Mallory and Shrill are friends who make each other see terrible movies.
Mallory: are you working right now?
want to talk about Jupiter Ascending?
Shrill: I am not
we can talk now if you’re free
Mallory: Shrill why did you make me see this movie
why do people keep giving the Wachowskis money
also: did I love this movie??
Shrill: I made you see this movie because I knew you would hate it slash I knew you would love it
Like I knew you would hate it on the surface, but like so deeply that the hate curdled into love
Why did I know you would love it? I don’t know
Mallory: I think I feel about it the opposite of how I feel about Ayn Rand
Shrill: expand
Mallory: I don’t know
I love Ayn Rand, but I know it’s wrong to love her
I hated this movie, but I know it knows that I need it
Shrill: that’s okay, the movie was Incredibly Specific about literally everything
Mallory: this movie had TWO SCENES WHERE CHANNING TATUM CRASHED A SPACESHIP TO KEEP MILA KUNIS FROM SIGNING A DOCUMENT
they went back to a VERY SPECIFIC WELL
Shrill: TWICE.
Mallory: everything about this movie felt like watching a Scientology video
Shrill: every time a character opened their mouths it sounded like a speech about midichlorians
or thetans
Mallory: I had to look up whether the Wachowskis were Scientologists like four times just to prove that they weren’t
Shrill: seriously, I feel like I can’t exactly be sure that I haven’t been brainwashed
it had all these non-sensical details that had nothing to do with the plot and only make sense to include if you’re trying to form a religion
Mallory: okay so like
speaking of nonsensical
I feel like we have to talk about the society/economy that apparently exists in this movie
because there are roughly four UNIVERSAL PHARAOHS
who are each flanked by lizard-dragons who wear leather jackets (WHY WOULD YOU WEAR LEATHER JACKETS IF YOU ALREADY HAD SCALES)
a handful of robot slaves
and planets of cattle people (us)
WHERE IS THE MIDDLE CLASS
WHO IS DOING THE HARVESTING
WHO IS PILOTING THE SHIPS
who is…who cleans their baroque space palaces?
who’s BUYING THEIR PRODUCT and MAKING THE PROFITS THEY KEEP TALKING ABOUT?
Shrill: the, y’know, “other people” were something that was incredibly unclear
like, where does the police class come from?
Mallory: well and one of the space emperors had an ENORMOUS STOCKPILE of youth juice or what have you
just traveling around with him
what is their resource allocation system??
what do they EAT
Shrill: remember there was that scene where the space emperor’s accountant was like ‘if you harvest in 100 years, your profits will exceed your competitor’s”
Mallory: right?? what profits?
they’re harvesting AND USING their own product, right?
how do they make money?
Shrill: this is where the existence of a middle class would make sense
sell small amounts of the stuff to middle class people, who would use it as currency or use it themselves
Mallory: this is like when they have you sell chocolate bars in high school to fund the marching band
and you end up buying them all yourself because no one wants to buy candy bars from a high schooler when they can just buy them anywhere else so you end up funding your own marching band
that’s not a scalable business plan!
Shrill: the whole thing was like a big piece of fan fiction in that it was super concerned with minutiae of world-building and making up ridiculous names that it completely forgets about large scale things
Mallory: yes! like…why is anyone behaving this way?
Shrill: idk how we’re treating spoilers but like
Mallory: SPOIL IT UP
Shrill: what exactly does Jupiter plan to, like…”do” with The Planet Earth?
and
if there are thousands of other planets filled with human beings that are going to be harvested, how does the end of the film constitute a happy ending?
you saved Earth on a time scale that is a minute compared with the lifespan of the people who wish to harvest it
congrats on saving earth for a bit, you’re going to die in fifty years and they’re gonna harvest it anyway
Mallory: HERE IS MY THING WITH THAT, SHRILL
like if there are two people
who are given the same resources
and one of them says GREAT, I will utilize them for profit and personal gain
and the other one says I WILL DO NOTHING, I will go back to cleaning toilets all day and pretend not to be a queen
GIVE IT TO THE SKIN EATER, Jupiter has clearly demonstrated that she does NOT DESERVE A LEADERSHIP ROLE
Shrill: are you going The Parable of the Talents on me?
are you casting Jupiter into the outer darkness
Mallory: OH MY GOD I AM
(retell the parable for the unsaved)
Shrill: so the parable of the talents is this story Jesus told the disciples and it goes basically like this
this rich guy is gonna go on a journey and he entrusts his three servants with money
pieces of his estate
to watch over while he’s away
two of the servants invest their money, essentially
and when the master comes back, they give the money back to him with interest
and the master is like: great
but the third servant said that he was afraid of losing the the money
so he buried it
Mallory: BULLSHIT, THIRD SERVANT
Shrill: yeah
the master is PISSED
he’s like, “you should have at least put it in the bank and given me a piddling amount of interest”
he says “give the the talents to one of the other ones who used it”
and throw this worthless dude outside (into hell)
it’s sort of hilarious because the end of the parable totally abandons the metaphor
Mallory: Shrill, let’s not get too off topic here, theologically
Shrill: I’m sorry
anyway point is
Jupiter buries her money instead of using it
even charging interest, which is technically bad, would have been better
Mallory: she doesn’t even use being QUEEN OF EARTH to pretend she got a SLIGHTLY BETTER JOB!!!
like “oh i got a job at starbucks instead of cleaning toilets”
SHE GOES BACK EXACTLY TO CLEANING TOILETS
Shrill: I mean on the other hand, what exactly is she supposed to do
Mallory: get a spaceship!!
Shrill: she has a hand stamp that says she’s queen of earth
Mallory: don’t harvest earth but definitely RULE IT
Shrill: who will recognize said handstamp
she doesn’t even have a space phone
or whatever
Mallory: everyone in space, Shrill!
EVERYONE IN SPACE RECOGNIZED IT AND THEY HAD SPACE LASERS
also she didn’t JUST own the earth
she had other inheritances too!
Shrill: TRUE
really unimaginative
Mallory: I’m just saying it ISN’T NOT SEXIST that this was basically the Matrix with a girl
and the Girl Neo’s ultimate fate is GET A HOT BOYFRIEND WITH WINGS and HAVE A BETTER ATTITUDE ABOUT DOMESTIC CHORES
Shrill: lol
Mallory: question:
do you think
Channing Tatum was trying to do an accent in this movie
I went back and forth
sometimes I thought he was
and sometimes I think he wasn’t
Shrill: I was too busy laughing at you during the credits to check to see whether they’d staffed the “dialogue coach” or “language consultant” position
you know what I think
honestly
here’s what I think
I think there’s no accent in the script, and that Channing Tatum just sort of sometimes accidentally slipped into a weird pseudo-British accent because he was concentrating so hard on rendering the role
completely unintentionally
Mallory: I have never seen Channing Tatum so doughy and charmless
it was like someone put his dick on mute
Shrill: there was more sexual tension between Channing Tatum and his metal-working machinery in the trailer for Magic Mike XXL
than the entirety of his relationship with Mila Kunis
Mallory: HERE IS A LIST OF THE PAIRINGS THAT HAD MORE SEXUAL CHEMISTRY THAN CHANNING AND MILA
IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
Shrill: even his PHYSIQUE was muted, he took off his shirt and it was “yawn” instead of “I feel simultaneously inadequate and quite possibly not entirely straight”
Mallory: Sean Bean/Channing Tatum
Any of the sexy evil alien wizards with each other (any configuration)
Mallory: The weird robot on Bureacracy Planet and his clone
Shrill: oh man, that scene was FRAUGHT
the looks they gave each other
Mallory: WHAT WAS THIS MOVIE AND WEIRD ANTI-GAY TROPES??
like, that robot-dude was so fussy and made-up and clearly Edward Everett-Horton-style gay
and both of the evil space brothers looked like they’d seen the first 40 minutes of Dune and decided to base their entire characterizations on Baron Harkonnen
why is that still such sci-fi standby, the fussy gay/decadent bad guy?
