02-10-2015, 10:59 PM
This movie was a missed opportunity for a good sci-fi film. If they had avoided the pandering to the "young adult" crowd (i.e., 10-12 year old boys), it might've great. Still could've been a stinker, but the opportunities for success would've been broader without Channing Tatum skating through the sky on grav boots at the drop of a hat. Yay, kewl d00d, roller blades in the sky!
Anyway...
Jupiter Ascending is a Cinderella story (or maybe Anastasia story) about Mila Kunis, an immigrant girl who makes a living with her Russian mom and aunt cleaning the toilets of Chicago's rich and famous. She doesn't know it, but she also happens to be a space queen and her potential to inherit entire planets, like Earth, sets in motion assassination and marriage plots by her unknown family of space nobles.
The movie puts a lot of work into the sets, costumes, scenery, and background to produce a universe as rich and baroque as that of the original Dune movie. Bladerunner also came to mind just for the effort put into the background and little details. Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum pull their weight as actors, given the limits of the script.
The setting had potential. You've got nobles who are thousands of years old sitting at the peak of interstellar industries to harvest planets of biological resources (people). Earth hasn't been harvested in a long time and is worth a fortune. Genetics and genetic engineering is a big deal, almost a religion. I was thinking of Orions Arm "houses" in the movie.
The universe isn't all about nobles and their houses. There are space cops who might (or might not) have the potential to arrest nobles. There's a huge bureaucracy handled in a montage that's informative and amusing. The movie doesn't pause to explain matters in detail; it comes close to respecting the viewers' intelligence in that you follow or get lost.
Then the movie gets Jar-Jar'd by having Tatum skate around in grav boots any chance he can get. The fight scenes are almost unwatchable because the camera won't hold still, but that'd be more forgivable if they were aimed at a more mature audience.
I'm probably going to buy the movie just to milk it for RPG material. I'll skip the fight scenes.
Anyway...
Jupiter Ascending is a Cinderella story (or maybe Anastasia story) about Mila Kunis, an immigrant girl who makes a living with her Russian mom and aunt cleaning the toilets of Chicago's rich and famous. She doesn't know it, but she also happens to be a space queen and her potential to inherit entire planets, like Earth, sets in motion assassination and marriage plots by her unknown family of space nobles.
The movie puts a lot of work into the sets, costumes, scenery, and background to produce a universe as rich and baroque as that of the original Dune movie. Bladerunner also came to mind just for the effort put into the background and little details. Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum pull their weight as actors, given the limits of the script.
The setting had potential. You've got nobles who are thousands of years old sitting at the peak of interstellar industries to harvest planets of biological resources (people). Earth hasn't been harvested in a long time and is worth a fortune. Genetics and genetic engineering is a big deal, almost a religion. I was thinking of Orions Arm "houses" in the movie.
The universe isn't all about nobles and their houses. There are space cops who might (or might not) have the potential to arrest nobles. There's a huge bureaucracy handled in a montage that's informative and amusing. The movie doesn't pause to explain matters in detail; it comes close to respecting the viewers' intelligence in that you follow or get lost.
Then the movie gets Jar-Jar'd by having Tatum skate around in grav boots any chance he can get. The fight scenes are almost unwatchable because the camera won't hold still, but that'd be more forgivable if they were aimed at a more mature audience.
I'm probably going to buy the movie just to milk it for RPG material. I'll skip the fight scenes.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
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"Everbody's always in favor of saving Hitler's brain, but when you put it in the body of a great white shark, oh, suddenly you've gone too far." -- Professor Farnsworth, Futurama
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"Everbody's always in favor of saving Hitler's brain, but when you put it in the body of a great white shark, oh, suddenly you've gone too far." -- Professor Farnsworth, Futurama