The Wachowskis' Jupiter Ascending (2015) (1 Viewer)

[joshEH]

Good points. The Wachowskis aren't totally finished in Hollywood at the moment -- they have a highly-anticipated Netflix science-fiction television series, Sense8, about to launch (conceived with Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski), Jupiter Ascending did decently overseas for its number of screens, and they'll almost very likely get offered another feature film at some point, here.


That said, given their recent domestic track-record, industry speculation that the siblings might be close to accepting a Marvel or DC movie as their next film (a bankable, easy, slam-dunk project that will re-establish some credibility with the studios, and restore some of their future personal creative autonomy) is becoming very believable, frankly, and I wouldn't be shocked to see it happen, now.


If they're not actually in Movie Director Jail right at the moment, they're in the next closest thing, and they're gonna have to make their next picture "one for the studio." Reportedly, though, they're still on good terms with Warner Bros. (there's still some of that Matrix goodwill lingering), which should make things slightly easier for them.


Agreed 1,000 percent about Bound -- would love to see them tackle another movie like that again someday.

 

[TravisR]

Some people are using the failure of Jupiter Ascending and its "originality" as a rationale to keep making derivative sequels, remakes, etc.


I hate to break it to those folks, but the movie studio executives who green-lit this space opera did it in the mindset of it being a sort of Matrix sequel. In all of the marketing both the Wachowskis' name and The Matrix are mentioned at every opportunity. The studio indulged the Wachowskis desire to make this movie because they were the Wachowskis.


Would a movie studio have green-lit a movie like this if it was helmed by a director with no huge hits in his filmography? Hell no.

Of course that's how they got a budget that big but that doesn't really have anything to do with the point that I was making.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

 

[TravisR]

^ Starting at 3:30, he really nails the movie (and John Carter too).

 

[Brian Dobbs]

5/10


Phantom Menace + Matrix Revolutions = Jupiter Ascending


I am the Wachowski's #1 fan, but I don't I understand what they were trying to accomplish with Jupiter Ascending. I applaud the attempt of an original science fiction story, but the end result here came across as a little bizarre.


The Good

• Channing Tatum
• Visual Effects & Sound Design
• The concepts of 'time as a resource' and 'harvesting'
• The Bureaucracy
• Costume Design

The Bad

• Animal / human hybrids (What was the point? How did this pertain to the story? Tatum's character has wolf DNA but in the end he gets his wings 'back'? Huh?)

The Meh

• Mila Kunis (why did they want her? She brought nothing to this role)
• The physics of having a space station in the Red Spot Storm on planet Jupiter that we are expected to swallow.
• Eddie Redmayne

The WTF?

• The Russians
• The title "Jupiter Ascending" (I had hoped there would be more to it, but it is silly after having watched the movie.)

I do not see the need for a franchise. I will buy this movie, but only when it hits the bargain bin.


It's a good thing they postponed this until February. It's not making a whole lot of money now, but it would have been DESTROYED in summer 2014.


Perhaps the Wachowski's need to be reigned in a little. Give them an existing property. Marvel or DC perhaps.

 

[steve jaros]

Saw this yesterday and wow, was I disappointed. This movie was boring from start to finish. Yes, Mila Kunis is a doll and I enjoyed looking at her, but the acting by just about everyone was wooden, almost phonetic, the SFX were a hot mess, Channing looked ridiculous with Spock-ears, and the silliness of the plot (basically, every 25 or so minutes, somebody tries to kill Mila, and Channing somehow blasts his way through 3 ships and 1,000 enemy troops with nothing but a shield and a pistol to save her).


The last 40 minutes, I had one eye on the film and one on my mobile Facebook, which I had pulled up on my phone due to boredom. And no, I wasn't being rude, because I was literally the only one in the theater.


2/10 stars

 

[Bobby Henderson]

One of the problems with the Wachowskis is they love to bog down a story with all sorts of Zen-existential pseudo philosophy. It's like they're trying to one-up "the force" from Star Wars. That kind of stuff worked for the most part in the first Matrix movie because of two things: 1, they kind of kept the concept simple and, 2, it actually had something to do with the story and helped drive the plot. The two Matrix sequels were suffocated with that philosophy garbage (along with plenty of WTF moments and a totally buzzkill ending).


George Lucas made some of the same mistakes in the Star Wars prequels. "The force" was a big, mysterious yet simple concept in the original Star Wars trilogy. Then he had to nerd it out with a bunch trivial exposition basically killing any of the dramatic magic it had. A future Jedi had to be born with enough miticlorines or some other kind of pool chemicals in him to be able to manipulate the force. Yeah, alright. Snoozzzzz.


Not everything in a movie needs to be explained. Many of the best movies leave things open to interpretation or just give the audience enough credit for having brains by giving them just the bare essentials needed to move the story along to more important stuff -like actually entertaining the audience.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Very nicely put.


The greatest letter in film history is the 's' at the end of "Clone Wars." Remember what your imagination did with that the first time you heard it?


To be fair, though, General Grievous is awesome.