Shrill: I don’t know, I can’t understand it
Mallory: all big crimson robes and evil lisps and mother complexes
Shrill: like how the younger evil space brother kept saying: this is a BUSINESS ARRANGEMENT
it’s not about LOVE
it’s not SEXUAL
we’re just SIGNING A CONTRACT
strip out the context and it was like A Beard For Hire
Mallory: WHAT CONTEXT, SHRILL
WHAT
CONTEXT
he had the dress waiting for her!
he didn’t even do the standard faux-affable thing where he said “take three days, think about it”
they had to get married IMMEDIATELY
Shrill: maybe the SUPER HARD SELL might have been a red flag
given that he’s basically immortal
Mallory: Jupiter was a very easy sell
I felt like she believed whoever she was in the room with 90% of the time
Shrill: to be fair to her she was dealing with a LOT of stuff at once
Mallory: and all she wanted was a telescope
she never once, like, named a star or mentioned an interest in astronomy, but
she really wanted that 5000 dollar telescope
IDK this movie was a particularly egregious case of Sci Fi Talk
Shrill: SO MUCH talking
honestly
Mallory: “The Aegis has invoked the Council. We must invoke the Sky Elders’ rule if we wish to avoid the Standhold.”
Shrill: every time people weren’t talking, the movie was pretty engaging
Mallory: 1/2 exposition, 1/2 screensavers crashing into each other
Shrill: I have no idea if you made that up on the spot
Mallory: okay let’s not get out of hand here, Shrill
the movie looks PRETTY GOOD
but it looked like a regular scene from Myst
Shrill: what’s your problem with Hologram Shields and Space Rollerblades
Mallory: like a PRETTY GOOD screensaver
I have no problem with those things
but i have a problem with a guy who gets blown out of an airlock
goes to all the trouble to grab a spacesuit AS HE’S BEING BLOWN OUT
then proceeds to waste his entire oxygen supply by NOT USING HIS JET BOOTS
HE JUST HANGS THERE
WITH HALF AN HOUR OF OXYGEN
DOING NOTHING
Shrill: but wasn’t that basically like that one scene in Guardians of the Galaxy
Mallory: there were SEVERAL scenes in this movie that I already saw in Guardians, absolutely
Shrill: how DID that spaceship appear out of nowhere and pick him up, by the way
Mallory: no reason
which wouldn’t necessarily bother me in a movie that felt like it contained internal logic
but in the middle of THIS movie infuriated me
it feels like the Wachowskis have absolutely no sense of what drives any human beings
“what are feelings? a single diamond, smirks, yelling”
do you remember the Steve Guttenberg episode of Party Down?
Shrill: there were SEVERAL points during the movie where I thought to myself “I have no idea how we arrived at this point”
Mallory: when they’re running through Roman’s sci-fi script and it’s just awful
this felt like his script BEFORE Steve Gutenberg convinced him to add heart to it
It was the spiritual opposite of this line:
“Are science fiction and heart mutually exclusive? One word: Cocoon.”
Mallory: also: will bees recognize Mila Kunis for the rest of her life?
can she control them, or do they just follow her around?
Shrill: might be awkward!
Mallory: why didn’t they recognize her from birth, if she’s GENETICALLY royal?
why did it take until she met up with Channing Tatum for bees to notice her?
Shrill: well, they DID, right
Sean Bean was like “you’ve never been stung by a bee, right”?
totally inconsistent
plus
what is the Purpose of bees being able to recognize her
Mallory: wait but do they not sting her, or do they act as her giant arms?
because at one point during the chase scene, it seemed like she used bees as her giant arms
Shrill: really? I thought the bees were naturally pissed off and just attacked on their own
when someone tried to hurt her
MALLORY: THESE BEES WERE INCONSISTENT
Mallory: Shrill
we have to talk about it
we have to talk about the “I love dogs” scene
because it felt like that was the closest this movie came to having a “heart” scene
Shrill: yeah so
Channing said “you can’t be in love with me, b/c of my genetic splicing I’m more similar to a dog than I am to you”
Mallory: EVEN THOUGH
HIS ONLY DOG FUNCTION
IS POINTY EARS
AND A PUBE-LOOKIN’ GOATEE
BUT I DIGRESS
Shrill: and he bit someone for no reason one time
but yes
and then she replies “but I love dogs”
which, to their credit, was intended to be ridiculous
Mallory: “to their credit”
YOU DON’T GET CREDIT FOR AN ACTOR ACKNOWLEDGING IT WAS A TERRIBLE LINE
A
TERRIBLE
LIIIINE
god I’m getting so angry right now
everything about this was so wrong
Shrill: she says “oh why did I say dogs”
but that’s like
not close to enough
like
if she’d said “I’d have sex with a dog if it were hot enough”
Mallory: the dialogue in this movie
Shrill: that would have been funny
Mallory: I don’t think I can remember an actual line from it
except for “I love dogs”
it felt like there wasn’t an actual script
Shrill: “I love dogs” has juuuuuust enough plausibility
you know what
Mallory: like every day they got another page of the script bible about their weird backstory
and told to wing it
Gugu Mbatha-Raw shows up every eighteen minutes to throw Channing in some new space dungeon with her Nien Nunb ears
Shrill: the movie’s dialogue in a nutshell was
that scene at the beginning after she’s rescued
where Channing Tatum leaves a gun by her so that when she wakes up
she can point the gun at him
and she LITERALLY
forces him to give her plot exposition at gunpoint
Shrill: that’s all the dialogue
forced exposition at gunpoint
Gugu was too sexy for the movie to be honest
it was distracting
Mallory: they tried to tamp it down
Shrill: yeah with those GARGANTUAN ears
like you can imagine the prop designer being told to make them four times bigger than they already were
and then he made them that size as a joke/protest
and they’re like “perfect”
Mallory: how did they sell this movie to executives, do you think?
Shrill: the whole movie is the Wachowskis saying “perfect” to stuff that is totally absurd
they must be INCREDIBLE in meetings in Hollywood
maybe they’re The Rulers of Earth and all they want to do is make movies
blackmail?
those are the only options I can think of
Mallory: YOU ARE SO RIGHT
at no point
did anyone bring up an idea
that the Wachowskis shot down
Shrill: it was like this was the last movie they’re ever going to make
and they had to empty their notebook of literally every world-building detail they’d ever thought of
every idea
every ridiculous name for an alien or a culture
Mallory: and I mean
I love geeking out on worldbuilding details
I really do!
I’m not anti-details
but it was all SO LAZY
Shrill: same
Mallory: the gender stuff was lazy
the anti-gay vibe was lazy
Shrill: and none of it fit together
Mallory: not because I think they’re homophobic
but they were just like, yes, lisping, rich, weirdly seductive all the time, effeminate and pale, that’s what evil people are like
Shrill: yeah
Mallory: who was it
that said it felt like they JUST saw Brazil
and then made this movie
this was like Terry Gilliam’s Lunchables
Shrill: I don’t know, probably someone on twitter but like
that navigating the bureaucracy scene
that was like STRAIGHT from Brazil
they saw The Fifth Element
they saw the Star Wars prequels but none of the original movies
and they saw Brazil
Mallory: oh god yes okay what are sci-fi movies that this movie badly cribbed from
that you should see instead of Jupiter Ascending?
Fifth Element, Brazil for sure
probably either version of Tron, honestly
Shrill: yeah
Mallory: the Disney version of Atlantis
Shrill: oh YES
Mallory: pictures from literally any gay Halloween party from 2003-2005 where guys wore black underwear and fake wings
Shrill: The Muppets Treasure Island
Mallory: Dune
The Warriors
(for skating)
Brink! (also for skating)
Shrill: it’s too bad there’s no good Fantastic Four movie for the sky skating
The Neverending Story
Mallory: The Incredibles
Kiki’s Delivery Service
THE MATRIX
BECAUSE HI
Shrill: yes
Mallory: WACHOWSKIS
HOW MANY MOVIES CAN YOU HAVE THE BIG REVEAL BE “SUPERIOR BEINGS HARVEST HUMANS FOR NUTRIENTS AND ENERGY”
you can’t do that more than once!
