Lost space queen gets rescued over and over again.
Okay,
Jupiter Ascending is not hard sci-fi, in fact it's barely space opera. The science is never explained and in the words of
Arthur C. Clarke;
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". What it is, is a mish-mash of myth and fairy tale, merging
Greek,
Roman,
Norse and
Hindu mythology to come up with a bizarre galaxy full of lizard men and space vampires. In one scene we even leave this established but messy and colourful background to enter
Terry Gilliam's grey steampunk Brazil setting full of pipes and bureaucracy (with a cameo by
Gilliam himself). What the fuck is going on here? World-building by someone with ADHD.
The plot is just as chaotic with elements of
Flash Gordon,
The Matrix,
Barbarella,
Carmilla/Elizabeth Bathory and
Jason and the Argonauts. We can even mix in some
Hitchcock as our heroine's name is
Jupiter Jones; the same name as the leader of
Hitch's
Three Investigators books, which I loved as a child. It seems that
Jupiter Ascending is the
Wachowski's
Kill Bill! Every time I think that the
Wachowskis are going to say something really important about class, gender or the patriarchy, it just ends up with another scene of
Mila Kunis getting rescued yet again. Come on
Lana, what the fuck were you thinking! Is this the same woman that gave us the wonderful
Sense8? Oh, and what was with that ending?
So the world-building is a mess, the plot is a mess, what about the characters?
Channing Tatum is an odd duck. He looks so utterly blank but every film I see him in he seems to shine somehow. Like I said, odd; I like him. His satyr/fawn-like character is the usual "get out of jail free" card for the resident damsel in distress
Mila Kunis, whose character sets feminism back a good 30 years by refusing to do anything proactive, giving into the baddies under the slightest pressure and needing to be rescued over and over and over again. Anyway, she's
"The One" or the Queen... I forget which.
Eddie Redmayne plays a cookie-cutter
Machiavellian Ming the Merciless type character - he really only needed a long droopy moustache to fondle and he'd have been perfect.
Sean Bean is okay.
It's all big, colourful, messy and silly but the limp portrayal of the female characters let the entire film down in my opinion.
"You don't treat your cousin like chicken!"
"Gordon's alive!"
