PLOT: Jupiter Jones is a housekeeper whose DNA pattern identifies her as royalty to a kingdom from another planet that claims ownership of Earth, of which she is the rightful heir. Multiple factions are after her, looking to team up with her, betray her, or kill her for their personal gains, with the fate of the Earth hanging in the balance.
REVIEW: Note: This is a spoiler-filled review. Jupiter Ascending is an epic disaster of galactic proportions. It begins and ends with the titular character, Jupiter, portrayed by Mila Kunis, who delivers a sober, uninteresting performance. Kunis is known for the warmth, humor, and personality she brings to a film. Normally, she glows with this energy. Here, there’s no opportunity for spontaneous banter, or even a smile. She’s serious for most of the movie. She isn’t having fun.
The character essentially gets carted from scene to scene, being asked to deliver a reactionary performance rather than taking matters into her own hands, as any strong protagonist would. Kunis’s eye shadow is the same when she is a housekeeper at the beginning, and the Queen of the Earth at the end. She goes through nine wardrobe changes just for the sake of seeing her in different outfits.
By my count, she gets rescued while plummeting to her death at least four times.
None of this is Kunis’s fault. We’ve seen her deliver comedic and dramatic performances effectively. Here, she reminds me of Natalie Portman from the Star Wars Prequels – a gifted actress whose talents aren’t utilized to their fullest capabilities.
Hers isn’t the only flawed character.
Cain Wise, the bodyguard assigned to protect Jupiter, played by Channing Tatum, is equally as one dimensional. For the most part, he conveniently shows up during action scenes so he can be front and center, annihilate enemy soldiers in droves, save Jupiter. Then rinse and repeat, he does the same, over and over again.
The love story between Jupiter and Cain is so contrived, so forced, so obvious. It was thoroughly unbelievable the two could fall for each other so hard, so quickly. Suddenly, Anakin wishing he could wish away his feelings for Padmé in Attack of the Clones seems like Shakespeare compared to this relationship.
The three members of the royal family vying to control Jupiter, the antagonists of the film, are bland, their purpose, pointless. Jupiter first encounters Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), whose sole purpose of the entire movie is to deliver exposition to Jupiter that explains everything about the world. After her lines are delivered, she literally disappears from the film, never to be seen again.
Similarly, Jupiter’s second encounter is with Titus (Douglas Booth) who, in five minutes, convinces Jupiter she needs to marry him to save the Earth. Cut to moments later, and Jupiter is now in a wedding gown with a wedding ceremony arranged in her honor. When she waits until the very last second to question her decision and reject Titus, his character goes away completely as well.
This leads us to the primary antagonist, the current ruler of the kingdom, Balem. Eddie Redmayne’s performance is cringe worthy and stereotypical. Of course, he is crazy because what evil lord bent on world domination isn’t? He’ll deliver a line of dialogue very calmly, then out of nowhere, scream something in an unfounded fit of rage, which ultimately makes him seem more like a cry baby than an intimidating force of evil.
Sean Bean as Stinger Apini provides the only breath of fresh air amongst this sea of mediocre performances. My only guess is that to properly deliver his lines, Bean had to convince himself he was acting in an entirely different movie. It wouldn’t be a stretch. He’s a war weary humanoid ex-miliary officer, dressed as such, surrounded by weird alien creatures. I’m not exactly sure how he keeps a straight face when he elaborates on Cain’s backstory and how he is the most ruthless warrior he had ever trained, when Cain wears eye shadow, goes shirtless through action scenes, and dances like an ice skater with rocket boots that allow him to fly.
The biggest problem is that these actors seem to have all been plopped in front of a green screen having to visualize every last piece of the world around them, and at a certain point, it becomes an impossible task to pull off.
This was none the more apparent than the “bee” sequence in the film. We learn that bees can sense the evil in royalty. I think I got this right – truthfully, most of this film was so convoluted, I’m trying my best to interpret these scenes as best as I can. So Stinger has Cain and Jupiter safe at his hideout on a farm infested with bees. Now, the bees won’t sting the good guys because they sense the good in them. What we have, therefore, is a hilarious scene in a shack with the actors delivering dialogue, and bees buzzing all around them in the background.
The actors don’t seem to notice the bees at all, explained away by the fact that we know the bees aren’t a threat to them, but in reality, we know it’s because the bees were computer generated later in post production, so there weren’t any on set, or so it seemed, for the actors to play off of.
I’m sorry, but even if I am told the bees aren’t going to sting me, if I’m in a room full of them, my human nature is going to be to react, jolt, swing them away from my face. That would have been a great opportunity for some humor and improv to come out of Kunis, but no, the actors had to play it straight and depressing, and thus this was another missed opportunity.
It’s one of many examples of the hollowness of this movie.
There’s no better way to quickly wrap up a bloated self-indulgent movie than to have a “destruction” sequence of the bad guy’s space station, so you can have a build up of destruction to ramp up the pace and the action. In this case, rather than a cleverly devised plan to bring down the station, Cain breaks through an energy barrier with his tiny ship, which apparently was enough to create a rift in the shield, which causes a chain reaction when combined with the gaseous elements of planet Jupiter that sets off a slow destruction of the station. Thats a long way of explaining the real issue at hand here: Lazy filmmaking.
There’s a reason Jupiter Ascending was relegated to a February release. With such resource, such a huge budget, and so much talent being given to this film, it’s shocking, and a shame, the finished product turned out to be such a misfire, literally, on every single level.
Grade: D-.