YOU CAN’T HAVE THAT BE THE SAME TWIST TWICE
Shrill: the Wachowskis have never heard “you can’t”
in fifteen years
Mallory: it’s the SAME
TWIST
Shrill: and it’s the same non-resolution as the last Matrix movie
Mallory: i just want to put them on an island with Peter Jackson and M. Night Shyamalan
Shrill: “we’re not letting everyone out, surprise!”
Mallory: where they are safe and warm but unable to direct, to paraphrase Maria Bamford
Shrill: “truce!”
Mallory: okay so I understand why I hated this movie
but I can’t quite understand why I feel so obsessed with it
Shrill: the reason why I love it and why the Wachowskis should keep getting 120 million dollar budgets for each of their movies
is that they DO NOT CARE
they swing for the fences every time
Mallory: they just care about ELECTRO COLORED DREADLOCKS and BLOODLESS, UNINTERESTING FIGHT SEQUENCES
Shrill: whatever else you say about them, you cannot say that they pandered or compromised their vision
Mallory: but their vision is such garbage
it’s uncompromised garbage
Shrill: listen
they had a guy with feathers for facial hair
Mallory: they DID, at that
ALSO
WHAT FERTILITY CLINIC ONLY OFFERS $15,000 FOR YOUR EGGS
I tried to sell mine after college like every other broke be-egged woman and I didn’t meet the strict criteria, but even so, the going rate was like $35K, easy
Shrill: they didn’t care about that detail because they didn’t make it up
no research was done for this film
actual details that would give the story believability
and versimilitude
Mallory: I’m getting angry and I also kind of want to rewatch this movie again
so
Shrill: those were unimportant
Mallory: I don’t know if I should recommend it or not
Shrill: fake details that don’t matter
Mallory: I did hit you after we saw it, I feel like we should report that
Shrill: important
you did
but you were ALSO stomping your feet out of glee during it
maybe what would help is a comparison to another movie you hated but didn’t love
Mallory: rage and glee and energy left over from all the ginger ale I had
Shrill: Drinking the sweet nectar of capitalism
Mallory: YOU KNOW WHAT, HONESTLY
CAPITALISM IS AWESOME
AND I WOULD RATHER WATCH A CAPITALIST STEP INTO A BATH OF BEAUTIFUL BABY CELLS AND STEP OUT PERFECT AND WRINKLE FREE THAN SOME DILETTANTE TRUSTAFARIAN GO CLEAN TOILETS WHEN SHE DOESN’T HAVE TO
capitalism is the hug that money wants to give all of us
Shrill: so here’s the thing: the point of the movie is that CAPITALISM WAS BAD
so maybe you’re just counter-convinced
Mallory: this movie hated capitalism with its WORDS but it loved capitalism with its actions
all the lush dresses and big flipping space rococo palaces
Shrill: like the villains of the movie flew around in the sky like We Are Genetically Superior
humanity is cattle to our glorious vision of…
oh
our glorious vision of zero-G sex orgies
Mallory: THAT WAS SO LAZY
WE GET IT
PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEX ARE EVIL
all right we gotta wrap this up before I kick a hole in the wall
Shrill: okay I have one last question
which is… so Mila gets Channing Tatum his job back as Angel Soldier or whatever
Mallory: right
Shrill: so he’s basically the enforcement arm of the people who harvest humanity
Mallory: is that what they did?
I thought they were just like
flying police
WAIT WHY DID HE NEED WINGS IF HE HAD JET BOOTS
HE COULD ALREADY FLY
OMG
Shrill: we were told that “time” is the only currency of space
that was incredible
Mallory: THE THING HE WANTED THE WHOLE MOVIE LITERALLY DIDN’T MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO HIS EVERYDAY LIFE
Shrill: just incredible
no difference at all
Mallory: okay but so was it confirmed that he wanted to go help harvest people??
Shrill: I mean it literally doesn’t matter what was “confirmed” it’s like being in the Spanish armada
it doesn’t matter if you personally had slaves in the New World
Mallory: do you think he’s ever ingested humans?? to stay young?
Shrill: and he wasn’t the police b/c police don’t have wings
HOW OLD IS HE???
they wouldn’t give that precious fuel to a Dog
also
something totally absurd about the movie
we could keep doing this forever but like
being a genetic identical to a person doesn’t ACTUALLY mean you’re the reincarnation of said person
she wasn’t their mother
Mallory: RIGHT
TWINS AREN’T THE SAME PERSON TWICE
THEY’RE LITERALLY DIFFERENT PEOPLE
Shrill: LITERALLY
Mallory: ugh also
the scene where she tells Eddie Redmayne “i’m not your damn mother” BUT THEN DOESN’T KICK HIM OFF THE PLATFORM
is just dramatically unsatisfying
she has JUSTIFICATION TO KILL HIM
NO ONE WOULD HOLD IT AGAINST YOU, JUPITER
HE LITERALLY JUST TRIED TO KILL YOU AND YOUR WHOLE FAMILY
Shrill: yeah, and that was the second time she used that “I’m not your mother” line
Mallory: BACK TO THE SAME WELL
Shrill: it would have been like in Return of the King if Eowyn had been like “I AM NO MAN”
and then walked away from the Witch-King instead of killing him
Mallory: ahahahahhaa
RIGHT
they LITERALLY DON’T UNDERSTAND DRAMATIC PAYOFF
Shrill: I think maybe the movie wanted her to have the moral high ground of Not Killing but it SOOOOO didn’t work
maybe if he’d said
DO IT, I HATE MY LIFE
KILL ME
and THEN she’d walked away
Mallory: and then she had DENIED HIM HIS DEATH
Shrill: fine
Mallory: uuuuugh
it would not have been very hard for this to be a wonderful campy mess
instead of a horrible sort of homophobic screensaver
Shrill: if they’d bothered to read the script they might have thought of this
Mallory: HOW DO YOU RUIN DOG-CHANNING WHEN YOU HAVE DOG-CHANNING HANDED TO YOU
Shrill: LOL ALSO
what was with all the dark insinuations and foreshadowing
and buildup
about Channing Tatum biting a royal for reasons unknown
just “his instincts”
and then they NEVER COME BACK TO IT
I REALLY thought the royal he killed was her genetic double from the past
but nope
they go out of their way to NOT pay that off
Mallory: I THOUGHT THAT WOULD ALSO HAPPEN
WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO MEEEE
Shrill: they didn’t even leave it open for you to fill in the blanks
Mallory: he has this DARK PAST and he MYSTERIOUSLY bit out some noble-person’s throat for reasons he cannot remember!
Shrill: they intentionally resolved it in a way that adds nothing to the story
Mallory: and you’re like, oh yeah, clearly he was being manipulated by one of the evil royal siblings!
Shrill: “someone else killed the mother”
Mallory: AND THEN THEY DROP ITTTTTT
Shrill: “they just started fighting for no reason”
Mallory: “Chekhov’s gun means if there’s a gun in the first act, you should imprison a dog in the third, right?”
Shrill: lol
completely drop it
never to be returned to again
there’s not even a scene where he MIGHT bite someone
even him biting one of the royals would have been okay
not OPTIMAL
but definitely better
they had that scene where she was like “do you feel like biting me right now?”
like
he RIPPED OUT SOMEONE’S THROAT WHAT ARE YOU DOING
it wasn’t a cutesy sex bite
Shrill: plus isn’t the fact that his love for her is probably purely canine loyalty a little bit of a problem for this world-beating love of theirs
Mallory: I can’t give any more, Shrill
I can’t
Shrill: yeah
we’ve talked a lot about this and I can’t figure out whether this is good or bad
we’ve seen bad movies together before and exhausted the conversation after 5 minutes
Mallory: that’s true
you were pretty sad about I, Frankenstein
Shrill: I was? I don’t remember
we didn’t have a WHOLE lot to say about Dracula Untold except that a couple of plot points didn’t make a whole lot of sense
then we quickly moved on to jokes about the name of the sequel
or anyway I did
Mallory: all right
will you go see the sequel with me
when/if it comes out
Shrill: yes
I don’t know what it means that I just said yes
and feel good about saying yes
Mallory: okay
don’t think about our friendship too hard
we just see things
and mix sodas
and don’t ask a lot of questions
Shrill: I can’t recommend the movie and I can’t not recommend the movie
yeah, that’s a good encapsulation
Tags: Ezekiel Kweku, jupiter ascending, movies, yelling
Look, the way I see it is, she’s not going back to scrubbing toilets forever. She’s just scrubbing toilets for now while she learns about space law and how to speed-skate on the air. Next time someone on a giant spaceship with laser guns shows up, she’s going to know how to deal with it.
