For a person who doesn’t specifically love The Matrix, I have a weird love of Lana and Andy Wachowski. Two of their movies (Cloud Atlas and V for Vendetta) are, despite their many flaws, pretty firmly in my top 10 favorite films, and I’ve never not at least had fun while watching one of their post-Matrix Revolutions films, even Ninja Assassin, which I’m still not entirely sure I didn’t just hallucinate. So, when I recently got a chance to go to the Chicago premiere of Jupiter Ascending, at which they were in attendance, I was not only excited to see them in person, but also to see what emotional highs, philosophical speeches, crazy action, and possibly total nonsense I was getting myself into.
Jupiter Ascending follows Jupiter Jones, a Russian-American maid who discovers she is the heir to the planet Earth, and becomes a chess piece in a interstellar political game between the three members of a powerful royal family. That is an impossibly simplified overview of the whole story, but since it is a large, original sci-fi universe, some of the finer points I’ll leave for the movie to reveal to you. The movie does fall occasionally into the trap of having to provide a lot of exposition about the universe in dialogue heavy exposition scenes, but since the protagonist is new to the universe it doesn’t feel as heavy handed as it could have, and manages to get through most of those scenes before the halfway mark.
The world of Jupiter Ascending is less “science fiction” than it is “science fantasy” or “space opera”. There are overly dramatic kings and queens, the science never even attempts to seem real, and it feels as much like a fun fantasy world as it can while being set on mostly spaceships. The tone of the world and the story is pretty silly; this is not a movie for quiet, nuanced scenes, and a lot of depth. This is not a movie where characters come in many different shades of grey. This is a movie where a villain shouts his evil plan at a man before throwing him out of an airlock, and Sean Bean plays a Bee-Man Space Cop. You have to come for the camp, and you stay with it or you don’t. I’d especially like to point out what I like to call “Whatever Eddie Redmayne Was Doing” as what is likely to be the most delightfully ridiculous performance of the year. The movie is filled with ham, but it was never trying to be kosher in the first place.
The weakest link in the fairly cut and dry space opera plot is the inevitable romance that attempts to be the center of the story, but never quite manages to be developed or convincing enough to serve as a strong emotional storyline to carry us through the film. Jupiter’s love interest (played by Channing Tatum, as a Former Wolf Man Space Cop Antihero) doesn’t feel connected enough to the rest of the story for his presence to feel justified. He’s her entry into the story and the one who takes her out of it, but I wish he had been a more interesting element of the story itself.
Even when the emotional core of the movie falls flat, the visuals do pick up some of the slack. The costume design is gorgeous, and the design of the different kinds of blended-humans is an interesting visual. Before my screening of the film, the directors drew attention to the chase scene through Chicago in the beginning of the movie, which was both exciting and a beautiful take on the city’s skyline. You don’t have to watch this movie in 3D, but I enjoyed the use of it, and it did enhance a few of the action scenes.
Jupiter Ascending is crazy science fantasy nonsense, and executes the hell out of being exactly that. I wish that the emotional center of the movie, which is usually a hit or miss area for the Wachowskis, has been better developed to keep me attached to the characters, but that doesn’t completely distract from the fun the rest of the movie provides. It may not be something I want to watch fifty times, but I had a great time watching it.
TOP HAT ROBOT 