TECHNICALLY YOUR SON, WHY DID YOU THINK IT WAS A GOOD IDEA!? At least she got one hell of a cool outfit during the scene I guess.
The movie finally moves on to the third and final evil son, Balem Abrasex, played by Eddie Redmayne, who ironically would go on, two weeks later to earn a Oscar for his portrayal of Stephan Hawking in the movie, The Theory of Everything, a movie I wish I was reviewing instead of this. Hey at least this role earned him a Golden Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor. Honestly though, his Nicholas Cage level of acting is truly what makes this movie. Anyway, turns out Jupiter's family, or whatever were captured by Balem's army of badass anthropomorphic dragons, you heard that right Furries, there are Scalies in this.
Jupiter is almost duped into signing over the rights to the planet to him before she finally realizes, "oh shit, if I do that, then i'll screw over everyone on Earth", and so she doesn't and before anything bad happens, Channing Tatum comes in and saves her once again. Why have your character face negative consequences, when instead you could have Channing Tatum save her? Remember when I mentioned that Jupiter was essentially a cleaning lady before all of this? Well suddenly she's acting like she has been in combat her whole life as she manages to do what would be impossible for a normal cleaning lady to accomplish. Just before Balem falls to his death, as most villains do, he refers to her as mother again. Now here I was getting my hopes up thinking she'll come up with a snarky one liner like "you're grounded" or whatever, but instead she simply says, "I'm not your mom" and that's it. Then She gets saved by dog man again and they do that thing where you think they're dead, but they're not cliche, which only goes on for less then a minute.
Finally at the end of the movie, what does Jupiter do with the knowledge and power she gained? Does she reveal the truth about Earth, gives away the cure to cancer, maybe even give her family a better house? Nope. Hey she got the telescope she wanted, I guess, and why use your status as literal owner of the entire planet Earth for good when you could instead go flying with your half-albino-Spock-eared-winged-dog-man boyfriend! Yes, that is correct, he gets wings at the end. Thank god this movie is now over.
Overall, the movie attempts to emulate the successful of The Matrix with a Young Adult twist book twist. However, it fails to ascend any expectations as it feels like an embarrassing fan-fiction written by a fourteen year old girl, who claims, "I'm not like the other girls". One thing I will give the movie however is that it is nice to look at, in certain points in the film, if only the special effects were applied to a better story. I don't think I could make myself watch this again, and so just like the run time being two hours, i'm giving Jupiter Ascending two paws up.
Thank you for joining me on my second review, it was really fun typing this up, despite the movie I had to force myself through. Anyway I'll see you all next week!
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