I feel guilty talking trash about the Wachowskis’ new film Jupiter Ascending. It feels like mocking a family member or old friend who has fallen on hard times. The sibling duo of Lana and Andy Wachowski have produced precisely one classic science fiction epic—1999’s The Matrix—which is something most people don’t even dream of doing.
Now they’re back and the reviews of their latest—Jupiter Ascending—are mostly awful. And yet, should we feel guilty about disliking it? If we don’t like Jupiter Ascending, we may be in of danger hating on the idea “original” science fiction films and making said kinds of movies extinct. But is this supposedly original movie original at all?
The kneejerk complaint and/or defense of Jupiter Ascending emerging lately is that nobody likes the movie/it’s failing at the box office because it is a stand-alone original film and not part of a larger franchise series. Or put more reductively: audiences who like outer space movies only like tent-pole corporate blockbusters! This argument is most evident in a recent Variety article which claims that failure of Jupiter Ascending is bad for the future of hypothetical “original” movies. Recently in the Los Angeles Times, Lana Wachowski defended the originality of Jupiter Ascending by saying “When I was young, originality was everything. A sequel was like a bad word.” On paper, I’d like to agree with her and the Variety article. And, generally speaking, I love defending original works of science fiction simply on the grounds that they are original. (See: my controversial defense of Interstellar.) But Jupiter Ascending is a bad movie and certainly doesn’t feel remotely original at any point.
Mila Kunis’s titular Jupiter tells the audience in the first moments of Jupiter Ascending that she is technically, an alien. And, technically, Jupiter Ascending is an original script, but almost nothing about it feels that way, because there’s almost nothing in the narrative to care about at all. Mila Kunis as Jupiter Jones finds out she’s a space queen set to inherent rulership of the whole universe and reacts emotionally as though she’s swiping left on Tinder. While being pursued by spacey bounty hunters who look like Skeletor’s out-of-work-henchmen from Masters of the Universe, she is rescued by a pointy-eared Channing Tatum playing a character boringly named “Caine.” Originally sent to apprehend Jupiter, Caine changes his mind and/or heart because of events which are both never depicted and not explained at all.
Through various generic chase sequences that would both make Michael Bay blush and piss him off, the big “idea” of Jupiter Ascending turns out to be this: an entire planetary harvesting system exists just so people can develop the ultimate near-immortality elixir, which if you bathe in it, becomes the best body wash product ever. This substance, called “Abrasax,” is revealed in terribly predictable as being “made of people.” Yep. The line is almost identical to the similar (spoiler alert!) reveal in the sci-fi classic Soylent Green, where Charlton Heston weeps that Soylent Green is people, too. This is also like The Matrix, where it’s revealed to us that everything we think we know is something else and really just a pointless bi-product of that. In The Matrix our bodies were batteries for weird aliens. In Jupiter Ascending, entire planets are, in essence, just bars of soap waiting to be packaged. The revelation that an entire space empire is built on people wanting to get rid of their wrinkles is both hackneyed and unconvincing and makes the conspiratorial “twist” of Jupiter Ascending a cynical knock-off of both The Matrix and Soylent Green.
Obviously there’s nothing wrong with borrowing and re-doing concepts from The Matrix and/or Soylent Green (with a dash of Dune), but that requires you to actually homage all this stuff well. Yet in terms of the plot structure, dialogue, and acts of physical danger, Jupiter Ascending actually feels less-original than the extremely derivative and homage-heavy Guardians of the Galaxy. You could start watching Jupiter Ascending at literally any moment and feel like you were watching another movie. If it were re-titled Space Movie: The Movie, it would seem more original than the hacky title it does have which somehow references both Mila Kunis’ character and the fact that Eddie Redmayne lives in an improbable city inside of the planet Jupiter. Is it creative and original to have your title reference such things?
Let’s keep hitting the originality survey: The Silence from Doctor Who are subtly ripped-off, as are the designs of all the ships from John Carter. Every chase sequences/fight sequence is by-the-numbers and wildly less-original than any fight from The Matrix. The characters in Jupiter Ascending are beyond hollow and unrealistic to the point that one scene actually features a giant crowd at a wedding populated by robots “sims” as if to acknowledge that even the faces in the crowd are fake, pointless characters. Sean Bean has a daughter but nobody knows why and she barely figures into the plot. A winged-dinosaur henchperson is told that if he fails to capture Jupiter Jones, he’ll be punished. When he fails, we’re supposed to believe this dinosaur put himself into this flimsily torture machine willingly while another identical dinosaur takes his place. Does it matter that these winged dinosaurs have names? No. It does not.
