Jupiter Ascending

By: Robert Murphy

Whenever a new science fiction style movie comes out, with it’s flashy commercial and presentation of an outer space world, your inner child can still get really excited about it but if you’re an adult or somewhat of one, you have to question it a little. Jupiter Ascending is the perfect example of a questionable movie for me when I first got a look at it and doing like I always do, I through caution to the wind and tried it out. Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is a Russian-American immigrant that was born in the middle of the ocean while her mother and aunt were sneaking into the country on a freight ship. She now lives with her aunt and mother, along with an entire extended family in what I can assume is maybe a three bedroom house. She spends her days miserably waking up early and cleaning houses, thinking of something, anything else. Dreaming big about a telescope her father once owned. Well, something big is about to come her way as she begins to be targeted by some unknown, alien, forces. How can she escape? Well, sound the trumpets as, Caine (Channing Tatum) has come to save her majesty. Yes, I said her majesty. It would seem that is more to Jupiter than meets the eye as she soon finds out.

The story had me interested for the better portion of the opening bits as Jupiter’s family escapes Russia to America, where else when you want to supposedly follow your dreams. We also cut between this, Cinderella story, along with jutting a few billion miles away to an alien planet where three bickering, humanoid, characters are talking about the planet they’re stood upon which was recently “harvested”. The three are apparently a form of galactic royalty and are siblings, the eldest brother is Balem (Eddie Redmayne), thee middle sister is Kalique (Tuppence Middleton) and the youngest being Titus (Douglas Booth). Those are just guesses mind you considering that somehow they’ve unlocked science that allows them to remain forever young. The three bait their respective eyelashes at one another, using words to politely undermine one another, it was like watching a scene from Game of Thrones and needles to say I particularly enjoyed it.

How does Jupiter fit in with these three high class manipulators? Well, she apparently is some sort of reincarnation of their former mother and heir to the Earth. Yes, our little blue marble is actually owned by someone and it needs protecting. This leads to her being a targeted by Balem who wants to harvest the planet for some sort of weird human energy source. Never quite followed that part and cue Tatum soaring in on some cool gravity boots that make him look like he’s sky skating his way to save Jupiter, once or twice, seven or eight times I think. It was a lot.

This brings up my qualms with Jupiter Ascending, it starts out interestingly enough but it has no follow through. The story literally repeats itself over and over about three times with Jupiter being kidnapped by each of the aforementioned royalty. Kalique really doesn’t seem like she had an evil plan for her but still for some reason kidnapped her, Caine comes to save her. Then, Titus has some evil marriage scheme in which he would get the valuable possession of Earth and stick it to his brother Balem, Caine saves her a second time. Finally, Balum takes his turn for the climax of the movie and steals Jupiter’s family so she’ll hand over Earth and he can kill everyone, making a crap ton of space dollars, I’m guessing. Spoilers, Caine saves Jupiter again. It all just felt like one big meaningless circle.

The romance between Jupiter and Caine as well was pretty shawdy work too. You know those big romantic kiss scenes where you know they’re about to go for it but one of them comes to their senses. Well, that horrible gut wrenching scene happens not once but twice in the movie. What’s worse is they’re stacked almost immediately on top of one another so you don’t have any time to heal the wound. When the two finally end up kissing it is a big dud of a scene, you knew it would eventually come and it could have been done way better.

Perhaps the two worth while aspects to Jupiter Ascending were Balem and Channing Tatum’s Caine. For most of the movie I didn’t understand Balem’s character, he whispered most of what he said for the film and spent the rest of the time screaming or shouting his lines. But his unflinching performance was something that I could not help but to enjoy as I fell less in love with everything else. And when I say unflinching I mean he never blinks for the whole movie, its crazy spooky and unnerving, it’s like watching Hannibal with Anthony Hopkins. As for Caine, his acrobatic exploits and theatrical scenes were some of the best I’ve scene in a movie in a long while. He glides through many of his scenes on those boots of his and just takes down everything in site. He often uses many of the cooler gadgets and space ships you will see for the movie and while they’re all interesting, it won’t blow you away enough to fell your viewing was justified.

In the end, Jupiter Ascending falls short with it’s grand ideas. You can see that there is plenty of potential in the works with the setup and the huge fantastic worlds but it just falls short with it’s story and dialogue. Things don’t reach the standards of the grand world that Jupiter finds herself in and Mila Kunis, bless her, doesn’t really do much good as the lead role for the film either. If the pace from the beginning had followed through the entire length of this two hour film, I would gladly have stuck with it.

Good:

- Impressive visuals and worlds

-  Channing Tatum and Eddie Redmayne as Balem were the two characters worth noting

Bad:

- A flop romance between Caine and Jupiter

-  Story never lives up to the potential it should have

- Everything repeats itself over and over with unnecessary moments throughout

Scully Rating: 4.0 out of 10