Have you ever tipped over a glass of milk and watched, seemingly in slow motion, as it hits the table and becomes an intolerable mess? It’s a wince-inducing experience. Witnessing movies with break-the-bank budgets crash and burn is sort of like that. All you can do is sit and stare, powerless to intervene, and wallow in the aftermath, wondering how the hell that happened.
“Jupiter Ascending,” Andy and Lana Wachowski’s latest sci-fi adventure, is like spilled milk. The $175 million train wreck pushes “The Matrix”-directing duo further into obscurity after a string of mediocrely received movies (“Cloud Atlas” and “Speed Racer”).
Stepping right into adventure film clichés is Mila Kunis, who plays a disgruntled toilet-scrubbing maid who inadvertently finds out she is an unexpected reincarnation of a dead queen and heir to a shady space corporation’s throne. Three descendants of the queen, Balen (Eddie Redmayne), Titus (Douglass Booth) and Kalique (Tuppence Middleton) are part owners in a dynasty called Abrasax, which secretly controls the fate of thousands of planets across the universe.
Jupiter’s reincarnation, explained by future world genetic science mumbo-jumbo, threatens to undermine each evil child’s plot to cease control of Earth and harvest its inhabitants for more fountain of youth juice. She’s the rightful owner of a vast empire of which every being on Earth — including herself — is completely unaware.
(Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)Apparently the Wachowskis themselves wrote “Jupiter Ascending,” but I wouldn’t be surprised if they delegated the work to some 10-year-old with a fixation for cyber-punk tropes and horrendous one-liners.
Thankfully, Channing Tatum’s pointy-eared half-canine, half-human hybrid character, Caine Wise, saves the day and unintentionally gave me something to laugh about throughout the film. Tatum isn’t meant for stoic superhero roles. Apparently, he isn’t meant for love either. Between his goofy attempts at sexily eye-gazing and Kunis’s laughable lip-biting, The Wachowskis should be lauded for creating one of the worst on-screen romances of all time.
Ironically, Redmayne (the sole Oscar-nom of the cast) is astonishingly the worst part of the film. His whispery voice and sad attempt at an intense Caesar imitation almost erased any recollection I had of his tour de force performance as Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything.”
A few of the costumes manage to dazzle and the massive orchestral soundtrack adds power to the action sequences. So, if you search deep enough, there are some minor positives here.
Those few pros barely hold a candle to the extensive list of cons though. With a budget this large, the special effects should be incredible. Instead we get amateur green screening and poorly designed sets. Even the extended action scenes lack any fluidity or gusto. Honestly, Tatum’s hover boots that make him look like a flying ice-skater might top my list of dumb movie sci-fi tech. The poor CGI only accentuates its grotesque imagery.
Abrasax’s process of refining reaped human bodies into a liquid that immortalizes those that bathe in it is a fascinating idea, albeit similar to “Soylent Green.” Suggesting that “time is the single most precious commodity in the universe," Abrasax does provide a genuinely great sci-fi backstory. I just wish The Wachowski's could have kept the importance of their audience’s time in mind and spared us all from this hot steaming pile of space waste.
The Wachowskis' knack for style over substance is finally catching up with them, and I’d be surprised if a studio backs them with this kind of high budget for a long while. It’s still early in the year, but I have no qualms assuring Jupiter a spot atop my list of 2015’s biggest blunders.
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