film
A Strong Female Lead
Welcome back to Space: It’s Different This Time By Lu k e Z . Fe nche l Jupiter Ascending, directed by The Wachowskis, playing at Ithaca Stadium 14. ou know how posters for sciencefiction movies look like great science-fiction book covers, but sometimes the movie isn’t as good as the novel in your mind? For once, the movie Jupiter Ascending delivers beyond its marketing elements. For anyone who spots Terry Gilliam’s cameo as a wobbly, fusty office bureaucrat in the Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending, if you can see him behind the make-up and think about Gilliam movies like Time Bandits and Brazil and their influence on movies like The Matrix and Jupiter Ascending, you are the movie’s ideal audience. Having made the hugely risky and ambitious screen version of the David Mitchell novel Cloud Atlas with Tom Tykwer, a goofy space opera like Jupiter Ascending feels a bit like a step back for them, but it’s a fun step back. Mila Kunis stars as the title character, Jupiter Jones: a smart and capable woman of Russian descent who hasn’t been able
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to connect with whatever her gift is; she spends her days getting up at 4:45 a.m. and scrubbing wealthy families’ toilets. Unbeknownst to her and the rest of the residents of Earth, life on Earth and countless other planets has been seeded by families of alien royalty for the purpose of harvesting the evolved living creatures once they reach a “Darwinian state of perfection” to produce a type of youth serum that allows them to live forever. When the matriarch of the most powerful of the alien dynasties dies, her children Balem (Eddie Redmayne), Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), and Titus (Douglas Booth) are at war over the inheritance. Jupiter Jones is the new heir. She meets Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), a genetically engineered interplanetary warrior, who came to Earth to reveal that her genetic signature—possessing the same gene sequence as the deceased matriarch— makes Jones royalty and heir to Earth. What a crazy plot. Luckily, the Wachowskis plow ahead with their tale, moving Kunis from Earth to galaxies, space palaces and all manner of sci-fi eye
candy as far as the eye can see. (I saw the 2D version, but I must confess that I’d be interested in seeing it in 3D while it’s still in town.) Lana and Andy Wachowski have never been shy about concealing their influences; at its core, The Matrix was a high-tech riff on Alice in Wonderland, and I was onto the parallels to Cinderella before anyone on the movie actually spoke the word. There are also thematic references in
Tatum does save Kunis’ bacon a few times, but it’s clear that Kunis is more interested in Tatum as a lover than a protector, and that when the ending comes, she deals with the situation on her own terms; as in the best Jane Fonda films of the era, Kunis’ Jupiter starts off in the film as something less and becomes something more. And while we’re waiting for Marvel and DC to make a female superhero movie, here’s one right here and now. Back to the eye candy: Jupiter Ascending is quite simply a splendid film to watch for the sheer imagination of the film’s production design, special effects, and art direction. Here is a movie that deals in well worked over tropes. We know we’re going to see intergalactic planets, spaceships, and weaponry. But just when you think artists have run out of ways to make new versions of things we’ve seen in hundreds of these movies, the technicians and Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum in Jupiter Ascending (Provided) craftspeople have found new shapes and ideas. Special Jupiter Ascending to Star Wars, The Princess kudos are in order for cinematographer Bride, Soylent Green, The Terminator and, John Toll, production designer Hugh oddly enough, The Matrix’s notion of using Bateup and the art direction by David humans as fuel. Allday, Dominic Hyman, David W. Jupiter Ascending is actually a rare Krummel , supervising art director Charlie example of a film starring a proactive Revai, Mark Scruton, Merje Veski, and heroine who doesn’t need a protective male Su Whitaker. Good work, folks. Jupiter to swoop in and save the day. Granted, Ascending is a fun film. •
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