2K

Sigh…just click through to read on. There’s a lot to say.

In 1999, The Matrix blew me away. It was a perfect confluence of many threads that were moving through the culture at the time: the modern internet had just begun to leave its nascent phase; the cyberpunk movement was just ending a monumental run; conspiracy theorists were having a moment due to the popularity of “The X-Files,” and the dominant force in music was interested in authenticity above all.  The Wachowskis baked all of that into The Matrix, as well as some groundbreaking special effects and fight choreography, and produced an instant classic.

It felt significant the evening I saw it. It still does. It still blows first-time watchers away today.

Clearly, these two have big ideas, and a huge vision for what they want to create. However, much of what they’ve created has fallen flat. V for Vendetta was good, but forgettable in the larger scope, Speed Racer was pretty but did not have a story, and Cloud Atlas is a mixed bag, all things considered.

Now comes Jupiter Ascending, a space opera entire conceived for film, from visionaries like the Wachowskis. It’s been a long time in the making: they pushed back the release of the film to continue to finished special effects. On paper, it’s everything science-fiction fans want.

And because of this, I really wanted to love Jupiter Ascending. I wanted it to be a monumental sea change like The Matrix was. But it just isn’t. Somehow, somewhere, I think the Wachowskis may have lost their way. Lost in their own thoughts, ideas and ambitions, they somehow have forgotten what made them great. It makes me wonder if The Matrix was a fluke in some sense. This is just one sentence by Lana Wachowski in response to criticisms for Cloud Atlas, and I think it says it all:

And we’re wrestling with the same things that Dickens and Hugo and David Mitchell and Herman Melville were wrestling with.

If you ask me, anyone who believes they should be included in the same conversation as those authors is focusing on the wrong thing. And that’s a shame; I want to have auteurs who make thought-provoking science fiction. These sorts are needed, in a sense. To move things forward. To break boundaries. To blow minds. And yet, despite what I’m about to get into with Jupiter Ascending, I think the Wachowskis are capable of all of those things. It just hasn’t happened in a while on the level I am looking for.

The Good

Here’s where everything i said previously is flip-flopped: the creative direction, art design, costuming, and special effects for this film are amazing on a grandiose level the likes of which we have rarely ever seen. The only thing I can compare it to is David Lynch’s Dune, but on steroids. Where Lynch went Baroque, the Wachowskis went Rococo; it is detailed, elaborate,  dramatic, and beautiful.

You should go see this movie for the big-screen visuals alone. What was achieved is truly remarkable. And, it is not all special effects. The way the Wachowskis work with light and set, especially in the scenes on Earth, is breathtaking. There is clearly true talent at work here, and I firmly believe their vision was realized.

Off-world, space seems majestic. it is teeming with alien life and weird culture. it is old beyond comparison and twisted into something at once new yet familiar.  Again, all the familial/political intrigue of Dune, but this time it’s gene pools that are the currency, not spice. It is a perfect universe to tell many, many stories. Stories I would want to see/hear/read. But with a dismal U.S. opening weekend and a huge budget to overcome, this one is going to be viewed as a box office bomb.

Here are a few reasons why.

The Bad

Ultimately, film is a medium with which to work with, and the Wachowskis were not trying to create visual scenery–they were trying to tell a story with Jupiter Ascending. With all of their talk about aesthetics lately in interviews, I think that the movie’s actual story was undermined. To be reductive, it was a vehicle to move the two main characters from interesting locale to interesting locale, without much actually happening. There was a lot of dialogue, and a lot of people with power gallivanting about, but for most of the movie, nothing really happened. Sure, there were a few chase’s and fight scenes, but they felt as if they were hitting a mark rather than being integral to any story.

SPOILERS BELOW

The movie starts off with Mila Kunis, who plays Jupiter, telling us she is an alien. This, in fact, is not true. She is born of two perfectly ordinary human beings–it just so happens that she is a 100% genetic match to the now dead queen of the universe. Naturally, the queen’s children want to secure her good graces so they may subvert or share in her endowment–namely, the planet Earth, to harvest the human gene pool here to further alien anti-aging technology, which is the only currency left in the universe.

