Jupiter Ascending

Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is apparently the exact recantation of a mother of three royal siblings vying for control of planet Earth, this of course totally unknown to her until a half wolf, half human crossbreed named Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) saves her from Balem Abrasax's (Eddie Redmayne) agents and introduces her to a world where alien royalty harvest the residents of planet Earth (and other planets) for their own Darwinist creation that halts the aging process and essentially grants them immortality. As she is seen as the exact recantation of the mother, the will asked for the ownership of Planet Earth be passed down to her but stuff happens and each of three sibling's want Earth for their selves.

Let's face it the Wachowski siblings really struggle to write naturalistic dialogue and their previous films are good examples of this. Despite the fact that The Matrix series is one of the most important film series in terms of technical innovations it was hampered somewhat by shoddy dialogue, most notably a killing machine that was designed for one thing - Search and Destroy (pretty sure that's two things). Jupiter Ascending merely proves that writing dialogue really isn't the Wachowski sibling's strong point. Some of the dialogue is so shockingly poor it makes the film an almost unbearable one to listen to and not only that the poor dialogue is perhaps the cause of the dire performances from the major players, particularly Eddie Redmayne.

Eddie Redmayne undoubtedly gives worst performance in the film, his performance as the villainous Balem Abrasax is one that brings about unintentional laughter. He is a pathetically unthreatening villain and Redmayne delivers almost all of his lines in a long, drawn out, overdramatic almost posh and up himself whisper. Redmayne tries too hard which is in complete contrast to the performances of both Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum whose one note performances almost makes them seem completely bored and uninterested. The uninteresting performances of the two main players is the result of bad direction (the pace is horribly mismanaged), awful dialogue and a complete lack of chemistry between the two stars, Kunis and Tatum.

What the Wachowski's have done well however is create brand new worlds, the attention to detail is quite impressive and the visuals are spectacular but their effect and one's appreciation of these extravagant new worlds is greatly limited by the plodding story which makes the film's two hour running time feel double the length. Jupiter Ascending has a touch of The Fifth Element and Flash Gordon about it as the costumes have a similar zanny, crazy campiness about them and the longer the film drags on the costumes get ever more so enjoyably ridiculous. However, the camp costumes are an exception as Jupiter Ascending is lacking in a sense of humour which makes it less farcical fun than the likes of Luc Besson's The Fifth Element.

Current reports seem to suggest that Jupiter Ascending will be a financial flop, and it's not because it is an original work of Science Fiction (people have argued that the film's failure will damage original Science Fiction ideas in the future) but because of a lukewarm reaction, poor marketing and the fact it's a bit rubbish.

1/5