Jupiter Ascending

JUPITER ASCENDING's strength comes chiefly from its visually extravagant presentation of a mammoth romantic cosmic tale. Its promise of an engaging story soars at the start, but from the heights it reached within its complex and ever expanding universe, it descends rapidly and falls flat with its poor and brow-arching narrative. The film's biggest mistake is that it focuses heavily on decorating its worlds and everything in them, that it leaves its script poorly delivered and blandly executed. Its story, following an ordinary woman deemed to be "the Chosen One", rolls and branches out from one world to another now and then, but often gets derailed from its spine, and thus gets left unresolved. It gets further dragged by uninteresting and underdeveloped characters you would rather laugh about and love if they weren't in the scene.

JUPITER ASCENDING fails to carry out a glorious astral ascent. In spite of its jaw-dropping visual prestige, it misfires and never soars past its cinematographic grandeur. A thrilling visual presentation utterly bereft of narrative eloquence, JUPITER ASCENDING is another huge cinematic mishap, best appreciated by audience that are only after feeding the eyes. I give this movie 5/10 stars.

I'm not sure how to start this review so I'll just get right into it: This movie isn't good. It makes no sense. There is no room to get immersed in this world because there is no story to relate to. It's all just stuff happening; fluff. Beautiful, well made fluff mind you, but at its core this movie is a steaming hot mess.

Here's the plot from what I gathered: Mila Kunis is suddenly the majesty of the Earth and has to protect it from a bunch of rich douchebags that live in Jupiter's atmosphere who want to use it for harvesting grounds or something. It's a dumb plot, and every scene that tries to move the plot forward is a scene wasted. The only interesting parts of this movie are the visuals and Channing Tatum's character, but even he is given absolutely no character development. He's just a badass space agent, or something. I don't even remember.

The characters end up the same way they began - there was no journey to redemption or revelation for anyone. It was just do this, do that, stop this, go home, the end. And they try to include multiple stories, like Mila Kunis' relationship with her family (boooring); Caine (Tatum) and Stinger's (Sean Bean) history (wholly underdeveloped), the whole villain arc...

The villains in this movie are spoiled brats. Seriously. They're not scary, they're not intimidating, there was no point in the movie where I was like "oh man sh*t is about to go down"; there was just no intrigue. Their motives were all over the place. It's not worth trying to piece together every plot point they throw into the movie because it will just lead to confusion and disappointment, and eventually frustration when you realize how much potential was wasted in creating this massive universe. The lizards looked really cool. Why not have more of them? Oh we're just going to focus on the playboy brat now, okay.

I really wanted to care about this universe. It has a Star Wars vibe in parts, like the "royal" wedding scene and the space battles, but there were no good characters to experience this adventure with. You're just watching things happen with no consequences, or at least none you cared about.

The acting was fine in this movie. Channing Tatum and Sean Bean in particular gave great performances, and Eddie Redmayne as the primary antagonist was decent as well. Yeah, he's an Academy Award winner, and as much as I hate to say it I have not seen The Theory of Everything yet but I loved him in Les Mis so I was really hoping he would save this movie. Unfortunately the material he's given is absolute garbage, so in an effort to make the character stand out, Redmayne give him a weird, eerie, whisper voice that was akin to a hundred year old man trying to force words out from the back of his throat. But hey, I think it worked. The guy is completely unlikeable so might as well give him a unique trait to remember him by. Good on Mr. Redmayne because he succeeded. The only things I will remember about this movie are the cool visuals, the wasted potential, and his creepy voice.

Don't see this movie. Unless you want to see some really great CGI for a couple hours, which can be found in much better places by the way, you won't find anything worth salvaging from Jupiter Ascending. It was a nice effort but ultimately a swing and a miss.

...the hate. Had a lot of neat things going on, had a bunch of sci fi that we'd all like to see in our lifetimes...and Mila Kunis. Watched it 4 times now, really wish they'd do a sequel...but I know the money's not there. It's a good, fun flick. There are a lot that aren't. HAHA, and now I have to add a line or my review's not worthy. Gotta love IMDb. Anyone think they're gonna bring the message boards back?

This movie came out last year (2015) and has had overall bad reviews. But despite that I gave it a shot having low expectations.

I actually liked it. Sure it was rough in some places. The relationship between Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum didn't seem real (more like cold).

But you have to understand what they were shooting for. It's a very ambitious science fiction fantasy movie. It reminded me a bit of Dune (the book and movies). The special effects were great. A lot of action. It feels like it could have been great if there was real chemistry between the two and if they would have smoothed out a few of the rough spots.

Overall pretty entertaining.

For five years, I've put off watching this movie due to unfavorable reviews. Quarantine had me desperate for new content though so I gave it a shot and was not disappointed.

It's not high cinema, and there are certainly elements "borrowed" from other franchises... but the cinematography, acting, and storyline were all excellent. The SciFi "tech" and style was well thought out and original. It's a fun movie and just about the right length for the genre. If you liked Stargate, Blade Runner, or Dune (heck, even The Last Starfighter) you'll like Jupiter Ascending.