 

[Ejanss]

One of the problems with the Wachowskis is they love to bog down a story with all sorts of Zen-existential pseudo philosophy. It's like they're trying to one-up "the force" from Star Wars. That kind of stuff worked for the most part in the first Matrix movie because of two things: 1, they kind of kept the concept simple and, 2, it actually had something to do with the story and helped drive the plot. The two Matrix sequels were suffocated with that philosophy garbage (along with plenty of WTF moments and a totally buzzkill ending).

Exactly--They were a nice visual-oriented set of directors when they did Bound, but started believing their own fan hysteria after the first Matrix.

The hooey of the two sequels about where the Matrix came from almost played like a parody of Matrix fanboydom, and now they believe they have to one-up the first Matrix in any movie they make.


Their visual style worked in Speed Racer, where some other source material was calling the shots, and they weren't supposed to deviate too far from it, and anything that dulls their urge to deviate will only help focus their stories.

 

[Vic Pardo]

The greatest letter in film history is the 's' at the end of "Clone Wars." Remember what your imagination did with that the first time you heard it?

I think I understand what you're implying there, but the hyperbole is way more than I'm capable of wrapping my head around.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I saw this last night (in digital IMAX 3D) and was underwhelmed with the movie.


On the pluses, the visuals were mostly well done, I think the performances were pretty good, and I liked some of the deeper concepts, but on the whole, it didn't feel like there was enough "there" there. Exciting and flashy things happened to people, but I didn't really care about the people these things were happening to, so it all kinda fell flat. A lot of the action scenes reminded me of stuff out of "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack Of The Clones" (which I happen to like but recognize is probably not the best Star Wars movie to invoke when you're doing Star Wars).


To me, maybe the most interest concept in there was how people were harvested, so that millions and billions would die for a select few to live. That's an intriguing concept, especially when the bad guy pulled out the small tube of liquid and said that 100 people died to make that... and we had just seen earlier that a character needed to bathe in an entire pool of it for it to work, so who knows how many really have to die for it to work. That was more interesting to me than most of the rest of what was in the movie, but it was very underdeveloped. How is such a substance made? How was it discovered? How many people use it to stay alive? How many of the planets in the universe are destroyed to make this substance, and how many planets benefit from it?


On the other hand, the reincarnation thing was pretty dull to me, I didn't think it made much sense. I just didn't believe that an entire system of inheritance would be designed around a thought like, "If we ever see someone who looks just like you used to look, they'll get everything of yours." They mentioned something about cloning having been once tried and was a disaster, but that thought was dropped almost as soon as it was brought up.


I think the script needed a lot more work. Having an interesting idea for a movie isn't the same as actually having an interesting movie, and what was on screen seemed very underdeveloped to me. I didn't really believe the world(s) that these space people came from, and I didn't care enough about the characters to suspend disbelief. I wanted to like it more than I actually ended up liking it.

 

[SFMike]

I finally saw it last night in Real D and enjoyed it way more than I expected. After following all the thread comments I decided to check a lot of critical thinking at the door and just go with the action and visuals and I wasn't disappointed. As someone mentioned before, this film would have been better as a miniseries to flesh out more of the themes that I thought were kind of interesting. As far as the 3D conversion, I thought this was very well done and really added to the very detailed visuals presented. Overall I thought it had kind of a serial "Flash Gordon" kind of thing going for it that was fun. Audiences just don't give original properties a chance. While watching the preview for Avengers 2 it came off to me as more of the same but that's what people seem to want these days.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

I think I understand what you're implying there, but the hyperbole is way more than I'm capable of wrapping my head around.

You are probably older than I am -- I was 5 or 6 when Star Wars came out. People who encountered it at a more mature age were generally not as affected by it.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Featuring stale execution and a story weighed down with mountains of drivel-tech talk that would give a headache to the biggest fans of Dune, this sci-fi mess can't help to compound the problem with every stock trope and cliché. Toss in Kunis' dismal acting range and at least the laughs at the numerous scene-to-scene misfires will half entertain.


The action scenes are at least serviceable, despite the convoluted sensory chaos and woefully muddled and oversold stakes.


And oh yeah - Terry Gilliam has a cameo, so lets waste minutes of time with a Brazil-inspired bureaucratic caucus race of paperwork filing for something or other.... who can keep track at that point?


2/10

 

[Chris Will]

I finally saw this a few days ago and I guess reading this thread and all the bad reviews lowered my expectation so much that I really enjoyed the movie. Of course, I also really enjoyed John Carter and I love Cutthroat Island, so maybe I'm just messed up.

• The physics of having a space station in the Red Spot Storm on planet Jupiter that we are expected to swallow.

I find it amusing when people have critiques like this. So, you'll by into the physics of space ships opening portals to travel instantly through space, shoes that allow a person to "skate" through air and space, ships where the wings are help together by an energy source but, the line is drawn at having a space station in Jupiter's red spot. Oh well, it didn't bother me and I never worry about physics in a sci-fi movie. I actually thought it was visually stunning concept. Again, I'm probably strange for even enjoying this movie.