![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Movie Review: Jupiter Ascending
Feb. 15th, 2015 01:01 pmHigh point: really amazing visual design. Amazing. Lush and intricate.
Low point: OMG enough with the chases and battles and explosions already! I just don't bleeping care. Yes, I know you have 3D effects to show off. And if I'd tried to watch the 3D version I'd have been puking my guts out in the aisle. (I know better than to watch 3D at this point.)
Various people on Twitter primed me with the knowledge that if you don't go into this movie having set your viewing protocols for "heterosexual sci-fi romance" it looks like a bit of a hot mess. (Actually, nobody bothered to mention the "heterosexual" part because of course that's assumed. I just like to throw it in there to make a point.) Given those viewing protocols, the movie delivers exactly what was ordered. As with many romances, the set-up has a bit of a Cinderella-ish feel. There are no actual "wicked step-relatives", though -- the dynamic in Jupiter's family is boisterously chaotic, but you get the solid sense of love and connection among them, which is important for making later events plausible. (Oh, right, the heroine's name is Jupiter.) As soon as you get to the "Me? A Space-princess?" moment, you pretty much know how the whole thing will resolve, at least on the macro scale. The characters are straight out of Archetype Central, but dressed up imaginatively.
I feel like I'm not really describing the plot. OK: ordinary working-class Earth girl discovers she's really a Space Princess due to being a genetic double for a deceased Space Princess. Discovering this involves lots of aliens chasing her and trying to kill her and being rescued/kidnapped by a hunky genetic-engineered wolf-man hybrid mercenary guy, prone to brooding and smouldering looks. And bees. There's a thing with bees. It's weird and random and doesn't get exploited enough. The Space Royalty are fighting over ownership of Earth and Jupiter's existence throws a wrench in the works. Uncertain who she can trust, Jupiter makes a bid to establish her status, hampered by all the usual flaws of being a Good Guy -- like the tendency to throw away strategic advantages any time someone she cares about gets threatened. In the end, Right prevails. Bad guys die (probably). Good guys get rewarded. We work through the threat of one last "and it was all a dream" episode. And then Jupiter gets her happily-for-the-foreseeable-future with her hunky space mercenary.
There are many things to love about this movie (besides the visuals). The hunky love interest may spend a lot of time saving the princess, but she also gets a lot of agency and does a plausible amount of self-rescuing when available. And there are lots of messy dangling plot-ends. This may not be a "thing to love" for everyone, but I enjoy a story that makes clear that there's a big world out there and you aren't going to see the resolution of all of it. (Whatever happened to whats-his-name's daughter? Are they really just going to leave Earth alone at the end of all that? And "dignity of all labor" and all that, but can't she use some of her space-princessy power to arrange for a different family business?) Another messy aspect that I liked but not everyone may was the almost random nature of the initial scenes. Everything gets tied together soon enough, but there's a lot of "huh? what just happened there?" that you just have to wait on.
There are many things to look askance about this movie (besides the endless chases, fights, and explosions). The resolution may be realistic (save Earth but don't give much thought to the bigger picture) but undermines the morality somewhat. The power relationship between the Space Aristocracy and the Space Bureaucracy/Government is not at all clear and seems a key point for the success of the resolution. There are a few intrusive moments of slapstick humor that seem out of place. (The movie badly needs its allotment of humor, but didn't always implement it well.) The penultimate "and it was all a dream" fake-out felt cheesy. I do not include "plausibility of Space Logistics" in this discussion because it's a space fantasy, not technological science fiction.
Overall: if the phrase "heterosexual sci-fi romance" doesn't put you off, definitely see it. The movie has a nicely female-centered vibe that we could use more of. (No doubt why they felt the need to balance it out with all those chases, fights, and explosions.)
Low point: OMG enough with the chases and battles and explosions already! I just don't bleeping care. Yes, I know you have 3D effects to show off. And if I'd tried to watch the 3D version I'd have been puking my guts out in the aisle. (I know better than to watch 3D at this point.)
Various people on Twitter primed me with the knowledge that if you don't go into this movie having set your viewing protocols for "heterosexual sci-fi romance" it looks like a bit of a hot mess. (Actually, nobody bothered to mention the "heterosexual" part because of course that's assumed. I just like to throw it in there to make a point.) Given those viewing protocols, the movie delivers exactly what was ordered. As with many romances, the set-up has a bit of a Cinderella-ish feel. There are no actual "wicked step-relatives", though -- the dynamic in Jupiter's family is boisterously chaotic, but you get the solid sense of love and connection among them, which is important for making later events plausible. (Oh, right, the heroine's name is Jupiter.) As soon as you get to the "Me? A Space-princess?" moment, you pretty much know how the whole thing will resolve, at least on the macro scale. The characters are straight out of Archetype Central, but dressed up imaginatively.
I feel like I'm not really describing the plot. OK: ordinary working-class Earth girl discovers she's really a Space Princess due to being a genetic double for a deceased Space Princess. Discovering this involves lots of aliens chasing her and trying to kill her and being rescued/kidnapped by a hunky genetic-engineered wolf-man hybrid mercenary guy, prone to brooding and smouldering looks. And bees. There's a thing with bees. It's weird and random and doesn't get exploited enough. The Space Royalty are fighting over ownership of Earth and Jupiter's existence throws a wrench in the works. Uncertain who she can trust, Jupiter makes a bid to establish her status, hampered by all the usual flaws of being a Good Guy -- like the tendency to throw away strategic advantages any time someone she cares about gets threatened. In the end, Right prevails. Bad guys die (probably). Good guys get rewarded. We work through the threat of one last "and it was all a dream" episode. And then Jupiter gets her happily-for-the-foreseeable-future with her hunky space mercenary.
There are many things to love about this movie (besides the visuals). The hunky love interest may spend a lot of time saving the princess, but she also gets a lot of agency and does a plausible amount of self-rescuing when available. And there are lots of messy dangling plot-ends. This may not be a "thing to love" for everyone, but I enjoy a story that makes clear that there's a big world out there and you aren't going to see the resolution of all of it. (Whatever happened to whats-his-name's daughter? Are they really just going to leave Earth alone at the end of all that? And "dignity of all labor" and all that, but can't she use some of her space-princessy power to arrange for a different family business?) Another messy aspect that I liked but not everyone may was the almost random nature of the initial scenes. Everything gets tied together soon enough, but there's a lot of "huh? what just happened there?" that you just have to wait on.
There are many things to look askance about this movie (besides the endless chases, fights, and explosions). The resolution may be realistic (save Earth but don't give much thought to the bigger picture) but undermines the morality somewhat. The power relationship between the Space Aristocracy and the Space Bureaucracy/Government is not at all clear and seems a key point for the success of the resolution. There are a few intrusive moments of slapstick humor that seem out of place. (The movie badly needs its allotment of humor, but didn't always implement it well.) The penultimate "and it was all a dream" fake-out felt cheesy. I do not include "plausibility of Space Logistics" in this discussion because it's a space fantasy, not technological science fiction.
Overall: if the phrase "heterosexual sci-fi romance" doesn't put you off, definitely see it. The movie has a nicely female-centered vibe that we could use more of. (No doubt why they felt the need to balance it out with all those chases, fights, and explosions.)
