Jupiter Ascending (2015) | Movie News & Review | - Pop Movee

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JUPITER ASCENDING (2015) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

JUPiter ascending (2015) movie

Genre | Science Fiction

Classification | M

Running time | 127 minutes

Released | 19 February 2015

cast

Mila Kunis ... Jupiter Jones
Channing Tatum ... Caine Wise
Sean Bean ... Stinger Apini
Eddie Redmayne ... Balem Abrasax
Douglas Booth ... Titus Abrasax
Tuppence Middleton ... Kalique Abrasax
Nikki Amuka-Bird ... Diomika Tsing

director

The Wachowskis

writer

Lilly Wachowski ... (written by) (as The Wachowskis) &
Lana Wachowski ... (written by) (as The Wachowskis)

cinematographer

John Toll

music

Michael Giacchino

film editor

Alexander Berner

box office result

Worldwide $183,987,723

Australia $4,049,140

North America $47,387,723

the best dialogue

Jupiter Jones: Technically speaking, I'm an alien. And from the perspective of Immigration, an illegal one. My parents met at the University in Saint Petersburg, where he taught Astrophysics and she taught Applied Mathematics. My mother fell in love with him when she found him almost frozen to death on the bank of the Neva, staring at the stars.

Stinger Apini: We need a plan.
Caine Wise: We need firepower.

Kalique Abrasax: [steps out of her rejuvenation pool] Each of us has a code for our optimal physical condition. The problem is our genes have an expiration date which is transferred to our cells. A long time ago, someone figured out how to replace deteriorating cells with new ones. Today, it's as easy as changing a light bulb.
Jupiter Jones: Where do you get these light bulbs?
Kalique Abrasax: You grow them.
Jupiter Jones: Like clones?
Kalique Abrasax: No. Clones lack genetic plasticity. Several million years ago, a gene plague caused by cloning, nearly annihilated the entire human race.
Jupiter Jones: I was told that the House of Abrasax seeded the Earth. Is that where you get it?
Kalique Abrasax: Your earth is a very small part of a very large industry... Feel my skin.
Jupiter Jones: Oh, wow.
Kalique Abrasax: In your world, people are used to fighting for resources... like oil, or minerals, or land. But when you have access to the vastness of space, you realize there's only one resource worth fighting over... even killing for: More time. Time is the single most precious commodity in the universe.

JUPITER ASCENDING (2015) MOVIE IMAGES

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JUPITER ASCENDING (2015) STORY SYNOPSIS

Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) was born under signs that predicted future greatness, but her reality as a woman consists of cleaning other people's houses and endless bad breaks. Caine (Channing Tatum), a genetically engineered hunter, arrives on Earth to locate her, making Jupiter finally aware of the great destiny that awaits her: Jupiter's genetic signature marks her as the next in line for an extraordinary inheritance that could alter the balance of the cosmos.

JUPITER ASCENDING (2015) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty | Review date 19 February 2015
Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐

JUPITER ASCENDING is a film full of spectacle but sadly lacking in important movie-making fundamentals such as a solid story, believable acting and coherent editing. For those not familiar with the background of this film, it’s important to do a quick update to provide the context as to why it’s such a mess. In mid-2014, just weeks before the film was due to be released, Warner Bros, the film’s principal financier & distributor, pulled the pin; announcing that more time was required to complete the complex special effects work. To many, this made little sense. With so many visual effects houses in operation around the globe, time and quality should not have been an issue to meet Jupiter Ascending’s opening date. Almost immediately speculation started that the film’s writing & directing sibling-team – The Wachowskis – had delivered yet another box office bomb following on from the poorly-received duo of Speed Racer and Cloud Atlas. Warner Bros pushed the release back to February 2015; the cinematic equivalent of the proverbial graveyard!