So Jupiter Jones owns Earth. And Channing Tatum is a genetically engineered werewolfey bounty hunter hired by one of the three children of the former queen to retrieve Jupiter. You see, there are other bounty hunters hired by another sibling that are after her, too, as well as murderous aliens hired by the third sibling. So Channing Tatum needs to get her off Earth to reclaim her genetically-endowed rights, and so on. Sean Bean enters into the mix somewhere outside of Chicago, because he’s an alien too and is hanging out here with a bunch of bees and a daughter.

Also, spaceships destroy Chicago in a beautifully frenzied fight, and no one notices because it all is reconstructed afterwards.

After that, we basically get a beautiful tour of space by way of visits to the three siblings. They all try to befriend Jupiter (one tries to marry her), and in the end one attempts to kill her. Channing Tatum saves the day and saves her before a palace on the Planet Jupiter explodes in a fiery brilliance, and then they go on a date in Chicago.

Finer points of the story include dinosaur people, Channing Tatum’s zero-gravity ice skates, a subplot about Jupiter’s family and a creepy cousin who wants her to do creepy things for money.

I thought Jupiter was going to be the hero of this movie–a character we could learn about, and understand her story arc through her goals, conflicts, and resolutions. Instead she is more of a Cinderella character; no, really, it is on the nose. She is a poor housekeeper who transforms into a space princess that changes costumes multiple times but doesn’t ever get to show any real motivations or desires. Her instant love for Channing Tatum is formulaic at best, as well as her gullibility to be nearly conned into a marriage later in the film. Unfortunately, Jupiter ascended to little more than a macguffin for other characters to act around. She was everyone else’s motivations for action, her very existence the driver of the entire plot. However, she didn’t do much more than walk from place to place and talk to a bunch of people. The only time she fights for herself and doesn’t require saving is in defense of her Earth family who have been (surprise) kidnapped). It’s a sad state of affairs. In a sense, I wanted a female version of Neo, but what was presented in the film was a capricious, static character who ended up exactly where she started and was more concerned about getting a date than the fact that there’s an entire universe out there to explore. Also, she literally owns the planet Earth and other worlds too. What–no takers?

Everyone in the film are fine actors, and I don’t think that there was an issue with any of the performances. However, the Wachowskis just didn’t give Kunis much to do, other than stand there and look doe-eyed and pretty. Also, I have to call out Eddie Redmayne for portraying a pitch-perfect, dastardly disaffected, and ancient bad guy.

So, the story is bungled at best, convoluted to be sure, and trivial in its character development. Why oh why did this happen?! For such a beautiful film from people who can clearly write engaging movies, this was a bland story that felt recycled from The Matrix and Dune.

Finally, let’s talk about one of the most essential aspects of a space opera: the score. This is a Michael Giacchino joint, a composer whose talents need no introduction or defense. The guy is good, really good. But here, I found his typical magic not present. For whatever reason, the music in the film just feels uninspired and workaday for an “epic sci-fi blockbuster.”

A space opera’s score needs to be as grandiose and spectacular as its visuals (and story), but what Giacchino turned in was nuanced background tracking. I heard no major themes or leitmotifs, I did not feel transported or moved by the music in any way. It was a forgettable aspect of the film–a systemic issue with many of today’s movies. To paraphrase the great Paul Bateman, music is the oxygen of a film. In that sense, Jupiter Ascending was blue in the face.

So, why spend all this time discussing a movie that was just so-so? It’s because Jupiter Ascending had so much potential. It was so visually gorgeous. It was a new, creative, unique space opera. It’s a move that was trying new things. Some worked, some didn’t. I think it will find its fans down the line, years from now, who will look back on it and think about what a quizzically beautiful but disjointed thing it was. But for me, I will always sigh when I think about this one.

Real talk? Now that you’ve come to the end of the story, I’ll be honest: I wanted something on par with Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Dune (of the novels), Star Trek, etc. Is that so much to ask of the Wachowskis? I honestly don’t think so. They can talk the talk, but it’s not 1999 anymore–it’s time to walk the walk.

-JT