Jupiter Ascending

A digital hell. (23/04/2015)

For me, probably the guilty pleasure of the year. The film is aesthetically unattractive, with a leading villain that takes it all the way to 11 and a very incompetent casting. When Mila Kunis tries to look serious, it simply doesn’t work… but when she tries to drop one-liners, it’s almost painful. Only the core premise of planets as people factory-farms or fuel to keep the vitality of the galactic rulers had some potential, but this time the Wachowskis were unable to exploit it. On the other hand, I must confess that, in its own way, this crap was actually fun. (03/05/2015)

I was sort of hoping that the Wachowskis wouldn’t pour 200 million dollars into a black hole and so I’ve been ignoring the reviews around here before I watched the movie myself. I played it with excitement and within a few minutes, I got into a phase where I would have probably immediately turned it off if it weren’t for the beautiful space shots and effects, because the story is totally out of it. At first, the very first shootout reminded me of Star Wars, then the space scenes moved more towards Star Trek and then Channing Tatum popped onto the screen to explain that he’s a werewolf from outer space. It really couldn’t have been any dumber and I’ve never seen a more idiotic movie with such a high budget. (19/06/2015)

Sometimes it's sad to see how a perfect-looking blockbuster can crumble into smaller and smaller pieces with each scene. What starts with the absurd scenes with the Russian family the script calmly continues with random scenes without no explanation of bizarre names, theories, and memories, and it absolutely triumphantly concludes with Eddie Redmayne in a perfectly annoying acting role in front of a pre-embalmed corpse that cannot produce a single comprehensible sentence. Lana and Lilly Wachowski should be glad that Channing Tatum smoothly switched to air skating, because without his aerial antics in the final fiery inferno, the rating would unquestionably drop into even more terrifying places. (05/02/2015)

The fantastic visuals save a feeble story and fumbling actors. It’s not as big a disaster as I had expected. It moves by relatively quickly and a couple of moments are really funny. The Wachowskis have gone soft with their sex change. Giacchino’s music is out of this world. (06/05/2017)

Too bad about the idiotic script and zero character motivation. The reason to watch the Wachowskis' films, besides the many clever ideas and often interesting innovations in various aspects, is the visuals, and unfortunately that's also the only thing that really works reliably here. But what to do when all those aesthetically intoxicating, almost bizarrely Victorian sets and worlds look so stunning and yet the film is such crap? Surprisingly, the Tatum & Kunis chemistry works above average but it’s cheesy. (25/10/2015)

I didn't expect much, but I got more than enough. Fabulous sci-fi trash in the best sense of the word (in short, a full-fledged successor to 1980's Flash Gordon), set in an absolutely amazing world and almost constantly entertaining. Hand on heart, it's not much different from the much-vaunted Marvel movies. True, there could have been a little more perspective (crop circles and space bureaucrats with Terry Gilliam amused me immensely), but then Jupiter Ascending could also have turned into an awkward comedy, which the Wachowskis (after Speed Racer, thank God) clearly didn't intend. The action scenes are superbly engaging, the special effects are lavish, everything is nicely clear and understandable, but perhaps the most pleasing thing for me was Michael Giacchino's bombastic music and its judicious use, which makes it not really stick out from the film , but it is not simply neglected either. Four pure stars and I'll probably go to the cinema again (I'll put on Flash Gordon before that happens). (06/02/2015)

A film where, due to a completely dysfunctional narrative continuity, we often don't even know what awaits us in the next minute (which could be a big plus), but due to a catastrophically overstuffed and unbalanced script, bland characters and a chaotic depiction of everything from the setting to the motivations, we end up not caring about it. It’s hard to imagine a greater travesty that Hollywood, as a purveyor of expensive non-art entertainment with infinite expressive possibilities, from the visual to the aural, has ever produced or will. 20% (12/09/2015)

Oh, dear Lord, that was awful. My expectations were ultra low, but this outdid them all. It's basically the most miserable variation on a harlequin Shrek: everyone wants the princess, but true love awaits in the form of a muscular dog from a dingy alley who is to take her to them (which is actually fitting for a toilet cleaner), and she finds out over time (pretty quickly, actually) that there’s less than 100 people in the glittering can and that she's totally horny. The script is from the realm of the most hellish fantasies you can have, and I don't buy at all that this duo could ever create something like the legendary Matrix. The actors clearly suffer when they have to chew through ultimate lines like: "You don't understand what that means but... I have more in common with a dog than I have with you." - "I love dogs. I've always loved dogs." And I suffered with them, writhing on the floor in pain, I was begging and pleading! Even if I had a room all pink, saved all my teen magazines from my adolescent years, and was considering lip surgery, I still couldn't have swallowed this "romance" without assistive devices. If I turned the sound off, I'd get the impression that it was a sort of bombastic, action-packed fashion arena for Mila Kunis, if you can endure watching her sour face. I'm going to reboot my brain, douse myself in liquid oxygen and goodbye, hopefully forever. (01/03/2020)

A fairy tale about how silly Honza saves a passive princess, shot from the princess's point of view. The things that are perceived as negatives here are what I enjoyed most about Jupiter Ascending. First and foremost are the erratic plot dynamics, which, while defying any precepts about how to build, structure, and develop a story, nevertheless make the development of the entire adventure quite unpredictable. They say it lacks humor. How can anyone say that about a film where in one scene we are told that the protagonist hasn't been stung by a bee in her entire life because she’s royalty, which bees can always tell, and in the next scene we’re told that Channing Tatum is the result of a cross between a wolf and a human who had his synthetic angel wings taken away as punishment? Rather, what I see behind the critical and financial debacle of Jupiter Ascending (besides being sunk by Warner’s lack of promotion and ill-timed theatrical release) is a situation where all media space has been filled with established sci-fi franchises from Star Trek to Marvel to Star Wars, and the auteur's (sic cheesy and semi-retarded) vision of an original space opera could not compete in this space with the established brands, their mammoth marketing, and the full-tilt industry accompanying it. (10/03/2021)

The film was visually impressive, but that's about where the positives end. The terrible script created a storyline devoid of logic, defying the laws of physics, resulting in a chaotic compilation of moving pictures. Casting Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis in the lead roles didn't help much either. It seems like the target audience might have been children under ten, who are used to gaming violence and might appreciate a story involving flying shoes. Despite the overwhelming CGI action, I'd describe the film as a boring mess. / Lesson learned: Want to be an enthusiastic toilet cleaner? Become the owner of Earth. (20/06/2022)

This is bad, bad. The story is so stupid and without ideas... Lana and Andy just played that it will all look great, which it does, but it didn't impress me. Their "Matrix" was full of thoughts, sometimes so much that one got lost in it and it didn't work the best, but in this case it's just too empty and without any good idea. Yes, there is mythology created here, but what is happening here is simply too much of nothing. And Mila Kunis has a really annoying character here. (23/04/2015)