By Anthony Biondi (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: February 18, 2015
“Satisfactory” is not a rating I’d ever like to give anything. It’s neither good nor bad — just locked in a purgatory of mediocrity. However, satisfactory is how I’d best describe the Wachowskis’ recent film Jupiter Ascending. It’s not that it’s in any way badly conceived — it just suffers from poor execution.
The film is ambitious. It aims to build an entire galactic culture and society centred on a substance that can grant the human body a form of immortality. Their society functions on a marketable fountain of youth, essentially, manufactured by harvesting human bodies from “seeded” planets such as Earth. The substance is manufactured by a single family, whose Queen recently passed away, leaving the enterprise in the hands of her two sons and one daughter.
The plot of the movie focuses on the inheritance of the sons, as they squabble to take control of their mother’s resources. This is where Jupiter (Mila Kunis) comes in: she is the reincarnation of the Queen, and therefore the sole inheritor of her estate. Of course, problems arise as the two brothers try to take that inheritance back.
The Wachowskis portray the galactic society and its ruling family quite well. Throughout the movie, it feels very elaborate and expansive, even though we are limited to the view of the one aristocratic family. The visual design of the universe is well-articulated and stunning. It feels fresh and futuristic. To top it off, I felt that the characters that inhabited both Earth and the universe beyond were well-developed and great to follow.
The villains especially came across very strongly, even more so than some of the main characters, maybe due in part to the large amount of screen time awarded to them. They felt distinguished and equally enjoyable — with the exception, perhaps, of the sister of the two main villains, who remained sadly forgettable.
However, this film falls short because it’s too ambitious. Jupiter Ascending would have been better off as two films. There is simply far too much crammed into a mere two hours and eight minutes. Even though the characters were strong, they were never given the screen time they needed to really develop.
The same could really be said for the plot. The film jumped too quickly from moment to moment. Characters’ stories and development became rushed and confusing. There was never enough build-up to justify certain characters’ choices. The film tried to cram in several story arcs into one film, which left each one only a limited time to quickly build up and resolve.
The result was weirdly episodic. In a way, each member of the noble family was given their own story to be told within the movie. It would begin with a capture, a meeting of the villain, and some climactic action involving Caine (Channing Tatum) flying in to the rescue. It became both repetitive and frustrating.
Due to the limited time, so many characters remained forgotten. Despite the strong leads, the supporting cast seemed strangely anonymous and forced-in. By the middle of the film, Jupiter seemingly acquired a whole ship with a crew, which belonged to Sean Bean’s character. None of the crew was introduced; only the ship was named. Throughout the rest of the film the ship and crew are given epic Mass Effect-style suicide missions, and we are expected to care about them. But we don’t. There just wasn’t enough to care about. Even by the end of the film I barely knew who any of them were.
To top it off, because of the rush, certain arcs were not given the world-shattering impact they should have had, which maybe they would have had if the movie were split into two. For instance, there was no real visual or immediate danger to the planet Earth. The story was building up to a harvest of Earth for the youth juice, but that moment sadly never came. The harvester never advanced, the Earth was never close to destruction, and it was only ever talked about. Sure, there were choices made by the main character that affected how Earth would be treated, but none of them felt immediately threatening.
All in all, Jupiter Ascending showed great promise. As a two-parter it could have been amazing, but as it stands, it’s only satisfactory. It had beautiful visuals, a really great premise, and well-developed villains and main cast, but ultimately its two-hour length limits it from becoming what it should have been.
