Friday, February 06, 2015

Jupiter Ascending

Jupiter Ascending
Rated PG-13 ('splosions and nekkid butts)
Written and Directed by: The Wachowskis
*** out of ****

Are you 12? Do you like video games and anime and comic books and sci-fi? Go and see this movie.

Are you an "adult"? Do you like driving your car, and going to work, and reading the newspaper? (I am not fully aware of what "adults do.) You might not like this movie.

Let's get this out of the way first: I was going to see this movie. I didn't read any reviews, and I know that the release was pushed back from last summer to February, which never bodes well, but I was going to see this movie because, even if it was terrible, it was going to be a beautiful disaster. The Wachowskis make stunning movies. Even in their neo-noir lesbian heist flick "Bound", they knew how to make a shot look cool.

Fortunately, this movie wasn't a disaster. It was, however, beautiful.

Plot? Pshaw. It's space-opera. It's well done space-opera, but it's space-opera nonetheless. You know all you need to know story-wise from the trailers. Jupiter Jones (my girlfriend Mila Kunis) works with her mother and aunt cleaning condos and penthouses in Chicago, but she's REALLY the genetic reincarnation of the matron of the House Abrasax, a bunch of ultra-wealthy twits with nothing better to do than snipe and sabotage each other, because they are THAT RICH. They own galactic sectors, not just planets. Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) is a former genetically engineered Legionnaire/bounty hunter hired to take Jupiter to (wait for it) Jupiter where destiny and blah blah blah. The story makes as much sense as Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy, which, while epic, was really just one damned thing after another.

This is the movie that "Chronicles of Riddick" wanted to be SO BAD. "Pitch Black" and "Riddick" worked because Richard B. Riddick is a bad, bad man like Mad Max or Snake Pliskin. "Chronicles of Riddick" didn't work because we really don't need the character to be in or part of a space-opera. The extensive lore that they put in actually worked against the character. In "Jupiter Ascending", while the story starts from the beginning Jupiter's life, we are dropped in medias res plot-wise. Wheels have been turning for millennia, and Jupiter is not only the protagonist but the audience surrogate. We learn things when she learns things. She's confused because we are, and this works quite well.

The universe that the Wachowskis have made here has more in common with "Dune" than with "Star Wars", and more in common with "Guardians of the Galaxy" than "Pacific Rim". The bad guys (and you can tell they are bad guys because HOLY CRAP ARE THEY ACTING. ACTING SO HARD.) are part of galactic society, but they are subject to the Aegis (Space Police) and a huge bureaucracy that leads into a fantastic Terry Gilliam homage that I won't spoil further.

There's no "magic" like The Force or Spice Awareness or psychohystory here. It's all genetics and gravity and physics that our branch of humanity doesn't understand, but it gives Channing Tatum gravity rollerblades because if he didn't have them we wouldn't have crazy action scenes. Also, he loses his shirt for a long time (ladies).

It's a big, dumb, pretty, somewhat lightweight space-opera that has a nicely self-contained story, but plenty of lore to explore. I would like to do some reading to look for the hidden symbolism that they are fond of putting in their movies (and, man, when you hear someone joking about college courses designed around "The Matrix", you stop them from making fun of it because, seriously. The amount of hard philosophy in that series is mind-boggling.), but it ain't gonna kill me if I don't.