The Wachowskis deliver a botched space opera cobbled together from earlier and better sci-fi classics
The Wachowskis return with a galactic epic that is overly in debt to better, smarter movies like Dune and The Fifth Element. Soylent Green may even get a nod but this is one space opera that makes Battlefield Earth look like Solaris.
From The Matrix to Cloud Atlas, Andy and Lana W have displayed a talent for real high wire verve and inventiveness but it’s easy to see why Jupiter Ascending’s release was delayed for nine months and why a post-production overhaul was also required - all of it is very visible in nearly every single scene in the two-hour running time.
It sure looks glossy and epic, and like The Matrix, it has very big and very interesting ideas about the real reason why human beings actually exist but the Wachowskis' first space voyage quickly descends into a confused and listless mess.
Milas Kunis plays Jupiter Jones, a Russian immigrant cleaning lady whose lowly life consists of dawn rises to scrub the toilets of the high class mansions of Chicago. She’s staring into the u-bend alright and having to put up with her disapproving and bickering emigre family but her destiny belongs in the stars, for young Jupiter is actually of noble galactic birth.
Her gene pattern is the exact replica of that of the long dead matriarch of an ancient galactic dynasty, the House of Abrasax and in what seems like an act of unconditional love, her long-lost `children’ Balem (Eddie Redmayne), Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), and Titus (Douglas Booth) despatch Channing Tatum’s mutant renegade solider Caine Wise to rescue Jupiter from cleaning one kind of throne to sitting on another kind entirely.
So just like Neo in that other Wachowski movie, Jupiter is “The One” and like a sexy Arthur Dent, she’s sucked into a world of freaky aliens, giant flying crocodile henchmen, and glittering alien metropolises to become the pawn in an epic intergalactic family feud. However, her siblings all have their own nefarious motives for having `mum' back in charge.
It should all add up to an entertainingly dumb space opera but Jupiter Ascending is quickly swallowed by a black hole of confusion with a script that reads like it’s based on a YA novel and dialogue that George Lucas would have deemed too dull for his Star Wars prequels. Someone actually says, "bees are genetically engineered to recognise royalty".
Douglas Booth who plays Titus Abraxas talks to Alan Corr
Visually, it owes much to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (the old Python himself pops up briefly), Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element and even, in one mildly amusing scene, Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy. The hardware and the space craft are straight from a Chris Foss dust jacket and there is also something of the pulpy style of 1930s Flash Gordon serials.
Sadly, the deadly-serious Wachowskis quash any potential for the kind of high camp that redeemed last year’s over-rated Guardians of The Galaxy. The pre-Oscar tipped Redmayne is particularly awful as preening prince Balem and Tatum’s half-man half-wolf hybrid may be a reliably old school hero but he lacks any intrigue of his own.
For a young woman with the destiny of the universe on her slight shoulders, Kunis has very little to do or say but she does gamely go along for the ride as the toilet cleaner turned intergalactic royal. And what a treat it is to see Maria Doyle Kennedy turn up as Jupiter’s hard-as-nails mother, with a Russian accent thicker than Natalie Murphy’s snarky Dublin drawl in The Commitments.
The best bit for me was an unwitting scene that looks far too like that TV ad for Kelloggs Crunchy Nut Cornflakes involving aliens and a wheat field. Sadly, for fans of the Wachowski's high-concept sic-fi, Jupiter Ascending is a muddle from start to finish.
When a mesmerised Kunis keeps asking: “Why is this happening to me?” you will know exactly how she feels.
Alan Corr
