Jupiter Ascending

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. (03/10/2021)

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% (09/12/2015)

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. (03/01/2020)

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. (06/19/2015)

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. (10/25/2015)