Movie Review: Jupiter Ascending

[hrj]

High 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.)

Comments

[irinarempt.pip.verisignlabs.com (from livejournal.com)]

Nice to see that I'm not the only one who uses 'bleeping' (also 'what the bleep'), Or who gets instant motion sickness from 3D films.

That said, I think I want to see it, but I'll wait for the DVD so my other half and I can unashamedly bitch about it.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I have a weird relationship to 3D film technology (even ignoring the fact that wearing glasses makes the 3D goggles non-optimal). As I understand it, there are three different 3D technologies currently popular. One of them sort of works for me (aside from wearing glasses over glasses). One of them simply doesn't connect with my brain. When I watch it, my eyes can't integrate the two images and it's like each eye is watching an entirely different movie. And the third sort-of works unless the motion is very fast (which, of course, it always is) and unless you have sporadic 3D effects against a relatively "flat" background. Then my eyes seem to develop different focal depths and one eye will always feel out of focus.

If I could figure out which of the three is the one that works, I might be willing to give it a chance. (When 3D animated films first became popular, they tended to use the technique I like.) But it's easier just to avoid 3D altogether.

[vnend.livejournal.com]

I'm lucky in that none of the 3D techniques bother me, but I know a few people who get nauseous trying to watch it.

That said, the only one that really works consistently for me is what I see in IMax theaters. To the point that, if I want to see something in 3D, that where I'll go (and there aren't any all that close.) If I'm with someone who wants to see it in 3D I'm willing, but I'm not expecting all that much.

Thank you for the review; I've been on the fence about seeing this one, and I think you've tipped it into the 'go see it' column.

IMAX 3D

[scotica.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure the 3D that works is IMAX -- that's what the first few we saw together were (Beowulf, etc.)

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

...oh, interesting! I didn't even think that the bit near the end could be read as an "all just a dream" fake-out/threat. Probably because I've so seldom experienced any stories that would use such a thing, it didn't occur to me as a possibility.

It's also interesting to me that it works for you as a romance-trope story, because I read it as 'female power fantasy', where acquiring an attractive, loyal, special Love Interest Of Preferred Gender was just part of that package. (Hollywood being what it is, defaulting to Straight White Dude, though the fanfic community will happily remove the first part of that.) And...gosh, there were a lot of dropped plot threads, in a way that makes me dream of a sequel that addresses some of them.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the movie, but it definitely felt like every time it had to choose between explosions and plot cohesion, it sacrificed the latter to keep the former. Very pretty explosions, at least.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I'd phrase it "works for me as a romance-trope story", more like "makes sense as a romance-trope story". ("Works for me" would have to involve the hypothetical possibility that there might be a non-heterosexual romance.)

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Right, "works for" in the sense of "makes sense in its choices of how to structure and prioritize plot elements."

I note in passing that there's a lot of interest in Kalique/Jupiter follow-up stories over in the fanfic community, but I'm not really sure how you feel about 1) fanfic, 2) the rather confused question of whether or not that would constitute incest.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

As a general rule, fanfic doesn't do much for me. Part of it is that one of my non-negotiables is good writing. And while there is certainly fanfic that would meet my standards, there is rarely a way to filter for that standard in combination with my reading interests. But the second aspect is that I want original fiction that addresses my tastes, and saying "oh, well, there's fanfic that takes care of that aspect" is acknowledging that, in a way, we've given up on expecting/demanding a breadth of experiences from original fiction. I'd rather have my reading support original fiction that *almost* hits the spot. Because in the long term, that support is more likely to lead to people being able to write original fiction that *does* hit my spots.

From the other direction, it's sort of the same as being asked to compromise my desire for well written fiction just because a story has fantasy elements and lesbian characters. If I give up on asking for better writing quality, I'll never get better writing quality.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

It's definitely harder to find high-quality writing in fanfic than in published fiction; god knows I don't read much of the former myself because it's so much harder to find what'll meet my standards.

As for giving up on demanding that from original fiction... That's not really the way I tend to view it, honestly? A lot of people reading and writing fanfic are also saying "Yes, I want more of this in the original fiction I read!" at the same time. They're not opposing forces, after all, and sometimes fanfic is basically the patchwork and home-made kludge that people can get while waiting for something more professionally produced.

That said, "doesn't do it for me" is totally fair as an answer. I tend to find fanfic more useful, personally, as insight into the sorts of things people got from a piece of media, and what they want in general, than as a useful source of new fiction. Too many good books to read already, and all that.

[tommy50702.livejournal.com]

I just saw it and I feel like I'm the only one who liked it :/

[hrj.livejournal.com]

You aren't alone! Lots of people in SFF twitter and blogging circles loved it.