Jupiter Ascending (2015) review

The Wachowskis haven’t really been on that great a run this past decade in regards to the films that they’ve directed. Of course as we all know, the sibling directing duo first made headlines in 1999 when they made ‘The Matrix’, which is now regarded as one of the ground-breaking films of its time. But pretty much everything else after that has not fared as well either critically or commercially. First there were the two Matrix sequels, ‘Reloaded’ and ‘Revolutions’, which were both released in 2003. Both films fared pretty well commercially but for the most part they’ve been universally bashed by fans of the first film. All of their directorial efforts after that have been even less successful and have bombed at the box office. There was their 2008 adaptation of ‘Speed Racer’, which I’ll admit that I do remember liking when I first saw it. And then that was followed up by 2012’s ‘Cloud Atlas’, which was easily one of the most polarizing films of that year, and I for one was among those who weren’t that enthusiastic about it. Sadly it seems that this streak of box-office bombs is set to continue with their latest film, and first original directorial project since ‘The Matrix’, ‘Jupiter Ascending’. And unfortunately, the fact that the film itself is quite a mess in terms of its story doesn’t help it either.

The film takes place in a world where the planet Earth is actually under the control of a powerful alien dynasty known as the House of Abrasax who harvest the planet’s living creatures every few millenniums in order to produce a special serum that basically makes them immortal. When Abrasax’s matriarch dies, her three children; Balem (Eddie Redmayne), Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), and Titus (Douglas Booth) come into conflict over the ‘inheritance’ AKA Earth. However, they soon learn of another ‘heir’ to the throne who comes in the form of Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), a young, unsuspecting, and unlucky Earth woman who spends most of her time working as a caretaker along with her mother. She soon learns that she possesses the same genetic signature as the former matriarch of the House of Abrasax and is the true heir to the throne. When Balem puts a bounty on her head so that he can collect the inheritance for himself, a genetically-engineered ex-military hunter named Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), along with the help of his old military ally Stinger Apini (Sean Bean), comes to her rescue so that she can probably collect her inheritance before Balem ends up harvesting Planet Earth.

One thing that you can always expect from the Wachowskis is that their films will be full of eye-popping visuals and that is definitely the case here. This film was pushed back a few months so that they could have more time to work on the visuals and in that regard, that extra time did pay off. True the visuals can sometimes be a major eyesore at times due to the occasional visual overload but they’re still quite visually appealing. The world-building of this original story is pretty impressive and the action sequences are also pretty solid, especially a key chase sequence in the beginning in Chicago. However, the story is where the film really starts to come apart. The best way I can describe it is that it feels just a bit too overly complicated at times when in reality it’s sort of a fairly simple story. There are quite a lot of twists and turns but not in a good way. In fact, if you’re going into this expecting an action packed sci-fi film, then prepare to be very disappointed because there actually really isn’t that much action in this; it’s more dialogue-based and that does get rather boring after a while. Not only is the story dull, but a lot of the characters aren’t that interesting either. Heck, some don’t even get much development at all, like the two other Abrasax heirs who disappear from the movie entirely by the end of the film and the alleged ‘motivation’ that I read about online about how Stinger was looking for a cure for his daughter’s illness, which for the record is never explored once in this.

Jupiter herself is also a conundrum of a character. While she does serve her purpose of being the ‘avatar’ for the audience in this strange sci-fi world, she doesn’t have that much of an arc in this and we really don’t see her grow that much; for the most part she’s just a damsel in distress. While the character is a fairly weak female lead, Mila Kunis, to her credit, does a good enough job with the limited material that she has to work with. Channing Tatum and Sean Bean, on the other hand, do have a little more to work with, though still not that much, and they do have some pretty solid camaraderie with one another. But as for Eddie Redmayne as the main villain Balem, the poor guy’s lucky that he has that Oscar nomination for ‘Theory of Everything’ because let me tell you, this performance is more than likely going to be amongst next year’s Razzie nominations. Most of the time he whispers his dialogue sounding like Lord Voldemort from ‘Harry Potter’ in need of a throat lozenge and other times he suddenly shouts at the top of his lungs a la Michael Shannon or Gary Oldman. It’s an incredibly awkward performance but thankfully he’s not in the movie too much. Seriously, he disappears for at least about 30-40 minutes in the middle of the film before resurfacing for the finale. Though in the end, I think this is more a case of bad direction than it is the fault of Redmayne.

For the record, I didn’t ‘hate’ ‘Jupiter Ascending’ as there are good things in it, like the visuals, the action sequences, and some of the performances. But for the most part, it’s just a mess and that’s mainly because of the story being more complicated than it really needed to be. Not only that, but some plotlines are never fully resolved and the film is actually rather boring at times due to the fact that a lot of the film mostly consists of scenes of dialogue instead of action sequences, which is even more disappointing given the fact that this was being referred to as a mix between ‘Star Wars’ and ‘The Matrix’. That and, well, there’s also one of the biggest acting misfires in recent history in regards to Eddie Redmayne’s turn as the main villain Balem. Hopefully this won’t be a case of the supposed ‘Norbit’ curse that ‘supposedly’ plagues any Oscar-nominated actor who has a critically maligned movie come out in the weeks before the Oscars. In the end, it’s pretty much certain that ‘Jupiter Ascending’ is going to be a box-office bomb which is sad because A.) It’s clear the Wachowskis are really passionate about their work and B.) It just sucks in general whenever a film bombs. But unlike a film like ‘Jack the Giant Slayer’, ‘Jersey Boys’, or ‘Warrior’, there’s not much about this 2015 equivalent of ‘Attack of the Clones’ that I can defend.

Rating: 2/5