Justen Smith, Contributor
Disjointed, confusing, and underwhelming, “Jupiter Ascending” fails to live up to the impressive previous pedigree of the Wachowskis.
Andy and Lana Wachowski are the siblings responsible for “The Matrix,” “Cloud Atlas,” and the film adaptation of “V for Vendetta.” “Jupiter Ascending” features Mila Kunis as Jupiter, a young woman that realizes she is the literal reincarnation of intergalactic royalty. She discovers a society that harvests Earth and other life-sustaining planets for its life. Channing Tatum co-stars as a half-man half-wolf protector. We follow Jupiter as she learns about this universal society and the implications of her own royalty.
I’ve liked both of these actors, particularly Kunis, in other films, but both of them are completely flat in this. Tatum barely emotes in any way whatsoever and Kunis shuffles between half-hearted snark and continual blank-faced awe at her surroundings. A film like this focuses more on world building and the setup of an internal mythology more than the single narrative of the protagonist. But even those aspects seem cut completely short.
The first half is actually quite hard to follow, since so many characters, scenarios, and plot lines are introduced with zero explanation. The second half plays out in beat-for-beat clichés. As a character, Jupiter comes up especially short. Supposedly a major figure of destined power and authority, she spends way too much of the movie blindly parading along with whatever obviously evil character of the moment while waiting for Channing Tatum to rush in and let her know what’s going down. Some big ideas about life, humanity, and bureaucracy are touched on but never fleshed out, and we don’t get nearly as much explanation of the film’s universe as it should have provided. The movie pushes these aside in favor of its action scenes and cliché story beats, especially in the third act.
Visually, the film was okay. While some of the fight scenes were overly chaotic and the green screening was obvious, the shots of the planets, spaceships, and wide shots of the cities were quite nice to look at.
Overall, this was disappointing. While some parts were reminiscent of the Wachowskis’ better films, “Jupiter Ascending” ends up being nothing special.
The Wachowski’s need to get back to their original source
that “helped” create the first Matrix movie. I’m starting to doubt the original Matrix
movie was even their original idea.