Meanwhile, we’re told that Tatum’s Caine was once a winged-person who got his wings taken from him for the afore-mentioned thing he did that makes no sense. Now, a winged creature getting its wings back is a great premise, and it could have been exciting in Jupiter Ascending. But, because we never saw Channing Tatum’s character lose his wings, when he suddenly has them again in the last scene of the movie it feels hollow, stupid and unoriginal, because it looks like Barabrella. Contrast this with last summer’s Malificent, in which the return of Angelina Jolie’s wings is an amazingly triumphant moment because we saw the pain and betrayal that occurred when she lost them in the first place. Malificent may have been a remake to an adaptation of a Disney-reboot of a classic fairytale, but it knew how to tell a story about losing your wings and getting them back way better than Jupiter Ascending. If Jupiter Ascending is “original” and Malificent is commercial garbage, I’ll take the garbage, thanks. The writer of the Variety article wonders how the next generation of filmmakers will be inspired without “original” movies. Well, they won’t be inspired by bad ones that misuse awesome themes, that’s for sure.
Ironically or not, The Matrix sequels share a problem with Jupiter Ascending: rabbit hole fatigue. Since the “real” world of The Matrix is not near as interesting as the Matrix itself, the sequels are more boring than the original because the shock of the reveal wears off. (I can only remind everyone of that rave party dance number in The Matrix: Reloaded so many times. It’s like the movie was so bored with itself that everyone had to dance.) And it’s worse in Jupiter Ascending, because nothing is interesting about the larger universe Jupiter Jones encounters, owing to the fact that seems like a mishmash of everything you’ve ever seen before. True, what we think of as being “original” is almost always a derivation of something else (Star Wars, all Superheroes) but it’s the spin that matters. The script may have been “new” here, but the themes are endlessly tiresome and carried out by a set of characters we’ve already forgotten.
I believe the Wachowskis are still capable of great things. Their upcoming TV show Sense8 might be absolutely brilliant. Perhaps there’s heaps of material which was cut out of Jupiter Ascending by studio meddling which effectively gutted it of any real human connection. But I doubt it. I think the movie was a noble attempt to create something new while referencing lots of the familiar. And it was a complete failure. It was a bad film because it was a bad film. Perhaps the lesson we should take from Jupiter Ascending is that “originality”—perceived or genuine—has nothing to do with quality, or even watchability.
Ryan Britt is the author of Luke Skywalker Can’t Read and Other Geeky Truths (Plume Books) forthcoming this November. He is a longtime contributor to Tor.com.
The Silence from Doctor Who are subtly ripped-off
You had me, and then you lost me. Ironically, in all your complaining about originality and derivation, you seem to have stopped way short of the “original” when it comes to large-headed grey aliens visiting Earth and wiping people’s memories. The Silence were themselves a reference, after all.
That sort of alien (commonly referred to as “Greys”) is a major theme in tales of alien abduction, and as such, have appeared in more sources than I can readily count–Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The X-Files, the Star Control games, Stargate SG-1, and most famously, anything to do with Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. They are the most commonly-described aliens in any “alien abduction” story. I doubt the Wachowskis had any specific thoughts about the Silence when they decided that the Greys were the farmhands of Earth, keeping the population under control.
There’s a fairly big discussion to be had here about common reference, the well of creativity, the monomyth, and what “original” means in our modern culture, though.
@1 Sure. Fair point.
There’s was just something in having the image of the aliens on a camera phone that was exactly like the the way the reveal played out with the Silence, which, as you correctly point out, are referential to every alien aduction thing, ever. As far as that larger discussion about the monomyth, you’re also probably right, but I’ve only got so many words.
The distance to the Silence was quickier than getting into a bigger discussion, because I feel like Doctor Who already “explained” grey aliens with a cameraphone, which is what I felt Jupiter Ascending ripped off. Not the act of having the forgotten aliens themselves. The specific narrative nomenclature was the same.
ryancbritt@2: Eh. I still think it’s a weak tie, because (cf. XKCD, https://xkcd.com/1235/) one of the things we’ve seen since the rise of cameraphones is the change in such stories.
In this day and age, the first instinct of everybody (well, everybody who had a phone) upon seeing something like that would be to snap pics. (In fact, it was something of a screwup on the Keepers’ part that they didn’t delete the pic from Jupiter’s phone–I can only assume they were rushed.) Had Jupiter done anything else I think it would have broken willful suspension of disbelief. Yes, the whole hoverskateboots thing was more believable than a modern American with a smartphone not snapping pictures upon seeing something bizarre; tell me I’m wrong.