JUPITER ASCENDING is finally finding its way out to audiences and the speculation, sadly, has turned out to be reality. The Wachowskis, once-upon-a-time, could have done anything they wanted and did! Unfortunately, with the release of Jupiter Ascending, from now on, art will not be allowed to forsake commerce. Even the most generous of reviews will be hard-pressed to recommend this film. It has too many flaws and it would be irresponsible to suggest that someone should spend upwards of $20 to see this film at the cinema. The paradox in play is that Jupiter Ascending should really only be seen on a big cinema screen. The action sequences are so visually complex that it would be near impossible for a viewer to take in a fraction of what is happening on a screen any smaller than that of their local multiplex.

Bad films are bad because their story and screenplay do not translate into an appropriately engaging piece of cinema. Jupiter Ascending feels like it started as something grander than what is presented as the “finished work” but was so complex as to be incomprehensible; robbing the film of important plot developments and replacing them with enhanced visual effects driven sequences that look to paper over the large story gaps. On more than one occasion the film asks the audience to make a leap forward with the story and accept that parts of the narrative have been excised for the sake of the film’s length. The Wachowski’s used this story method in their computer-controlled alternate reality of The Matrix trilogy and the comic book panel-like action of Speed Racer to good effect, but Jupiter Ascending’s premise does not lend itself to stylisation. The story seeks to show Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) as an ordinary person, whose life is completely unremarkable. To achieve this, the Wachowski’s make her a house cleaner, living a mundane life in the suburbs of Chicago, doing richer people’s dirty work. The effort to ground the story in a contemporary reality burdens the Wachowski’s with the need to tell the story with a more traditional cinematic narrative, dependant largely upon their skill as writers and their actors’ ability to execute. JUPITER ASCENDING fails on both counts.

Not surprisingly, none of the actors appearing in Jupiter Ascending cover themselves in any glory. Mila Kunis as Jupiter is as solid as it gets but she is largely a passenger hitch-hiking a ride through multiple set-pieces on her way to the big bang, visual effects-driven finale. Channing Tatum as Caine Wise is absolute cardboard, providing a Keanu Reeves’ Neo-esque performance as part-human, part-alien, part-wolf, part-bird, part-who knows what by the end of the movie! Sean Bean is awful. Normally, the Yorkshireman is as solid as a rock, but his turn as Stinger Apini is confused and confusing. Many of his scenes feel like a highlight-reel of some of the best work he did for the film cut awkwardly into key scenes to try and help heighten the emotion and make Tatum’s performance seem more dynamic than what it really is. The performance that takes the cake is Eddie Redmayne’s turn as the villainous Balem Abrasax. There are scenes in which Redmayne appears where the audience at the preview screening were laughing out aloud at how ridiculous his performance was. One moment his whispering inaudibly and the next he’s screaming at the top of voice, announcing to his minions his displeasure at their failure. In a word, Redmayne’s performance is shite. (If he wins the Academy Award for his turn as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, he needs to take the opportunity to apologise to movie-goers who actually paid money to see JUPITER ASCENDING and endure his turn.)

Ever since THE MATRIX came out back in 1999, I’ve hoped that The Wachowski’s could deliver another cinematic game-changer for the science fiction genre. The Matrix Reloaded was good, but not great. Revolutions was not the finish I was hoping for. Speed Racer was a comic book explosion that tested the balance between creativity and experimentation. Cloud Atlas was flawed and pretentious. If all the best pieces of each of these films were taken and put together seamlessly, perhaps their next game-changer would come into being. Sadly, JUPITER ASCENDING is not that film. I fear that, with the poor commercial result this film will endure, the Wachowski’s may have finally burned the last of the good will that existed for their artistic endeavours. That is a bad thing.

Movie-making needs people like Andy & Lana Wachowski. They are creative and each film they make offers audiences a unique vision. Those are not characteristics that exist within every big-budget cinematic experience. Unfortunately, JUPITER ASCENDING suffers from too many fundamental production inadequacies to let them off the hook to go on unchecked to their next project. At some point in time, somebody has to pay the bill and this time it’s the Wachowskis.