YES. She’s not falling into the lottery winners trap of spending all her Space Princess inheritance on ball gowns and warp drives. And FAMILY. She’s happy to go home and clean toilets because that’s where her family is; and people totally hide their fabulousness *cough* closet *cough* in order to fit into their families. At least as a short term strategy.
that is a BANANAS thing to say that is like if the first Matrix ended with Neo jacking back into the Matrix because he needed some time to figure out his plan and clear his head
yeah, well, maybe if he’d taken a couple days to think about it, it wouldn’t have led to the Matrixes 2 & 3.
Look, sometimes you need a time out to eat a hot dog and gravity boot skate around Chicago. For perspective.
I love the scene in the rich client/friend’s apartment; with the first alien tracking monster/brainwipe. I think she is a foil; with the “Do I love him? He’s the most eligible bachelor!” Help me pick out a proposal dress thing.
AND I think we should be proof texting from Paul, not from parables.
Love is patient, love is kind. = Love is a gene spliced Channing Tatum
Love is not jealous or boastful = The family that cleans toilets stays together. Intergalactic Imperial families suck.
Love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things = Love will get you through Gilliam style bureaucracy
For now we see in a glass dimly… = Trying to make sense of this movie is like applying lipstick using a 1000 year old tarnished serving platter as mirror.
Also, she needs to take time to figure out what it means to participate in a system which is literally built on dissolving other people and bathing in their life energy.
Yeah, that’s a weird thing to have in two different film series. What’s up with the bathing in dead people to survive, Wachowskis?
Because the capitalist patriarchy is about commodifying the proletariat, reducing their worth to how long their bodies can be used to sustain the elite.
Fair enough. Why the bathing though?
Hmm. I’d say that one probably traces back to whatever primal human fear created the Elszabet Bathory stories. Getting so far inside your victims that you’re literally bathing in their blood/essence/effluvia, plus the body horror of “oh god the bath is people oh god she’s covered in dissolved people.”
And something about the womb, rebirth, etc.
I’d say any society is about reducing people to component parts.
Consider:
Any system that is comprised by numerous “people” and has a life-span that exceeds the life-span of participating “people” (so, pretty much any “social” system, be it family, tribe, weirdo sci-fi pseudo-corporation of space aristocrats, or some quasi-Marxist commune) would need a mechanism for replacing people. Literally replacing.
That means that any such system would treat its constituent humans as replaceable components that not only can, but inevitably will, be discarded and swapped out for new ones when they outlive their usefulness.
Some societies are trying to be “nice” about it (because that makes constituent humans more cooperative), but in the end any society is a machine that literally uses humans as spare parts. It’s not a property specific to “capitalism”, or “patriarchy” or “communism”, it’s pretty much “any society that is capable of existing for more than 100 years”.
Yes, but in a just and fair society, those component parts are all acknowledged as parts of the machine, and therefore useful and important. The individual parts are assumed to get some benefit in return for their participation, because the great machine of society is supposed to benefit us all. Vampire space industry, on the other hand, reduces only some people to component parts, in a way which directly benefits only the elite few who have the privilege of not being dissolved into embryonic fluid.
really there’s no nothing to stop someone from shooting her again or blasting NYC the planet with a huge space gun which is what, in retrospect, Eddie Redmayne should have done in the first place
well yeah but then his crop would have been ruined, you know it was a nice crop of people
One thing I do want to know is that well Earth isn’t really set up to sustain people after like, another century? In a century it’ll be ripe for harvest, at least that’s what one of Eddie Redmayne’s henchmen said, and obviously Jupiter isn’t going to want to harvest it, so what the hell happens to Earth?
he didn’t seem to mind like… WWII. black plague. etc.
maybe the space police frown on that kind of thing.
yeah what I gathered/made up from the importance of the bureaucracy is that now the Space Police know she exists, so if something happens to her there’s going to be an investigation and it’ll probably come back down to one of the siblings and they probably don’t want an investigation. Before she got to Space Bureaucracy she was basically livestock and the Space Police wouldn’t do anything if she got shot.
were the space police able to stop even one person from doing anything they wanted to do, at any time?
Well, they did show up at Eddie Redmayne’s, at least.
My assumption is, much like real police, they do not so much stop crimes as show up afterwards and make your life sad and maybe put you in space jail or freeze all of your space assets
I mean, it’s the equivalent of 1 cop car being in range during a major assassination attempt, except separated from the rest of the space police by THE VASTNESS OF SPACE rather than a few miles
Thoroughly convinced Tatum was miscast here. Should’ve been Chris Hemsworth playing Hot Dog-Man. He can pull off Brooding Hottie in his sleep.
I feel like I just read a suggestion that Hemsworth should have played Christan Grey (or at least, that he would have been better that what’s his name).
Can Chris Hemsworth just get every part for someone who’s supposed to be overwhelmingly attractive? (Not that I don’t enjoy Channing Tatum.)
“Can Chris Hemsworth just get every part for someone who’s supposed to be overwhelmingly attractive?”
YES PLZ FOREVER.
Do you think Caine ever said “Skating is what we do, NOT who we are!” to Sean Bee?
This is everything I ever wanted. Also what happened to the cool dude with feathers for facial hair and the badass blue haired lady on the space motorcycle???? They were my favorite characters and they were just dropped with very little explanation.
true story. i wanted to watch a movie about those two
100% more exciting movie is mila kunis was hooking up with those two as well. and channing tatum was killed by the three of them
me too!! I love them
I was shipping Mila Kunis and the blue haired girl so bad! (Although honestly, I was shipping Mila and almost anyone besides Channing).
I’d also like to point out that egg donation is not a one-day deal. You don’t wake up in the morning and go, oh, I’ve decided I will donate my eggs, go to the clinic that day and get told, “oh, we’re going to give you some hormones and then collect the eggs.” It takes weeks!
YES!! I had so many problems with that part.
I hate that I have spent time thinking about this, but I think it is implied that the process had been ongoing and this was just the last step. The sketchy fertility clinic had her name/records, which is why the blonde lady got attacked at first. And they apparently did a gene scan on her which is how her reincarnatedness came to light.
but she seemed so completely unprepared!
For everything, really.
But don’t they say something like, “you’ll feel a bit rubbish because of the hormones”, as if she’s not been injecting herself with two different hormones for the past five weeks, but was just getting them that day?
Also, she would have had to inject herself with a high dose of human gonadotropin 36 hours before the, egg collection. I mean, I’ve only done IVF, where the money goes the other way, but that’s like £800-worth of drugs, long before you get to the surgery. I really doubt they’re like, well, you seem casually interested in donating your eggs, take this ton of expensive drugs with a non-insignificant risk of ovarian hyper stimulation which can land you in intensive care and let us know on the day if you feel like going through with it and we’ll give you $15k.
I’m fine with, like, gravity boots, elixir of youth farmed from humans, bees recognising galactic royalty, whatever, but I demand realism in the representation of medical procedures I havevundergone in the last fifteen months!
I saw this movie and was delighted throughout the whole thing, and yet I feel no need to defend it against the scathing reviews and tearing apart of the plot and everything in it because I don’t disagree. So maybe it’s just that kind of movie? I loved it but don’t feel protective of it?
I also had a dream last night wherein I was telling someone about Jupiter Ascending, and I distinctly remember that I told the person “Jupiter Ascending is, well, if I could only see one movie for the rest of my life, I’m just saying it would be in the running” with the defense of “I mean yes the plot doesn’t exist but who needs PLOT in a movie I can get that in BOOKS”
Upon further inspection, I don’t necessarily disagree with my dream self.
Everything you said. Yes. Exactly.
“I don’t need a plot because Sean Bean is covered in BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!”