As I was watching the film, I kept also getting hints of Mobeus and Jodorowski’s comic book work, especially The Incal and The Metabarons. I remember reading an essay on The Incal in particular where the author reacted his first exposure to the comic by trying to write something exactly like it, and failing because it wasn’t The Incal.
In this case, they were trying to get expansive/crazy the way those comics can but not quite making it… A pretty attempt, but one which had me admiring the craftsmanship rather than the passion behind it.
Yeah, I think the Wachowskis are skilled at creating visuals and do have a genuine affection for the sources they, um, reference. But, as far as storytelling goes, original they are not. Hell, back when the first Matrix came out and everybody lost it claiming it was a game-changer all I could think of was how much it felt like William Gibson mixed with Neal Stephenson or something like that. Not a bad movie, but not really original. As everybody has implied in these posts the trilogy pretty much stuck to the Campbellian mono-myth structure, so not terribly original on that front either.
Their other big movies have been adaptations of other original work, like V For Vendetta minus the subtleties of Moore’s story, Speed Racer just becuase they liked it as kids, or Cloud Atlas. Jupiter Ascending might be many things, or even tried to be many things, but original is hardly one of them.
Claiming that it’s not doing well because people don’t like original movies, or it’s not part of a trilogy or whatever is an argument out of a fanboy’s p.o.v. As Ryan Britt concludes, it’s doing bad because it’s a bad movie and that’s it.
Agreed: A good movie is a good movie – originality or not.
George Lucas built the Star Wars franchise on the conciept that no good story was original. In the end he relied too much on Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth, and the stories were perhaps too familiar.
Spieburg (and Lucas) also repacked time tested storytelling with the original Indiana Jones movie with their homage to the old movie serials. They just went to the well too often.
The Matrix was very similar to Dark City, which came some time before, but with cyberpunk background taken from Ghost in the Shell. DC also had a much better paced story (sadly much undone by a very silly mandated voicover), instead of getting it out in 30 minutes to focus on anime-like camera movements and slooooow motion. Adding that to how I could only relate to the traitor in Matrix, with everybody else just looking to be walking in a fashion show, and not giving a damn about the people they were suppossed to fight for, can´t say I liked that movie much. Unexpected dissapointment after how much it was hyped.
I’ve been disturbed by all the comments I’ve seen about how we should support a bad movie just because it isn’t a franchise film. That could backfire terribly, because it would make executives think that quality is irrelevant, that we’ll see any movie that fits a given category and thus they don’t have to bother to make it any good. Of course, they already think that, but the worst thing we can do is prove them right. We should support good movies, regardless of what category they belong to.
And I agree that originality is not about what title or characters you use. You can take an existing concept and do something very original with it (e.g. Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica, which could not have been more different from its predecessor and was essentially the world’s first magic-realist space opera), or you can attach a new title and character names to something that’s just an uninspired rehash of familiar tropes. Originality isn’t about where your ideas came from, it’s about where you take them from there.
@1: Apparently the “gray alien” iconography can be traced back to a ’60s Time Life Books publication that speculated about what humanity might evolve into in a million years — a speculation based more on cultural prejudices than solid science, since it assumed mind would prevail over body, sexuality would completely vanish, and everyone would end up extremely pale-skinned. The thing is, UFO sightings always reflected images of aliens that the public knew from pop culture: in the early ’50s, UFO claimants described little green men with antennae; in the mid-’50s, the age of the monster B-movie, they tended to describe big scary monsters; and in the early ’60s, the age of TV aliens that were just actors in funny costumes, UFO “contactees” tended to describe their occupants as idealized humans. It wasn’t long after the Time Life publication that we started to get reports of what we now call “Grays.” But by then, UFO lore was becoming part of the popular culture in and of itself, so that image of aliens ended up being reinforced by movies like Close Encounters and the like, and later on by things like Communion and The X-Files.
As for Roswell, that was a non-issue in UFO lore until about 1979-80, when a UFO researcher dug up a long-forgotten item about the military retrieving a “flying disk” near Roswell and then identifying it as a weather balloon. At the time in 1947, just weeks after the term “flying disk” first entered the vernacular, it merely meant a round airborne object of unknown nature; but the researcher filtered it through her own prejudices, believing the military had first admitted finding an alien ship and then covered it up. So she investigated, no doubt asking a lot of leading questions of people who’d long since forgotten the minor incident, and assembled the Roswell cover-up tale as we know it today, first putting it forth in a book that was then adapted into a movie a few years later. This was just a few years after Close Encounters, so “Grays” became associated with Roswell because they were already the dominant UFO-alien image in the culture at the time the Roswell myth was fabricated.
