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The Wachowskis have been trying to match the quality of their magnum opus The Matrix for more than fifteen years, always falling short. Jupiter Ascending is their latest attempt.
Jupiter (Milia Kunis), like Eddie Murphy in the Golden Child is the chosen one. She hates her life being an immigrant who cleans toilets as her day job. We know this because a poorly-realised montage is book-ended by her saying “I hate my life” – *yawn*.
After being rescued by a wolf-man (Channing Tatum) from assassination when she’s about to give her baby-making eggs away, her life is about to change forever.
Yep. That is the start of this sci-fi epic. In truth, the very start shows the death of her father with a cringeworthy scene of him talking to his pregnant wife’s exposed belly (with Jupiter inside). The dialogue sucks farts and that standard continues for the whole film.
The only character that is the slightest bit convincing is Sean Bean as an ex-military “sky-jacker”. Sounds like “sky jerker” at first, which sounds terribly, terribly perverse. It’s not what our Sean says – his dialogue is as bad as everyone else’s. It’s how he says it. He brings gravitas to what is mostly a mess of a film. Doesn’t say “Sharpe” though at all. Spratt from Downton Abbey somehow finds himself in this film. Make your viewing of the film more fun by trying to spot him.
The action sequences seem impressive at first. Tatum’s wolf-man has special boots that gives him a Neo-esque power of being able to manipulate gravity, which essentially amounts to him ice-skating through the air. It looks daft and only serves to make you wonder if he learned to ice-skate especially for this role.
One mildly amusing part is a satire of government bureaucracy. Jupiter has to jump all sorts of red-tape hoops to get her inheritance. She’s passed from pillar to post, told to do this and that. But she can’t do this without that and that thing is impossible to get because of the previous unattainable piece of administration. It quickly drops any further pretences of thematic depth.
Special contempt must be reserved for Mr Stephen Hawkings himself, Eddie Redmayne. His part as the evil, Balem, part of an intergalactic family dynasty cut-and-pasted from Dune, is inept to the extreme. To have to phone it in so early in his career must be a worry for him. His whispered delivery is supposed to be intimidating but it is amazing anyone he speaks to resists facepalm. Hopefully that Bafta is going to be one lonely statue in his cabinet. Poor Bafta.
The cut-and-pasting continues with a holo-deck a la Star Trek: TNG and tie-fighter style battles, just like that Space Opera made by some other George.
Cloud Atlas was better than this and that didn’t make any sense.
The ending is painful. Maybe the Wachowskis should get someone in to deal with plot and dialogue, whilst they concentrate on visual effects. We’re all going to have to wait a bit longer before the Wachowskis better their masterpiece.