Also, it’s extremely likely that he survived this movie. Just this once, Sean Bean lives!
Somebody needs to hire Mallory to do this kind of fact-checking on movie scripts. I demand reasonable space economies and maze-prison sissy boys in my trashy sci-fi, goddamnit.
“Reasonable Space Economies and Maze-Prison Sissy Boys” is a movie I would watch again and again
This article has had me chuckling for days, and perfectly expresses my thoughts on this delightfully silly film:
“There are montages where Mila Kunis scrubs toilets. She discovers she is a space princess who owns the Earth when space-wolf Tatum saves her from Roswell aliens who attack her while she’s having her eggs harvested. Her space princessery is further confirmed by bees, who, as it turns out, can smell princesses (???????????). Eddie Redmayne is her space-family and he wants the Earth.”
Wow, thank you for posting to that article as well, which gives us all this: “Eddie Redmayne was everything and I want a sequel where he and Lee Pace as Thranduil try to out-fabulous each other.”
Would it be cruel to my friends to make them drunkenly watch this (Jupiter Ascending, not a movie where Eddie Redmayne and Lee Pace try to outfabulous each other, although if that exists I will take that too) with me for my upcoming 31st bday?
p sure that Terry Gilliam is actually the beauracracy bit; it’s supposed to be a Brazil homage (which doesn’t negate that it is ridiculous and comes out of nowhere)
Yep, that was him in the last room, with the sandwich and the steampunk printer thing.
Mila says 27 B stroke 6 at one point too.
I loved it unabashedly despite agreeing with every single thing here. Who buys Regenex (or whatever Soylent Green was called – also, this is actually the 3rd Wachowski movie with a Soylent Green theme, the 2nd was Cloud Atlas)? When Sexy Voldemort’s butler talks about making more money than competitors’, is he talking about the other two siblings or are there other space magnates who mine the people oil?
On Channing Tatum’s accent, I actually think that was an unintentional side-effect of his jaw prosthetics. I remember reading an article about how he could barely talk because of them. Seems weird. Why even alter his jawline? (For the same reason as everything in this glorious movie – WHY NOT.)
WHAT JAW PROSTHETICS?? HIS JAW LOOKED TOTALLY NORMAL??
I spent his entire first scene in the movie trying to figure out what is it they tried to do to the jaw. I couldn’t see it either. And yet!
From this article http://www.gq.com/entertainment/celebrities/20140…
He also had to wear a mouthpiece that changed the shape of his lower jaw. “Which made it kind of interesting,” he says, “because I couldn’t close my mouth. I couldn’t close my mouth to talk and so that was a hurdle to get over.”
“I’m sure it couldn’t have been comfortable,” Kunis observes. “He had to learn how to speak and not have a lisp.”
Thank goodness, since lisps are EeEEEEEEEVVIIiiiILLLLLLL
I think the prosthetics made his jaw pointier and less lantern-shaped? Maybe?
That’s why I liked it so much, I think. The answer to seemingly every question in the production process was “WHY NOT?”
I have said it before and I will say it again: Whatever number of deleted scenes and alternate endings are on the Bluray, I am there for all of them. Where Melis gets mad about the holes, I just want more. Literally said to Mr. Blazes as were were leaving the theater: I hope there is a documentary coming about this world that shows the middle class and explains the space-economy. Give all of the world building to me.
I thought I’d read that this was supposed to be the first movie in a trilogy, which is the only way the ending makes sense.
Also giggled happily throughout the movie.
The movie starts with a whole monologue about how she SEES THE WORST IN EVERYONE because of DRAMATIC BACKSTORY. And then she trusts every single thing anyone says for the rest of the movie.
I can’t stop thinking about this movie because when she accepted the marriage proposal, I thought the next scene would be her scheming, delaying, having sneaky plans she was covering up, but then nothing! We were all denied complex power plays because the supposed protagonist didn’t think or do anything ever.
On the bright side, I saw it on a second date, and my date did the feminist damsel-in-distress critique before I got a chance, which was nice.
I think she hates everyone because they screw her over because she can’t help instantly trusting people. I related to it, because I’ve just been car shopping and sales techniques get me every time and I can’t be trusted to go alone because I’ll buy a car just to be polite.
I cannot disagree with anything here and yet I loved it. To quote a tumblr user: “Here is my feeling about this movie: it is your garbage. It is garbage for you. “Is this how straight dudes feel at the movies all the time????” I hissed SEVERAL times during this movie. “Like someone carefully noted down your early pubescent fantasies and then threw 100 MILLION DOLLARS at them?”
I hated the ending; I hated that she didn’t make ANY change, use ANY of her agency, new knowledge, power. But I am honestly stoked that there might be a sequel where she does step up to the plate and face down her antagonist (who must be the sweet, friendly, but totally addicted to regenex sister) and find a new way to make humanity flourish throughout the universe. something something BEES?
I loved this movie, despite recognizing all its badness.
The second time I saw it (because Reasons that don’t actually include “because I could watch this movie forever” even though I totally could) I was there with a 9-year-old girl and an 11-year-old girl. I realized that my love for this movie was AS NOTHING compared to theirs. They thought it was brilliant and perfect and wonderful. It was 1000% Garbage For Them. I am, in fact, jealous that I wasn’t a pre-teen when this movie came out, because then I wouldn’t even notice the parts where it is crap.
Maybe I’m spending too much time on Tumblr, as I immediately recognized the review you quoted. It was a really good review, though.
Is this how straight dudes feel at the movies all the time????” I hissed SEVERAL times during this movie. “Like someone carefully noted down your early pubescent fantasies and then threw 100 MILLION DOLLARS at them?”
This.
This entire thing is to female audiences what Star Wars is for early-teen males.
I don’t know how the siblings did it, but they somehow did.
I just hope to $deity it won’t spawn an equally absurd cosplay culture (I lie. I totally hope it does 🙂 )
Hahahaha, I don’t care what anyone says, I still love the hell out of this movie and will continue to love it no matter what.
“Where is the middle class”, good grief.
YOU’RE GOOD GRIEF THEIR BUSINESS PLAN MAKES NO SENSE HOW CAN THEY MAKE A PROFIT IF THEY ARE THE ONLY CUSTOMERS
they invoked space capitalism and I’M WACKY FOR ASKING ABOUT THE MIDDLE CLASS? FORSOOTH BUDDY
I gave this a lot of thought, so bear with me: the middle class are the bureaucrats and Terry Gilliam and the people in line to see them. Remember when that one Space Cop was telling Mila Kunis that the Bureaucrat Ring World had more people on it than Earth? Those people are totally buying and using the serum, just not as much of it as Eddie Redmayne and his family are. Probably it’s really expensive, so you buy a little to look younger for your Extravagant Space Wedding, or maybe your family chips in to keep Grandma alive for one more Space Thanksgiving.
Also there seemed to be differnt qualitly levels of serum, the family we follow in the movie has the best stuff but there are other families / coporations with lower quality product that is probably cheaper.
Spanksgiving!
THE MIDDLE CLASS EXISTS BY INFERENCE!
This is like watching a western and complaining that there’s no one but subsistence farmers and cattle barons!
WHO IS BUYING ALL THE COWS MALLORY WHY DOES ANYONE EVEN CARE ABOUT COWS IF THE MOVIE DOESN’T SHOW US A SLAUGHTERHOUSE AND THIRTY THOUSAND KNUCKLEHEADS EATING CHEESE BURGERS IN CHICAGO.
I saw a movie about the Gold Rush the other day but it’s BULLSHIT because WHAT ARE THEY DOING WITH ALL THAT GOLD
IT IS NOT LIKE WATCHING A WESTERN BECAUSE WE KNOW BASED ON HISTORICAL CONTEXT THAT THERE WAS A MARKET, YOU CAN’T CREATE A NEW WORLD WITH NO ONE BUT GALAXY PHARAOHS AND THEIR ROBOT SERVANTS THEN TALK ABOUT PROFITABILITY WITHOUT THROWING US ONE GODDAMN BONE ABOUT WHO THEY’RE SELLING THE GODDAMN SERUMS TO
WE DO NOT NEED A HUNDRED MINUTES OF EXPLANATION FOR WHY LIFE-ENHANCING YOUTH JUICE HAS A MARKET! IT IS SELF-EVIDENTLY MARKETABLE! ALSO THEY SAID LIKE TWENTY TIMES THAT THERE WERE OTHER COMPANIES THAT DID OTHER THINGS AND ALL OF THE BUREACRATS PAID EACH OTHER IN CURRENCY THAT WAS CLEARLY ON THE YOUTH JUICE STANDARD!