Anyway, back to the film, the use of an alien image as cliched as the “Grays” argues against this film having any kind of originality. The only lazier alien trope at this point is aliens that look just like humans — which the film also uses, compounding its unoriginality with the hoary cliche of humanity originating in space and being seeded on Earth. The moment I saw that idea mentioned in the trailer, I lost all interest in the movie. There’s nothing original about it. The problem with screen sci-fi is that most of the people who make it never read prose SF, never get exposed to the rich font of new and innovative ideas it features, and thus they just recycle the much narrower range of tropes that TV and movies have been rehashing for generations.
@7: There is, fortunately, a directors’ cut of Dark City that loses the voiceover and restructures the film in some other ways too. It’s an enormous improvement.
@9 Please tone down your rhetoric, even when disagreeing with the author of the piece or other commenters, in line with our moderation policy. Thanks.
I think that the only reason anyone would suggest a multi film version of this movie is that the whole thing felt rushed. The movie sucked because it never developed any of the characters or plotlines. My first reaction after watching it was to wonder why would someone go through all this effort to tell a story and then not tell the story.
@11: I’ve seen it suggested that in the current Hollywood feature-industry culture, as shaped by the film schools that are producing this generation of directors, the perception is that “telling a story” is about visuals, performances, and technique — pretty much everything except writing. Directors are trained to focus on creating images and evoking emotions, and the basic foundations of plot and writing are de-emphasized.
Whenever an unknown no-budget movie does really well it’s because it has a good plot and the people involved were skilled storytellers in their own capacity (director, actors, writers, etc). That should be enough to point to how important those aspects are regardless of how many blockbusters in the Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer vein do well financially speaking. I mean, not all movies need to be narratively profound but as long as sucky movies keep raking in the big bucks because “look at those special effects!” we’re pretty much screwed.
There is a difference between original and creative/innovative work, and the author seems to be mixing things up. Jupiter Ascending is indeed an original work. There’s no book, game, play or TV show behind it. It’s not a “safe” story pre-approved by audiences. The story was written originally for the movie with all the risks it implies. That’s the point the Variety article defends – and I stand for it. People are now so used to going to the movies knowing well the characters and/or the plot that it’s getting harder for them to get used to a whole new universe (specially a complex one like in Jupiter Ascending) and characters in a couple of hours. But that’s how things used to be before this giant (and annoying) adaptation wave, and it’d be a good thing if we had more room for original fiction work in the film industry – but people need to be more receptive about them.
As for the innovation part…well, nothing is really 100% as revolutionary as the author expects “original” works to be. Star Wars has heavy influences of Kurosawa movies and The Power of the Myth. Matrix was very influenced by Ghost in the Shell, Soylent Green and Plato’s cave myth. What differs Jupiter Acending from the previous ones is that its influences are maybe not that underground and more easily noticed. But even abusing of largely used formulas, there are still things worth watching in Jupiter Ascending, it’s not a complete disaster. The visual is awesome, the whole concept of planetary civilization is fine, and there are some really mind blowing action. It’s not a perfect movie. But it’s not that bad either.
I saw Edge of Tomorrow last year when a lot of people didn’t, so I’ve already thrown my donation towards originality lately. Ditto for Interstellar.
Since Jupiter Ascending looks as messy as the swirling clouds of that planet, I won’t be rushing out to see it any time soon. Though I am tempted to donate money because of the obvious color crisis in Hollywood. No, not those colors. I’m talking about the colors in the top photo. Look at that! Teal and orange are at it again! Let’s raise some money, people. Give these filmmakers the funds to buy more crayons.
Did Sean Bean’s character survive? That would be original….
Whatever! It felt like a book that I was enjoying, but wouldn’t do a reread on. That said, I was okay with the references, ripping off and everything else. I had 2 major issues. How could ANY girl living in Chicago’s poverty be so passively stupid? or gullible?
Also–really? Still cleaning toilets while owning the earth? Sigh.
