Jupiter Ascending

Where Wachowskis waver

Our story follows Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), who has a life filled with hard work surrounded by her invasive family. One day Jupiter's life is flipped upside-down when she realizes she is the reincarnation of royalty, who control the universe. She must see which of the three ruling families she can trust (if any), and try to save the Earth's population from the royals in the process.

Killing the amount of potential this movie had should be a crime punishable by silence in the creative market. I know that seems a bit harsh (given the Wachowskis track record), but this movie had so much potential that just got wasted on overly used cliche story arcs. They took a movie about the Earth's population being nothing but cattle (which I might have seen somewhere, but I will let it slide for now), and made it a boring Harry Potter esque, Twilight esque, (all stemming from the flower that was originally Cinderella) story arc about some downtrodden girl that became royalty. As much as this movie pains me, it isn't nearly going to be as painful as watching my social media feed flood with "waiting to figure out if I am space royalty" gibberish that will eventually come from this debacle. This movie is filled with just about every story cliche possible, adding maybe two or three interesting concepts. Let's go down a brief list of unimaginative story telling that ends up showing its ugly face in this movie: Girl loves a man that is beneath her caste, royal family trying to kill the new heir to either keep their status or increase it, pauper turns out to be a princess, "professionally I can't say this, but, good luck," "you betrayed me, let's  fight! Now we are buddies," etc. etc. etc. Really the list is about as long as my arm, but you get the gist. Even if this movie wasn't so lazy with their writing they would still have a poorly written script. The movie has plot holes that are seen within the first viewing of the film, which is never a good sign. The movie contradicts itself, example: at the beginning, the Earth is the most prized jewel in the universe; meanwhile, everyone keeps telling her that Earth is not the center of the universe. I know there are moments of lying in this, but seriously, if the Earth is not that special why the hell are you all fighting over it? They never actually explain why the Earth is so special. Is it the size of our population? (would make the most since with the story) Our multiple species? Nope, it just is. I can't be totally against this story, even though it tried to make me. The wolf/human hybrid concept was cool, use of multiple religions in the lore was interesting, and the broad concept was solid. They are lucky that I can even admit to that when their characters almost set me over the edge. Copy and paste from any other boring, cliche piece of crap and there we have our protagonists, antagonists, and secondary characters.

The one thing I can count on the Wachowskis for are visuals, and this time it looks like Jim Henson's brain was tossed into space. The character design was amazing, the look of even the smallest character was unique and fascinating. The fight scenes were also great, reminds you of The Matrix if it actually took place in space, and every one had cool weapons; however, the fight scenes were damn near buried by the poor choice in corresponding music. Seriously, who decides to mix uplifting music with fight music. It was like Kramer just entered the room every five minutes, but everyone in the room had guns trained on him.

The acting in this movie damn near killed the entire experience for me. I have seen better acting from almost everyone that participated in this movie, and decided that the Wachowski name was enough to carry the box office. Channing Tatum stone-walled the entire performance, and didn't even give me any animal-like tendencies, except for a growl every once in a while. Mila Kunis was not horrible, she was just basic, and caught from almost every unflattering camera angle imaginable. Sean Bean was....well... Sean Bean was Sean Bean guys, he doesn't have much in the way of range these days. Any good acting came from the seldom seen supporting cast, so instead of giving an actor credit for standing out among all the crap acting surrounding him, I am going to give you the worst performance of the movie (possibly the year, we will see). Eddie Redmayne was absolutely abhorrent in this feature. Good God, there are these random moments where he decides to replace acting with yelling, and just makes the scene awkward (sometimes hilarious). 

Final Verdict: Borrow it Replaced the "Pirate it" because I really cannot condone that. This movie had some really great points, bad the slew of bad crap that came from this was just too much. Borrow it from someone that didn't read this review (like everyone) if you absolutely need to see it.