From the directors and producers of the Matrix trilogy, V For Vendetta, and Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending promised to bring yet another ground-breaking cinematic sensation to the world this week. Yet no amount of impressive futuristic backdrops, consistently dramatised combats, or even a cast of such a wide and talented variety could quite save Jupiter Ascending from crashing to the ground.
The plot itself is unnecessarily complicated yet under-developed and terribly confusing. Jupiter Jones, the daughter of a Russian illegal immigrant working in Chicago, discovers that she is in fact the reincarnation of a universally powerful woman who lived over 90,000 years ago, and is wanted dead by two of her three utterly charming children. Having inherited the Earth, Jupiter travels effortlessly from planet to planet across the galaxy and then to and from Earth in a series of disorientating negotiations with space creatures, and her children from her previous life; including her seductive son Titus, played by Douglas Booth, who attempts to marry her. Followed around faithfully by Caine Wise, a spliced human wolf with wings, played rather expressionlessly by the odd teen-dream choice of Channing Tatum, Jupiter and Caine proceed to fall in love, and so after saving the world, unpredictably live happily ever after.
From the very beginning, the narrative is a patchwork of hurried snippets and snatches of melodramatic conversation, which on occasion burst into a bewildering flurry of high-tech chases to theatrically orchestrated music. Not only does the narrative flow just about as seamlessly as the neglected diary of a hormonal 12 year old, with repeated outbursts of, “I hate my life!”; the actors themselves seem quite unable to convincingly fit into their roles and adapt themselves to their new universe. With the exception of Eddie Redmayne, who plays soft-spoken antagonist Balem Abrasax, and who seems to hold not only the failing fragments of the plot together, but also, rather conveniently, the entire universe, the cast perform on a scale ranging from mildly acceptable to amusingly appalling.
Between the recycling of various action scenes and conveniently shortcut sections to avoid the exposure of a flawed script, the film does display an extraordinary parade of breathless backdrops and highly digitalised futuristic cityscapes, not to mention the artistically inventive costumes.
Perhaps one of the most impressive scenes is that of Jupiter’s wedding inside the spaceship’s very own converted gothic cathedral, which is filmed at Ely Cathedral. Its visually enriching aesthetics, however, seem wasted on the work as a whole; they are deserving of an adequately written script at least. Although the film is capable of entertaining, it is to be taken lightheartedly and without any expectations, for the seriousness with which the narrative and the actors take themselves makes it impossible to take it seriously at all.
The embarrassment at this truly cringeworthy film would have left the whole audience in laughable disbelief had there been any one else in the cinema bar my rather reluctant companion. I cannot criticise the inhabitants of Oxford for neglecting this unexceptional spectacle of random dream-like bewilderment. I myself will feel no inclination to buy the DVD.