WHERE DID THEY EVEN GET ROBOTS IF THEY WEREN’T SELLING YOUTH JUICE TO PEOPLE WHO OWN ROBOT COMPANIES
I WANTED ONE LINE, THEY HAD A HUNDRED MINUTES OF EXPLAINING *EVERYTHING ELSE*
I AM SKEPTICAL THAT ONE LINE WOULD HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE GIVEN ALL OF YOUR OTHER COMPLAINING MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE A WHOLE VIGNETTE WHERE THEY EXPLAIN SPACE CLASS ECONOMICS AND THEIR OBVIOUS ANALOGOUS RELATIONSHIP TO ANY
HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTNACES IN WHICH A CAPITAL CLASS SURVIVED BY VIRTUE OF A CONSUMER CLASS WHETHER OR NOT THAT CONSUMER CLASS APPEARS IN THE MOVIE
i think I love you.
But, there were lots of other people besides the Galaxy Pharoahs, like all the handservants and pilots and space-cops and lizard people (well presumably the serum wouldn’t work on lizard people but still).
Yeah I figured the customers were implied, it’s all the other space faring humans. It’s only ‘farm’ worlds like Earth where they grow people to harvest.
The middle class is all waiting in line on Bureaucracy Planet.
I think this movie deserves a Marxist analysis. Like out of the 30’s
I really enjoy that thanks to this site, I now think of Channing Tatum as a human dog but it still amazes me that the Wachowskis anticipated this and casted him as a dog human. Although if you guys made that connection because of this movie, well.. actually, it changes nothing. Channing Tatum = dog human now and forever.
What a world we live in!
I agree with you on every single point and I will still purchase this movie on Blu-Ray the moment it hits shelves.
I own a poster for this movie now and I will put it up on my wall the instant I own a house.
YES.
…Well, DVD.
the way they did Harvesting really confused me too, like, that they had to Harvest a whole planet at once and wipe it out entirely leaving a Dramatic Ghost Town Planet in its wake, that’s just bad animal husbandry
yeah do they like…put a new crop down afterwards?
Probably rotate out worlds, let nature recover a bit, maybe plop down some more natural resources, then re-seed.
I guess they’d have to knock down all the buildings but maybe they have stuff that does this really well.
Yeah I mean you saw them instantly heal the buildings after that huge first battle so the technology is probably there to just reset the world.
I could also imagine that, given the described number of habitable worlds, it is cheaper for them to find another planet to seed rather than restore a harvested one. They could do a cost benefit between restoring a harvested planet and finding/seeding a new one. Perhaps the lesser quality competitors have a business model that involves buying harvested worlds from other owners, restoring them, and then reseeding them.
Fixer-uppers on a planetary scale? I desperately want the spinoff property show.
House Hunters Interstellar.
“This place could be great if we just moved the continents around a bit. The feng shui of this planet is terrible; can’t you just feel how blocked the energy is?”
Good point. Once you have FTL technology there is no lack of planets / matter you have access to.
The first time I saw a preview for this movie it looked so terrible I assumed it had to be yet another in a long line of comic book/superhero movies, else it never would have been made! I was wrong, and that makes it’s existence even more perplexing!
It’s like a comic book/superhero movie, except it’s made out of internet fanfiction, rather than comic books.
But what is it fanfiction of?? Bafflingly, it appears to be fanfiction of ITSELF.
This conversation absolutely cements my need to see this terrible movie. I only wish I could see it today. RIGHT NOW.
some friends and i, upon seeing space bureaucracy: “this is about being trans!”
i wish someone would teach the siblings about feminism though, because DAMN does mila kunis have almost 0 agency. at the end she’s just running around like “omg fire”
She makes decisions (like the massive one of CHOOSING TO SAVE THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF EARTH OVER HER FAMILY, also not to kill Eddie Redmayne, whether you agree with that or not) and avoids being killed! And makes the move on Channing Tatum. A few times. She does things. I’m a big proponent of heroines who don’t literally need to kick ass superhero-style.
This. You put it much better than I could. I agree.
And I think it’s one of the most woman friendly SF movies I’ve seen in a long time, maybe ever – definitely most woman friendly space opera.
EXACTLY. I also like the analysis that it may be more feminine than feminist a movie, but I think that’s okay too!
Also I have zero problems with Channing Tatum zooming in repeatedly to save her. I am a woman with zero sexual interest in men, and I still fantasize about having a strapping man as a bodyguard/manservant. Ideally a pack of them to do my bidding and form human furniture. Like that image Mallory once used, of herself in a sleigh pulled by cis white men. Exactly that. It doesn’t demean Mila Kunis that she needn’t lift a finger, because he’s so willing to protect her.
Which fits in with Jupiter’s whole “call me your majesty” fetish.
And as I keep saying, a shirtless Channing Tatum may not exactly make up for all the gratuitous female nudity in SF, but it’s a good start.
Wanted to come back to comment this – “I also like the analysis that it may be more feminine than feminist a movie”
I hadn’t read that before but I think it’s right. I started to call this a feminist movie on FaceBook, and then I realized that I’m not sure I can defend that statement – but I can definitely support that it’s woman friendly and it seems to be shot for the female gaze, not male gaze.
It truly is! In response to both of your latest comments in this thread: I love what braak said, that this movie eroticizes male nudity but de-eroticizes female nudity. Think of the scene with Jupiter’s friend/client in her underwear. That wasn’t shot to be sexy at all.
plus, what is with not letting protagonists kill the horrible oedipus-complex king-dude. like “whoops, you fell off a cliff” is super boring. she wanted to kill him, let her, and then she can learn from it?
a quote from our viewing: “privilege underwear” – wrt the fancy lady she’s helping find a dress early on in the film.
though, tbh, i thought that was her roommate, and she was a dancer, because i am confused by this movie
I mean, if somebody kidnapped me from obvious aliens, and I woke up god-knows-where with my kidnapper, and I had a gun, I would totally force my kidnapper to provide me with plot exposition at gunpoint. It’s the more believable version of “as you know, Bob.”
Also: by not doing anything with her vast wealth and resources, she not only refuses to participate in a system built on wholesale murder, but she ties up a ton of space-resources doing it, which takes a significant bit of the Abraxis family’s murdering ability out of the picture. I viewed it as a form of resistance, almost. Maybe. Not sure.
I loved this movie for its commitment to total flashy nonsense. It was *not* a good film. It *was* a very fun movie to watch at the fancy theater with a mixed drink and food and to enjoy/mock with my fiancee.
She was driven mad by the trend of Jupiter being completely trustworthy of everyone all the time and being totally unable to stand up for herself pretty much ever. She snapped at one point and pretty much yelled “HIT HIM, YOU IDIOT!”
Like, yes, totally kick Space Voldemort off the side of that platform to his death. He tried to kill your family and you and YOUR ENTIRE PLANET. You are justified in killing him. But she doesn’t. Fine. She doesn’t want to kill someone. I get that. But, like, even short of killing, at least once you’ve decided to defy him you could just HIT HIM or something, rather than just refusing to put your wrist on his Space Kindle and just sort of throwing it on the ground melodramatically.
Also, where the hell did Jupiter think she was going after she escaped from the Portal Excursion Funnel and was just running around to/from nowhere as the Flame Spurts from the Fire Swamp kept bursting up at every turn?
But she definitely did hit him with a pipe that one time! She knocked him to the floor and he looked totally shocked. It was satisfying.
God I still need to see this film. I may watch at home with appropriate snacks and alcoholic beverages, thanks for the heads up Mallory.