Yeah, it’s not like ‘The Matrix’ was very original, either. They just ripped off a lot of books, comics, anime, and Kung Fu movies that most Americans had never heard of at the time. Being the nerd that I am, I was familiar with those things and was not impressed with ‘The Matrix’ at all, but most people wouldn’t listen to me when I said the movie was shit and all the philosophical crap in the movie was just a bunch of nonsensical mumbo jumbo. The sequels vindicated me, though. The Wachowski’s are just a couple of hacks that, like far too many of this generation’s film makers, are merely content to imitate, borrow, and steal from previous generations movies and books and add nothing new to them. See Tarantino, Eli Roth, and so on.
@14 I believe the point of the athour is that original or not the movie is extremely derivative. That the movie going public should not have movies that the best thing that can be said about them is that they’re not bad foisted upon them. That we deserve truly good scifi movies whether they are original or not. I would love to see a good original scifi movie and really enjoyed Interstellar so I agree with that point. I save movies that aren’t bad for my netflix Q not my $14 a pop theater watching.
Yup, nobody’s arguing that the movie isn’t an original story, that is, not based on a pre-existing property such as a novel, TV series, comic, video game, stage play, cave painting or whatever. And nobody’s arguing that the only way to be original or good is to not be derivative of other things, because that’s near impossible.
The point was that the movie itself isn’t very good. Their best stuff is either a pretty straighforward, but watered down, adaptation of a solid piece of work (V for Vendetta, Cloud Atlas) or, like Mr. Furious pointed out, a mish-mash of stuff they like that not many people knew about at the time and, thus, was erroneously perceived as innovative (the first Matrix).
If you like them and enjoy their stuff, that’s great. It’s definitely better than a lot of crap out there, but just because a slap in the face isn’t as bad as a kick in the nuts, one does not go arguing the merits of being slapped in the face.
I’m a fan of sci-fi and I’ve enjoyed several of the Wachowskis’ movies on one level or another, including this one. I can’t, however, in honesty say that it’s a good movie. Just because I like something does not make it good, in the same manner that me hating There Will Be Blood does not detract from its merits as a good film.
Most people think quality of a product is in direct proportion to their enjoyment of it, which would only hold true if every opinion was objetctive. So no, trying to be objective, this movie is pretty bad even if I did have fun watching it.
@20
I’m not even mad at all! But I love the name “Mr. Furious.” Great super villain name! :-)
@21: Mr. Furious is actually a superhero name — specifically Ben Stiller’s character in Mystery Men (and the character in Flaming Carrot Comics on whom he was based).
@8: Regarding the cliché of humans being originally from another part of the Universe: how many times has that idea been used recently?
Other than episodes from, say, The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, I can only think of a few examples, like The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Battlestar Galactica. Maybe we could include Larry Niven’s Paks and Star Trek’s ancient ones who both seeded the galaxy with their DNA.
@23: Prometheus used the “seeded by humanoid aliens” trope, and that was just a couple of years ago. Then there’s Mission to Mars from 2000, which posited that humans were the descendants of the Martians. And while Stargate SG-1 initially took the reverse path of having aliens transplant humans from Earth to other worlds, the Ori storyline in the 2005-7 seasons reversed that by revealing that the humanoid Ancients (the ancestors/engineers of modern humans, who’d originally been treated as an earlier evolution of humanity native to Earth itself) had actually come to Earth from another galaxy. So that’s at least four major uses in the past 15 years.
For older examples, Space: 1999 used it in “The Testament of Arkadia.” And Doctor Who tie-in fiction has often hinted that the Time Lords were the progenitors of all humanoid life in the universe in one way or another. (I think the closest the current show has come, though, is having a couple of exchanges where a character says to the Doctor, “But you look human,” to which he replies, “No, you look Time Lord.”)
Proposed theme for a new film: Earth is plagued by aliens coming to invade apiaries and test their putative new queens.
Then again, I thought Matrix 2 was the best, so wjo am I to judge…
I’m fascinated by the difference I’m seeing in reviews from male and female reviews.
Majority of female reviews I’ve read: “Zany over-the-top sheer ridiculous wish fulfilment so-bad-its-brilliant fun. Unashamed sci-fi romance. GO SEE IT NOW!”
Majority of male reviews I’ve read: “Silly. Skip.”
