By SETH HYNES
JUPITER Ascending is unabashedly style over substance – and it’s awesome.
When lowly housecleaner Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) learns that she is actually interplanetary royalty, she becomes tangled in the affairs of an alien noble house vying for her inheritance of the Earth.
Jupiter Ascending plays to the Wachowskis’ strengths of big ideas and mindblowing spectacle, and has certain elements that might have been disastrous in the hands of more restrained directors.
All of the characters are quite basic, including Jupiter, but this works well in framing her as an everyday person thrown into extraordinary situations, thus helping us relate to her.
Kunis and Channing Tatum (as Jupiter’s guard Caine) have endearing, dependable chemistry (even if the romantic sub-plot is terribly hackneyed).
The plot is lightweight and feels rushed in parts, as if cut for time, but Jupiter Ascending still astounds with creative, energetic action and enthralling world-building.
The set design, costumes and effects are magnificently vibrant.
The film takes old sci-fi tropes such as genetic engineering, harvesting humans as resources (like The Matrix) and spacefaring aristocracies (a la Dune) and makes them feel bold and fresh.
Jupiter Ascending needed some rewrites (and recasting Eddie Redmayne, who absolutely sucks as the main villain), but it’s nevertheless wonderful to watch a dynamic, good-humoured space opera that has fun but thinks big at the same time.
Too few mainstream sci-fi films do both these days.