Also Mallory you need to do this at some point: go to the Oscars and take random selfies and make an article about it http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/23/oscar…
My understanding was that Eddie Redmayne was the royal whose throat Channing Tatum bit out, and they were able to heal him enough that he lived but not so much that he could talk like a non-Voldemort human being? (And then Eddie Redmayne was actually the one who killed his own mom, I thought). Not that it paid off either way, obviously.
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
wait did they say that he was the royal whose throat he bit out at some point?
No, he just wore a lot of high collars and hissed, and it would be fun to think there was a reason other than “space fashion/evils”.
I think maybe I read that before I saw the movie, and then once I was looking for that to be the case, I saw hints of it, but now I don’t remember exactly what they were. But it seems plausible (in the context of a movie with space dragons).
No, they did not. This movie explains everything except the plot.
But I think if they can rejuvenate whole bodies, then shouldn’t they be able to fix a throat?
It confused me that nobody in the movie acknowledged the incest issue w/r/t Mila Kunis marrying her “son.”
Maybe that’s why he kept repeating that it was just a business arrangement, and not a romantic thing at all. Maybe, with all of the “including future selves in the will” thing, that actually winds up happening a lot, to protect business interests and consolidate power.
Hapsburgs: The Movie.
THAT BUGGED ME SO MUCH. I kept waiting for her to point out it’s incest and she NEVER DID.
That’s amazing about why whatshisname whispered all the time, I didn’t think of that. But surely he would have just had Channing Tatum killed?
I heard he won an Oscar. I want to believe that he whispered his acceptance speech but yelled the last sentence.
I’m thinking that there are deleted scenes explaining that backstory. And also explaining that Jupiter used her friend’s name and address for the fertility clinic, that she would have been picked up as a recurrence immediately if she had been born in a hospital, and whatever happened to Sean Bean’s daughter.
I *could* buy that theory except he yelled a lot and it sounded pretty normal and it didn’t look like it hurt or anything.
Yes, exactly, and Caine was trying to protect Mila’s former incarnation (Balem’s mom). That’s what I think they were going for.
OSCAR WINNER EDDIE REDMAYNE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
I desperately wanted him to accept his award in the Balem voice/someone to hack in and replace all his Theory of Everything clips with Jupiter Ascending ones.
why didn’t he wear this to the Oscars
I actually watched the Oscars for I think the first time yesterday. So Many jokes about Jupiter Ascending.
I wonder if roles like this are the Sweatpants and Pizza of Serious Actors ™.
GET SHRILL TO WRITE ON THIS SITE. i really enjoy him and the both of you interacting.
but……………………………………………………
Went to see this for Valentine’s Day with my husband, and we spent pretty much 80% of the movie gripping each others’ arms because the sheer ridiculousness of it left us speechless. My review can pretty much be summed up as: ??!?!?!????
What do you expect her to do with her space inheritance??? No one on earth even knows anyone owns their planet, let alone that it’s her! Her ownership is only recognized by other players in the human-harvesting market; there’s no way to use it to get spendable Earth currency. What’s she supposed to do, present her space tattoo at a gold mine like “This tattoo proves I own the earth, therefore I own all this gold, hand it over”? It’s like being the Tree That Owns Itself — the tree having a deed to itself protects it against humans chopping it down and building a parking lot over it, but it doesn’t protect it from, I don’t know, wood-boring beetles or bears scratching up all its bark or whatever, because beetles and bears don’t know about the concept of “ownership”.
I eventually came around to the same point Mallory and Shrill did: my friends and I may have spent two hours gleefully tearing it to shreds, but when’s the last time we talked about a movie for two hours? And I’m still delighted by so much of it. Balem. BALEM. I don’t know what he was channelling for that role, but Eddie Redmayne clearly deserved that Oscar.
Pretty sure I watched this movie ENTIRELY for Balem.
Space Voldemort!
I said this a dozen times last night. I don’t watch many movies (and the ones I do are usually NOT in the running for the “major” Oscars), but I kept telling people that I could totally believe that Redmayne deserved his Oscar, because he was brilliant even in this gleefully crappy movie.
80% Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element
20% Voldemort
The first time I saw Revenge of the Sith I was in France, didn’t speak French, had no subtitles, and I had a great time making up the plot on my own without knowing what was actually happening. That would also have been an ideal way to see this movie. It was SO PRETTY but SO PROBLEMATIC.
regarding agency and gender representation, I accepted Jupiter getting saved all the time because 1. otherwise what was Channing Tatum’s character for, and 2. it wouldn’t make sense if she were suddenly able to save herself, I mean she doesn’t have gravity boots, or any knowledge of how the alien universe works.
I also really liked how she got minutely better at doing stuff for herself throughout the movie. In the beginning, she can’t even stand up to her cousin who wants to take a ridiculous cut from the profits of HER eggs (???) By the end she’s able to beat up her genetic (??) son with a pipe. It seems to me that’s at least an improvement from all the movies where the woman starts out all badass and 100% competent and yet somehow at the end needs the hero to save her.
OH YEAH HOW WAS HE GETTING SUCH A HUGE CUT OF IT EXACTLY? THEY DON’T JUST HAND OUT CASH WHEN YOU SELL YOUR EGGS
that was the inconsistency that made me the most angry. Like, SHE EVEN ACKNOWLEDGES THEY’RE HER EGGS. CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN, JUPITER
I felt OK mostly because Channing Tatum clearly was an order-taking kind of guy that saves you, like more of a bodyguard than someone who thinks he’s won you by doing the saving. She’s the boss, he’s the punching guy! It’s a very specific sort of dynamic but it is a dynamic.
I loved this piece of hot space garbage, and like so many others in this thread, I don’t think there’s any defending it. I just sort of love that the Wachowski siblings get to make insane, goofy mega-budget movies that have this much pure camp in them, in the year 2015. I’ve always had a strong association between camp and queer, and I guess my reading was that this is innocuous, campy, theatrical make-believe.
I also think that Eddie Redmayne is THE reason to watch this movie. Watching an actor of his caliber just strut and VAMP and clearly have the time of his life just fucking around in those ridiculous costumes was pure pleasure, for me.
Yesssssss
110% agree. 10/10. Would watch Eddie Redmayne do this again.
This seems entirely accurate:
“LANA WACHOWSKI TURNS TO ANDY WACHOWSKI AND IS LIKE “BUT WHAT IF SEAN BEAN WERE A SPACE BEE-MAN?” AND ANDY’S LIKE “LANA WHAT’S OUR RULE?” AND SHE REPLIES “ALL IDEAS ARE GREAT IDEAS!” AND THEN THEY HIGH FIVE.”- http://samdoesfunstuff.tumblr.com/post/1105894549…
Oh god that tumblr led me to another Jupiter Ascending joke post..
welp, what is work? *dives into wormhole*
I haven’t even seen it yet but I love every tumblr post about it.
I have seen this movie twice, and I LOVE IT. Also, the boots don’t work in the vacuum of space because they operate using the differential of gravity and there is no gravity in the middle of space. Q.E.D.
As long as the sequel involves Sean Bee and The Space Werewolf Who Finally Got His Wings punching each other about their feelings, I will throw my money at it.
Somebody on Tumblr articulated this perfectly for me: “I felt like a raccoon that dove into a dumpster and found everything it loved.”
Petition to rename Sean Bean as Sean Bee?
But there IS gravity in space. Lots of it. Gravity is literally the only thing we can measure to account for the majority of the matter in the universe. It’s everywhere, it acts instantaneously, and if you can manipulate it you are literally a god because you can rollerblade through space at relativistic speeds.
It’s hers, can’t she just will it to her heirs? Or maybe space law has such things as trusts?
Well, I mean more about the planet itself, you know? If it’s not built to sustain life after 6 billion, so then what happens?
Well, I love Ayn Rand’s *hair* anyway.
Eddie’s got a punchable face, but I’d feel like a bully. He’s that bizarre looking. Based on the trailer he seemed to be playing the Grimauld prince from “Viking Women and the Sea Serpent” here.
I just wanted MORE SPACE VOLDEMORT CHEST.
Also, I like the theory that Channing Tatum tore out Space Voldemort’s throat.