@@@@@ 14 : “There is a difference between original and creative/innovative work, and the author seems to be mixing things up.”
that mix up occurred a long, long time ago. as far as reviewer shorthand goes, “original” does mean “creative, innovative, good”. our culture is too focused on originality, on the new and shiny. i’m definitely in the story quality camp on this. but, i do see the problem insofar as frightening film executives, who see a large risk taken, flop, and do think : ah, we should never do something original again!
originality is meaningless and frankly, largely non-existent. genre fans don’t care if something is new or an established property (which, damnit, was new once): they just want it to be good. if only producers understood that…
@14: The author isn’t confused about the definition of originality — simply pointing out that defining originality on the basis of whether it’s a first-time story or a continuation/adaptation is missing the point. As I said, you can retell an old story in a very original way (see: pretty much every Shakespeare play) or you can tell a “new” story in a very derivative and unoriginal way.
While everyone is name dropping matrix refs, not to derail, but “The 13th Floor” was actually a bit of a fan sleeper just before The Matrix occluded all film briefly.
It strikes me that this period in random was awfully concerned with the nature of reality, and how minds make reality.
But without having to read all that Borges.
Arisian spores seeded most of the zillions of Earth/ Human planets in the two galaxies, according to E. E. “Doc” Smith. That was from the ’30s: I can’t think of earlier. Unless God is considered extraterrestrial.
ChristopherLBennett @8-
Are you trying to be reasonable about UFO aliens?
@30: Nope — for me, being reasonable just kinda happens. ;)
Thank you for this, but the main problem with JA for me was that the movie wasn’t any good period. I could have grokked all the rehashed tropes if they’d been done well. I would be curious to see a director’s cut of this movie (if I get to see it for free) just in case the Wachowski’s “true vision” was mangled by the studio, but I suspect they just made an incredibly poor film. I’m sorry I spent money on it.
I just have a few gripes on this article.
First is the misnaming of referenced films: Barabrella and Malificent. A good proofreader would have spared us the dismay at why perfectly good movies which starred female icons were not grokked by the writer.
The other one is that you stated that “n [i]The Matrix our bodies were batteries for weird aliens.” The humans’ bodies in the film weren’t power sources for aliens, but for sentient machines which mankind developed.
Well guess what. I Freaking LOVED IT!
And I can’t wait to see a 2nd and 3rd film to follow this one up. I hope the universe and characters that this film presents are given much more space to develop and become more fleshed out. I think the story was utterly fascinating.
@10: Katherine, I am always suprised time and time again how a little criticism when inconvenient is classified as being inapprorpiate.
On the note of appropriateness, may I kindly suggest you have a read of some current academic discussion on the topic:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/2289?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+freethoughtblogs%2Fcarrier+%28FTB%3A+Richard+Carrier+Blogs%29
I find Christopher’s post not inappropriate, but yours worrying. I am wondering what welse gets censored on Tor.com. I assume this coment will never show :)
@35 I think you’re mistaking my response to comment #9 as being to comment #8. Christopher’s post was not unpublished: it was the comment at #9 did not abide by our moderation policy. That commenter is welcome to rephrase. Criticism is always welcome in these discussions, as long as it’s expressed in a manner that’s not rude or abusive towards other commenters or bloggers.
@35 – Unless your timing was very good earlier, but you were just late to post, CLB’s comment is 8 and the referecned 9 has been removed (I’d prefer problematic posts be hidden rather than removed, the better to use as gauges, but that has nothing to do with your comment).
As for the idea of originality in storytelling, I think it comes down to how a work is adapted. The vast majority of Disney animation is based on existing works, but they feel original – they take a story and make it their own. On the other hand, the countless Spiderman reboots that we’re getting feel like the same story rehashed. I think this similar to the fear that people are expressing about the new Ghostbusters or the complaints about Abrams’s Star Trek. You can tell a new and compelling story, but if all you do is rehash the same stories with different actors, it feels like more of the same.
I was interested in JA, and it was on my list of “oh, that could be worth a gander for $5” films. But, if we are just getting a common story with new actors plugged in, I can pass.
I saw this last night and it was basically a hot mess. It was visually very cool, but the plot lacked cohesion. It seemed like they wanted to cram in a bunch of things and then ended up with plotlines not being followed up.
For example, the bee part could have been interesting, but they basically dropped it after showing it. It seemed more like an excuse to do bees with cgi.
Sean Bean daugther being sick was the reason he left earth and betrayed them for a cure.
The movie is good for being a big dumb pretty sci fi movie. Don’t expect enormoius depths in two hours.
“In the matrix we were battires for weird aliens” Did you even see the movie?
I hate seeing the media blame the audiences for not wanting “original” content. No! We don’t want crappy movies!
I am constantly bemoaning the amount of “unoriginal” works lately — all the comic book movies, book adaptations, etc. Don’t get me wrong, they can be and many times are great movies that I will pay to see, but it does make me sad to see how little “original” work really gets released lately.
