Jupiter Jones hates her life. And who can blame her when the
day starts at 5am and involves cleaning toilets and arguing with relatives as
its highlights? But that changes abruptly when an attempted murder on her life
is thwarted and she discovers that she is a descendant of a line of royalty
with a birth rite to Earth. With a war brewing between three siblings with
similar claim, Jupiter must rise to the authority of her name in the hope of
saving her planet from a scheduled ‘harvest’.
With the tagline ‘from the
creators of The Matrix trilogy’,
there’s a lot of hope there right from the off. Consider also too that this
movie is an original story set in space with kidnap, murder, the reluctant
hero, and romance and there’s a lot to be said. But the disappointment becomes
all too real after about twenty minutes.
Jupiter Jones hates her life. And who
can blame her when the day starts at 5am and involves cleaning toilets and
arguing with relatives as its highlights? But that changes abruptly when an
attempted murder on her life is thwarted and she discovers that she is a
descendant of a line of royalty with a birth rite to Earth. With a war brewing
between three siblings with similar claim, Jupiter must rise to the authority
of her name in the hope of saving her planet from a scheduled ‘harvest’.
I have
to admit that the trailers for this film intrigued me, but that intrigue sadly
died away a little after fifteen minutes. To sum up the viewing experience of
this movie, think of Mistress Fauna the green fairy in Sleeping Beauty trying to bake a cake without any idea of how to
cook. She just chucks everything into a bowl, eggs complete with shells folded
through the mixture, no exact measurements of spices, just everything chucked
right in there. That’s what this movie was! All the elements were right: we had
the story of the reluctant hero/rags to riches, we had forbidden/unlikely
romance, we had multiple villains and villainesses, action, and great
opportunities for creature and special effects. But everything was just thrown
at you with no craft or knowledge as how to make them work the way they’re
supposed to.
Flaw number one, the characters needed more fleshing out. Even
Jupiter, who’s the character that we’re all sort of meant to relate to, is flat
and generic and I couldn’t really bring myself to root for her at all. Channing
Tatum’s character was pretty much just showing off his ‘animal magnetism’ and
each one of the villains were just so predictable and one dimensional that you
really felt like throwing them the ‘1001 Cinematic Villains You Must See Before
You Die’ book. I couldn’t bring myself to like anyone and that’s a sad thing.
Flaw number two, the story developments needed further development. Quite
literally the momentum of this movie goes at a pace fifty times the speed of
sound and then stops abruptly for the incomprehensible slabs of exposition that
the audience is oh so generously afforded. On many an occasion I was just
sitting them completely confused as to what the hell was going on! And none of
the three main stories that we had going on (the reluctant hero story, the
romance, and the familial/political schism story) were given enough attention.
They were all just loosely shoved in there to add breadth, each one as weak as
the next in flavour, ambition, scope, practically everything.
Flaw number
three, way too many action sequences. We’re talking Michael-Bay-Transformers: Dark of the Moon type stuff
that just got to the point where you wanted to get up and make a cup of tea or
iron flowers just to do something boring!
On a positive note, there was
potential in the performances.
Starring Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean
(in one of the rare films where he doesn’t die), Eddie Redmayne, Douglas booth,
Tuppence Middleton, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Christina Cole, Nicholas A. Newman, Ramon
Tikaram, Ariyon Bakare, Maria Doyle Kennedy, David Ajala, and Doona Bae, Jupiter Ascending is an average sci-fi
movie that just reminds us that the Wachowskis can’t get away from The Matrix (a central plot point will
show you why). Filled with action, suspense, romance, drama, and more action,
it’s a film that piqued my interest and bitterly slashed it to ribbons. I don’t
think this will make it into the collection.
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