Oh, and things I forgot while I was focusing on Space Vampire Industrialists:
Those two robot dudes totally used to date, and it’s always awkward running into your ex at work, hence the fraught, prissy looks.
I’m pretty sure the Wachwoskis weren’t actually going for “oh hey, D/s themes actually work for me,” but Mila Kunis’ excitement about Channing Dogman calling her Your Majesty was both hilarious and slightly uncomfortable. “Ooh, it works for me when you remind me that I’m actually in charge of you, and the owner of this whole planet. Yeah, call me Your Majesty again.”
I too am, like, PASSIONATELY AMBIVALENT about this movie, and I think it’s because it basically doesn’t follow any Standard Movie Storytelling Tropes, and I can’t decide if that’s a bad thing or not.
I was hoping this would answer my question about whether or not I should see this movie but I am still undecided, damnit.
Go if you can enjoy a movie just for effects and costumes. Don’t go if it is important for at least one damn thing to make since. Nothing makes sense. Nothing.
I’ve now seen this twice, and I loved it more the second time. The absurdity of it all just makes me giddy.
Regarding the dropped throat biting plot thread: I’m pretty sure the person Caine bit was Balem, hence the high collars and gravely voice.
DICK ON MUTE.
I was tempted to go see this just because it’s so colorful but I think I would be offended. hopefully it makes it to Netflax some day.
I had absolutely no desire to view this movie until this article. Now, I absolutely cannot wait!!!!!!!! I absolutely love watching bad movies or reading shit books and then YELL IN ALL CAPS ABOUT MY ANGER. THIS IS SOMETHING THAT I REALLY REALLY DO. I AM ALSO A WEIRDO WHO HOLDS DOWN THE SHIFT KEY WHILE SHE TYPES INSTEAD OF JUST PRESSING CAPSLOCK. SERIOUSLY I HATE CAPSLOCK WHAT IS THE POINT?!?!!?!?!??!
I THOUGHT I WAS ALONE IN ALWAYS HOLDING DOWN THE SHIFT KEY FOR ALL CAPS. This is very exciting.
Yeeessss. There should be a Secret Society for us.
So, this movie was almost exactly the same flavor of stupid-and-entertaining as The Chronicles of Riddick, right? Because I kept waiting for the Necromongers to show up.
NB, I love Riddick and am incapable of flipping past it when it airs at 2AM on TNT. So obviously I thoroughly enjoyed Jupiter as well.
Wait, is this movie basically Mass Effect? (Except Mass Effect basically wrote itself to make no sense there at the end.)
Also you are assuming this is a capitalist space economy. Also the answer is clearly robots do all that stuff. The real question is: WHY HAVEN’T THEY REVOLTED?
NOT ASSUMING EDDIE REDMAYNE LITERALLY PRAISES CAPITALISM AT ONE POINT
Needs more Volus!!!!
all these points about ridiculousness and plot holes the size of several human-harvest planets are valid, BUT!
my theory is that the wachowskis had to have written/storyboarded like six to eight hours worth of material, and probably shot a good chunk of it, when someone at warner brothers woke up from their coma and realized the money hemorrhage that was taking place and put a stop to it. i’m betting some exec ground them to a halt and basically said ‘pick your preferred 90 minutes of screentime for this mess, we are not paying for VFX on a single extra minute of footage’.
there just has to be a couple hundred extra script pages and an hour or two more movie lying around somewhere. imagine a director’s cut! i bet at least three of the 10,000 dropped plot threads might get resolved!
I LOVE THIS THEORY. Cannot wait for the director’s cut.
So, exactly what happened to David Lynch’s Dune? That would explain a lot, actually.
Yeah, I loved this movie. I think it’s objectively bad, I can’t defend it, but I haven’t had this much fun in a movie theater in a long time.
And, as dumb as the plot was, I’m still thinking about some of the underlying ideas a week later.
I thought it was one of the more woman friendly sf movies that I’ve seen in a long time. I hear what everyone’s saying about Jupiter’s lack of agency. But I loved that the women weren’t objectified or sexualized. Maybe a shirtless Channing Tatum fighting aliens doesn’t make up for Carrie Fisher having to kill Jabba the Hut in a metal bikini, but it’s a start – at least until all fictional characters are allowed to kill aliens while wearing all their clothes.
I think it works better as a spiritual parable (instead of you know, expecting a coherent story with a logical plot).
The movie starts by showing typical modern consumerism and materialism in Jupiter’s life (her dad was killed over a telescope, her cousin sold her eggs for a tv, she wanted pretty things she couldn’t afford) and then taking it to its illogical extreme in space, with the entitled blithely killing entire populations so they can live forever, even though they seem to hate their miserable lives.
And it ended with her embracing her ordinary, unglamorous life. She started the movie saying she hated her life, and being ashamed of cleaning toilets for a living, and ended by declaring that the previous queen’s problem was that she’d never cleaned a toilet in her life. And we see her happily scrubbing toilets and making coffee for her mother. It’s not about seeking things outside you, it’s about accepting your life as it is, toilet cleaning and all.
And yet, plot wise, I found the ending infuriating – how is she going to protect Earth by living her piddly natural life span and hanging out with her flying canine boyfriend?!! WTF??!!
You’ve done a great job of capturing this movie’s beautiful core, all the silliness and inconsistencies aside.
If you view the ending only as an intermission before the sequel, it’s not nearly so infuriating! Of course she deserves a break to renew her appreciation for her family and ordinary life, enjoy her new winged boyfriend, and learn to use those hover skates. Plenty of events might motivate her to take a different role and actively fight the intergalactic harvesting corporations.
I’d pay to see a sequel. (But I may not be able to persuade Mr Cleo to join me – he was unmoved by the glory of JA).
I kept thinking how is he supposed to live on Earth? Hiding on rooftops? He’s a winged dog-man, her family is going to know he’s not Russian.
I loved this movie, even though I kind of loathed the “embrace your life and simple joys” ending (both because I hate the “embrace a simple life” stuff and because, as you pointed out, it’s outrageously nonsensical plotwise. The W-siblings tried to go for some kind of morale for a modern parable, and what they ended up with is classical case of Reed Richards being useless)
It’s basically 80-era camp, with a preposterous budget.
What I want to understand is, how did they found out that she was a genetic replication anyway? Are they somehow testing the genes of every single human in the universe?
And is there any chance Eddie whatshisname will come back as a recurrance?
They found out after she went to the clinic to sell her eggs, under an assumed name. Since she was born on a ship and was undocumented in the US, that was the first time she showed up in the official medical records. The movie’s a little vague about how the space vampires had access to official US medical records, but I assume they had agents or something monitoring stuff.
I got more incestuous “Caligula”-style camp from the brothers than “camp gay.” I felt like I was watching a movie about three decadent kids each trying to fuck their mother.
Fun movie, though.
I hated this movie soooo much.
But I love the fact that all of the spliced animal people have animal features except Sean Bean. I imagined Sean showing up to costume in the morning, and them saying, “Okay so you’re part bee–” and Sean saying, “Fuck off,” and then everyone being too afraid to bee him up, so they just let him get on in his normal clothes.
At least I saw it with friends at the drive-in, so we were free to shout out loud. Mostly we shouted “STINGER!!” and “I CREATE LIFE!!!!!” and also “CHAPPIE??” but that was leftover from the trailers.
“bee him up” oops there goes the coffee through my nose…
Hey, his eyes got all weird sometimes, so that’s a spliced thing I guess.
I’ll allow your other critiques as a difference in priorities, but I reeeeaaally think that calling it homophobic is a stretch.
I’ve been trying to convince my friends to see this movie but when you have to start your pitch with the phrase: “You have to see this movie! It is terrible.” it is often a hard sell.
I mean, it’s not terrible. It’s ridiculous, but it’s not terrible.
BRINK!
"Reasonable Space Economies and Maze-Prison Sissy Boys" is a movie I would watch again and again
I think this movie deserves a Marxist analysis. Like out of the 30's
I realize I am way too late to this party, BUT maybe the world is ready for a Velvet Goldmine remake/sequel (I'll take either) with those two?