And then something like this tanks and they want to say “Audiences don’t want original!” which scares the studios off, and generally just creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Very similar to the way studios avoid female protagonists because a few films with them flopped hard.
Trust me, it’s not the originality , it’s the movie itself. Personally I was not interested in it from the get go because it looked like a lazy attempt at some flashy SF. I’m tired of the “perfect female chosen one” trope who is of course a Mary Sue if I’ve ever seen one. I don’t really like Kunis or Tatum either so that didn’t sell it for me. Basically my impression from the trailer was that it was a pretty shallow piece of work, relying more on flashy CG to make the sell.
Hahaha, such bad acting this movie had.
This summary is damn nice, love the wedding section:
http://www.digestivepyrotechnics.com/2015/02/jupiter-ascending-plot-review.html
One movie missing from the reference is Flash Gordon. A number of the troops (masks and outfit colors) in JA resemble Ming’s guards. The fact that Ming destroys planets for fun and there’s the same intergalactic wedding to spare earth. Not to mention Titus and Jupiter wedding outfits resemble those of Ming and Dale and the wedding gets crashed by the Heros Flash/Cane.
@41, “I’m tired of the “perfect female chosen one” trope who is of course a Mary Sue if I’ve ever seen one.”
You must *really* be tired of the “perfect male chosen one” trope then, since it’s been around since the dawn of time.
There’s nothing wrong with women writing heroines that fulfill some fantasies of theirs. Harping on “Mary Sues” to me reeks of sexism. Most characters called that have plenty of faults, but the fact that they are objects of female fantasies seems to be their only real fault in the eyes of many beholders. Have you seen the movie so that you can say otherwise?
I think I may be able to help you understand what that odd scene in the middle of the movie (intergalactic bureaucracy) was all about. They kept saying she had to go through the ascension process in order to receive her entitlement to claim her title to earth. That is a metaphor for going through spiritual ascension, which, if you’ve ever gone through a Kundalini awakening would understand the parallel. Going through all of the Kundalini ascension trials/symptoms (look it up) is like waiting in various lines at the DMV. It can be stressful and just when you think you’re through, you have to wait in “another line”. All of this, of course, is so that a person can achieve enlightenment (which the movie playfully calls entitlement). Every review I’ve come across seems to miss this point. The movie actually parallels The Matrix very closely, in that, an ordinary person is plucked from obscurity, shown that there’s more to the world and the universe, goes through trials to prove that they are The ONE, and then saves the world. I’m sure that much was edited, and yes they could’ve done better. But I personally think that there’s an agenda at play to keep people from seeing movies like this, movies that touch a little on truths that the powers that be don’t want the masses to know. It was bad for many reasons, but I believe that the negativity regarding this movie when it comes to reviews is being heightened for a very specific reason. So people won’t go see it. The movie was based off the Terra Papers. Look into that yourself and you’ll see….
There is an obvious vendetta against the directors. So many trolls out there. It nearly put me off going to see it. But I loved the movie. I dont care that there were more than a few characters portrayed at the beginning. Its not hard to follow. The three at the beginning were obviously bounty hunters. Homages to Dune, Brasil, Flash Gordon and ‘Enslaved’ the xbox game (Hanuman ‘Monkey’ story). Caine is very similar to Monkey from that game who had a flying disk and sheild.
Ryan Britt wrote “Since the “real” world of The Matrix is not near as interesting as the Matrix itself…” I wholeheartedly have to disagree, that was pure science fiction (showing mankind to ascend – from a sewer – again on the ladder after its fall) compared to the 2oth Century familiar settings within the Matrix. @@@@@ 45, interesting speculation but I did miss actual “enlightenment” throughout the story of Jupiter Ascending where I still feel there is an abundance in the Matrix Trilogy. Apparently “enlightenment” helped Jupiter to clean toilets with a different mindset but I think that was just as unrealistic and hilarious as would be the mere idea of the Wachowskis quitting the film industry and returning to their original occupation: renovating apartments (but maybe that break would do them some good, considering their great ideas that sprang from that early work).
