Jupiter Ascending (Wachowski, 2015):
Jupiter Ascending is exactly like
The Matrix. Both
Jupiter Ascending and the Wachowskis' paradigm-shifting
chef-d'oeuvre finely stitch together comprehensively immersive universes from a polymathic range of interests and influences. Both films attempt to make sweeping commentaries about life, love, humanity and society. And both films wrap these ideas in comforting genre conventions, all whilst searing our eyeballs with audaciously dreamlike visuals.
Jupiter Ascending is, also, absolutely nothing like
The Matrix. Where the films diverge is in their style and tone. Where
The Matrix engineered a grimy, industrial aesthetic that reveled in rebellious cool,
Jupiter Ascending celebrates its own silliness, pitching itself somewhere between the Wachowskis' cubist experiment
Speed Racer (2008) and the Neo Seoul storyline in their pantheistic opus
Cloud Atlas (2012).
The real question, then, is not: "Does
Jupiter Ascending live up to
The Matrix?" Rather, the question is: "Does
Jupiter Ascending live up to its own ambitions?"
The short answer is: "Yes."
Set to a palette of unhinged imagination that evokes both
Brazil (Gilliam, 1985) and Alejandro Jodorowsky's conceptual artwork for his conspicuously unproduced adaptation of Frank Herbert's 1965 novel, 'Dune',
Jupiter Ascending has all the childish abandon of a Saturday morning cartoon show from the '80s, like
ThunderCats or
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. It has just as many thrills and spills and excuses to giggle as something like the recent
Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014). Every action scene would end with a realisation that my fingernails were set deep into my palms; proof enough that the Wachowskis haven't lost their penchant for directing visceral action. And the Wachowskis haven't lost their penchant for crafting cool characters, either. The likes of Channing Tatum's wolf-spliced bounty hunter, Caine Wise, and Eddie Redmayne's flying dino-henchmen strut into the duo's Badass Hall of Fame with effortless swagger. Even the unfairly maligned Eddie Redmayne himself dripping with disconcertingly Oedipal sensuality has every chance of being remembered for an iconic performance, even if it's for all the wrong reasons.
Speaking of unfair malignment, the film's plot does
not lack focus, despite myriad accusations to the contrary. The primary narrative and emotional drive of the film is that of Mila Kunis' regal recurrence wanting to re-unite with her family back on Earth, but being compelled instead to confront the cosmic duties that have been thrust upon her. This emotional anchor works because we actually care about Kunis' birth family, specifically her mother (Maria Doyle Kennedy), with whom she shares a genuine warmth and love in the film's opening reel. Their relationship pays off in the film's climax, and is arguably the
real "love story" at the heart of the film.
It's not that Mila Kunis' refreshingly female-assertive romance with Channing Tatum doesn't work, because their chemistry crackles with endearing playfulness; but it ends up playing more like a subplot than the A-story, which may also be why some audiences were left emotionally distanced from the film. The other reason people may have felt distanced was the fast pace. When the credits roll, the audience feels like they just want more of everything more of Caine's anti-gravity acrobatics, more of Jupiter's ostentatious wardrobe, more beautiful worlds for your eyes to feast on, more interplay with Tatum and Kunis, more backstory about Stinger's history, more Abrassax conspiracies... And yet, when you look back on the film, you realise that it was packed to bursting point with all of the above. As we swiftly follow Mila Kunis through a fascinating cross-section of the latest Wachowski-verse, the journey is perhaps a little
too swift, a little
too condensed. The positive is that there is plenty to mull over during repeated viewings the jargon of Caine and Stinger, for example, evokes worlds and images in the way a novel might. The negative, however, is that audiences may have trouble settling into the groove of the story.
Jupiter Ascending would have pre-dated its contemporaries in space fiction,
Guardians of the Galaxy and
Interstellar (Nolan, 2014), had it not been pushed back several months from its original 2014 release date. There is a noteworthy comparison to be made by way of
Jupiter Ascending taking the fun-but-vapid space cowboy genre conventions of the former, and combining it with the somber, socially aware commentary on human consumption and collonisation of the latter. The coincidence that these films occurred within approximately half a year of one another is a graphic confirmation of the Wachowskis' mission to combine high concept with high thinking. Perhaps even more importantly is the fact that
Jupiter Ascending rejects both the realist mantra of Christopher Nolan
and the reluctantly fantastical tone of James Gunn, choosing instead to use its outlandish budget to construct the most lavish cosmic phantasmagoria that we have ever seen. It is a graphic confirmation that the Wachowskis' sense of artistic exploration, in an industry that clings in terror to the status quo, is as awe-inspiring as any space adventure.
Jupiter Ascending may not the best entry in the Wachowskis' filmography, but it
is among their most visionary. That's saying something.
★★★★★
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