My review of Jupter Ascending goes something like this: When I actually take the time to go see a movie in a theater, it is a special event. I am not a professional movie critic or even an occasional critic. I am a regular person. I can only tell you what I liked and didn’t like. Fair? This is going to bounce about a bit, so hold on tight…. I like Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum and Sean Bean. I like science fiction, always have and always will. Now, mind you, my first viewing of Jupiter Ascending was in my small, hometown theater that doesn’t have the best acoustics (old theater chairs where your knees hit the chair in front of you is a drawback, but I persevered). I missed a few words, but got the gist of what they were saying. I walked away knowing I would watch it again someday. The rare opportunity came again two days later as it was a matinee showing at a big theater in the city. (Acoustics were awesome, recliners weren’t bad either.) I heard all the words this time and picked up some points that I hadn’t caught before. I would have preferred that the story be explained more in depth, but then we would be watching a ten hour movie, right? Total spent: $9. Bottom line: I liked it. Yes, there were some hokey scenes. But how many other movies have we seen that don’t? I guess, if everyone who has decided they didn’t like Jupiter Ascending would like to step forward and write an original story that can stand up to being made into a movie, put your money where your mouth is. Original or not. Quality or not. I still liked it. To tell you the truth, I might have to go see it again.
I saw “Jupiter Ascending” based on what I thought was an excellent trailer for it, and left underwhelmed, realizing I had seen some terrible acting, most notably from Eddie Redmayne, who deserved his Academy Award winning portrayal of physicist Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything”. Hollywood could if it had chosen to – or rather the Wachovskis – based a film on, for example, David Weber’s “Honor Harrington” space opera novels, and that might have been far more exciting than the mess that is “Jupiter Ascending”. I know that leaving the theater, it made me think of the J. J. Abrams reboot of “Star Trek” as faux cinematic high art, and really made me wish I had seen again “Guardians of the Galaxy”. My thanks to Ryan Britt for his most perceptive commentary within this essay.
I agree with pretty much everything you said, even though I really *wanted* to like the movie… but you’re badly in need of a proofreader:
“hating on the idea of “original” science fiction”
“claims that the failure”
inherit, not inherent
revealed in terribly predictable what?
byproduct, not bi-product
There’s no hyphen in redoing, retitled, aforementioned, or “a winged person”.
flimsy, not flimsily
Barbarella, not Barabrella
Maleficent, not Malificent
remake of, not remake to
not nearly as interesting
the fact that it seems like a mismash
You do realize that their greatest achievement the matrix was was just a bunch of other peoples ideas cobbled together from other places and slathered in lowest denominator hipster cool.
People said that the sequals weren’t as good, but they were exactly the same. Except when the same formula was repeated twice more people suddenly went “Hey, this is just kind of corny and stupid”.
It always was nitwit.
It was the first time.
I enjoyed it. Was sufficient for my imagination to fill in the gaps and run with it. Most of you seem to have forgotten what that was like.
Yeah, the characters, their humor and a number of scenes look like something I wrote a few years back, had published for 2.5 years and pulled out of the market. Not saying they stole my ideas but…you know ;-)
I have nothing against being dropped head first into a Universe. But explain some it. What was the girl sick with and did she get healed? What did Caine do that got him booted? Why is Jupiter still cleaning-shouldn’t she slowly be introducing Healthcare and food tech to the Earth?
I don’t care that there were copied elements, I care that the storytelling was bad.
The less-used sci-fi idea in Jupiter Ascending (which was not developed properly) is that there is a family from another world ruling over this one and harvesting stuff from it. It is based on Pleiadian New Age myths, books like The 12th Planet, and movies like Battlefield Earth (a nod to L. Ron Hubbard, funny enough) but with a twist about humans versus gold, so at least in that regard it is fairly entertaining. (Plus there were some other esoteric parallels, as #45 had noted. To me, original is about how interesting and little-known the sources are, rather than what is taken so aggressively by some commenters here as borrowings from the well-known (?) past.)
What’s also funny is that I first thought Jupiter Ascending (JA) was based on some comic book and was not original at all, so I wasn’t disappointed with it that much (– not an exciting trailer either, IMHO). No matter, I confirm that Sense8 is indeed “absolutely brilliant.” In fact, I think the Wachowskis had finally outdone themselves (and soon after JA too!). Sense8 is no fairy story like The Matrix was. In the case of Sense8, the Wachowskis had finally made “expansive/crazy” (@@@@@ #4) that works. Kudos to them! And all after Warner Brothers dropped them. Hey, at least they were accepted into AMPAS! Well deserved indeed!
It seems to me that everything following The Matrix up to Sense8 was made during a transitioning period from brothers to full-fledged sisters. That would explain JA as a chick flick (@@@@@ #26, support from #34) but one that hasn’t found its feminine/trans/gay soul yet. Now stop complaining and go see Sense8.